Month: September 2009

I wanted to cry.

My friend Sasha and I were standing at the base of a rock fall, staring up at the most menacing peak we had encountered in our six-day trek.  Another hiker had just told us that we had gone off our trail.  Now we either had to backtrack and then follow the trail for god knows how long, or go over this pass, which was next to the highest peak in this part of Spain.

Still incredulous, I said to the other hiker in Spanish, “But the yellow markers said to go this way.  A lady yesterday told us to follow the yellow markers to the next refuge.”

She responded, “No, no, the yellow markers mark the way to the highest peaks in the Pyrennes.  Your refuge yesterday was on the way to this peak.  That’s why she told you to follow the yellow markers.”

I thanked her for her help, and the woman trekked on.  Sasha asked me what it was going to be.  Were we going to turn back and waste another two hours getting back to the right trail?  Or were we going to climb up this sumbitch?  I told her that as painful as this climb might be, I couldn’t face the idea of going backwards—it just went against my adventurous nature.

I took a deep breath and started upward.  The rocks at the bottom of the fall were the size of pick-up trucks.  I leapt from one to the next.  My breathing deepened.  The higher I climbed, the smaller the rocks became.  They began to shift under my weight.  By the time I was halfway up, I was trudging through baseball-sized rocks and dirt that slipped out from under my feet.  Pretty soon I was on all-fours, grasping at whatever was within reach.  I huffed and puffed and wiped my forehead on my sleeve.  I dug my feet in and squeezed the earth in my hands.

Sasha and I didn’t speak to each other on the way up.  We couldn’t.  I was heaving air in and out of my lungs, and I heard her doing the same behind me.  My feet sank deep into the earth, and I yelled, “Heads up!” to warn her of the rockslide heading her way.  I glanced back.  She threw herself to one side, and the rocks continued their race down the mountain.  “Sorry…about that,” I said.  I had to pause in the middle of my sentence to breathe.

“Don’t…worry about it,” she replied.

I looked up to see how far I was from the peak.  It didn’t seem any closer than it had when we were at the bottom!  I forced myself to keep my eyes on the ground in front of me and continued my climb.  I waited what felt like an eternity and then checked the summit again.  How could it still be so far up?!  I repeated the process probably ten times.  Look down, wait, wait, wait, look up.  No closer.  The blood pounded in my ears, and I felt like I was breathing through a coffee stirrer.

At last, I got to about ten yards from the top.  I stared at the ground.  It was now gravel and sand.  “Keep going….” I mumbled to myself.  I pushed with my feet, pulled with my hands, now raw from clawing at the mountain.  “Keep going,” I said again, and pushed and pulled again.  Over and over, I pushed and pulled, until finally there was nothing left to push off and nowhere else to pull to.  I was on level ground.  I turned myself around on my hands and knees to look for Sasha.  She was a few yards away.  When she reached the summit, we sat up and collapsed into a hug.

I threw my fists in the air and sang the opening measures of the Rocky theme song.  Sasha laughed.

We looked down the mountain we had just summitted.

“I’m proud of us,” Sasha said.

I wanted to say that I was proud of us too, but I was too emotional to speak.

I slid my hands palms-down under the outside of my thighs and began to swing my legs.  My heels thumped against the horizontal wooden bar of the chair.  The new “media center”—we still called it the library—at Cove Creek Elementary was air-conditioned.  Goosebumps sprung out on my arms, and I suddenly had to pee.

The man seated across from me was dressed in pleated khakis, a short-sleeved plaid button-down, and hiking boots.  He had a wide brown mustache, and he was a little bald in front.  On the table in front of him was a booklet, a record sheet, and a perfectly-sharp #2 pencil.

“What is air made of?” he asked.

I bit my lower lip.  Without letting it go, I said, “I don’t know.”  He put a zero on the ledger in front of him.

“If Sally leaves her house at 7:45 and gets to school at 8:10, how much time has she spent traveling?”  My brother was teaching me to tell time, but I hadn’t quite mastered it.  It seemed so easy when he did it, but then again, he was in second grade and knew everything.  I studied the floppy drive of the brand-new Apple computer to my right.

“I don’t know,” I told the  man.   He drew a perfect zero right underneath the first one.

“If Jeff puts 8 eggs in each of 3 baskets, how many eggs are in all the baskets together?”  That seemed like it should be easy.  The green cursor of the Apple blinked against a black background.  It seemed to be counting all the seconds that I didn’t know the answer.

“I don’t know,” I said to the man.

My brother, the second-grade genius, and my sister, who had skipped second grade entirely and was now in fifth grade, were already in GT.  Their gifted-and-talentedness was not under scrutiny.  But now it was my turn.  My mom had gone to my teacher, Miss Kathy (for in the South in 1981, you still called unmarried teachers by their first names), and asked her when I would be evaluated for GT.  Miss Kathy, who had had both my siblings for first grade, had said, “Oh, Rebecca, you know Amy’s your social butterfly.  She’s not like Bruce or Laura.”  My mom was fuming but calmly requested that I be tested anyway.

So here I was, watching an eternal column of zeros stretch down the page across from me.  That’s when I realized:  I was stupid.  From that point, any academic endeavor that was remotely challenging was proof.  Writing papers took everything I had; tests were terribly stressful.  Moreover, I did all kinds of extracurricular activities to compensate for my lack of intellect.  I was drum major in the band; I got in the 12-person competition theater troupe; I became president of the AFS club; I studied in Italy for a year and Mexico for a semester; I sold the hell out of some books door-to-door.

What I distinguished about eight years ago was that I was accepting the opinion of a six-year-old.  Wow.  I mean, if some six-year-old came up to me now and said, “You’re stupid”, I wouldn’t think a thing of it.  Anyhow, it took a while, but I let that shit go.

Of course, occasionally, when I’m feeling six, when I don’t get an allusion my friends make, when I say something inappropriate, it crops up again.  But I’m always able to identify it as my own bullshit and let it go.

My question is:  Why can’t I do that with my other bullshit?

P.S.  I got into that damn GT program.  As Homer would say, I’m S-M-R-T.

Woohoo!  The costumes had come in.  It was May 1993 and the Watauga High Pioneers were rehearsing the spring musical, none other than Oklahoma!. I was Ado Annie.

I walked into the theater and joined Charlie, who played the role of Will, in digging through the freshly opened boxes.  I was secretly in love with Charlie, of course, but who wasn’t?  He was hot and had long hippie hair and skied and smoked a lot of weed and ran with a crowd of seven other hot, pot-smoking skiers.  They called themselves The Rock Boys (because the were from Blowing Rock, but I liked to think it was cause they ROCKED).  Most importantly, he laughed at my jokes, and he called me Cookie.  Isn’t that sweet?  Sigh…Anywho.

Charlie pulled a shirt, a vest, chaps, even a gun holster, out of the boys’ costume box.  “There’s nothing in ours but skirts,” I whined.  No shirts, no bloomers, no cowboy boots.  Screw it, I decided, I’d just wear the skirt with my T-shirt and Birkenstocks.

The scene began.  It was the one where the character with the annoying laugh—I forget her name, but a girl named Susan played the part—starts flirting with Will, and Ado Annie has to choke a bitch.  This was our best rehearsal yet!  Everything was going swimmingly.  I slapped her.  She kicked me. I yanked her hair.  Everyone who was watching the scene was DYING.

At that moment, a thought wormed its way into my brain.  I had forgotten when I put on my costume that, at the end of the scene, Susan would throw my skirt over my head from the back and dart off-stage.  It would be a really funny moment, see, while I wrestled with my skirt, my bloomers out there for the whole audience to see.

Except this was rehearsal.

And I wasn’t wearing any bloomers.

All I had on under my skirt was my underpants.  And not cute ones.  No, I had on period panties—you know what I’m talking about:  gray granny panties with a stretched-out waistband.

It was too late.  By the time my mouth had caught up with my brain, Susan already had ahold of my skirt.  She pitched it up in the air and took off.  I stood there for a moment, while my butt got cold and a gasp erupted from the cast and crew.  A white-hot heat bolted up my neck into my face.  Sweat beaded on my upper lip.  Everyone in the theater, except for moi of course, fell into giggles.  Finally, I came out of my stupor and sprinted into the wings.  Seeing the curtain bunched up back there, I stepped over and carefully wrapped myself up, like a burrito.

The curtains parted slightly.  Charlie looked at me, and for one moment, I imagined he hadn’t seen, or maybe he had seen but he had been bewitched by my ass and would take me away.  We would smoke weed and listen to the Dead, and he’d teach me how to ski, and then we’d HAVE SEX.

Instead he said, “No bloomers, Cookie?” and sauntered away.

Don’t ever tell me that I’ve lost weight.  Don’t tell me I look thinner.

I fucking hate it.

First of all, I haven’t, and I don’t.  Lost weight or look thinner, that is.  I don’t diet; I don’t lose weight.  And even if I did, I stopped weighing myself about seven years ago so I wouldn’t know it.

Second of all, I’m not that fat to begin with.  My friend Sean and I used to talk about this all the time.  People who haven’t seen us in a while always say we look like we’ve lost weight, so he and I came to the conclusion that, in their minds, we live as obelisks.

Third of all, it’s none of your fucking business!  Would you say, “Boy, your acne has really cleared up!”  By making a statement about my imaginary weight loss, you’re condemning whatever I supposedly looked like previously.

Tell me I look smokin’ hot.  Tell me you love my new shirt.  But don’t fucking tell me I’m “shrinking”.

I just got back from a lovely visit with Margo and Dr. D in Lexington, VA, mostly spent talking and eating and walking dogs.  Yesterday, Margo gave me a book of her poetry.  I always feel a little ambivalent when people I love share their creative work with me.  I’m excited to see what they’ve produced, yet I’m terrified I’ll hate it and have to effuse fake appreciation for it.

I should say at this point, also, that I don’t enjoy poetry.  Excluding the fine works of Shel Silverstein, I find poetry inaccessible.  Moreover, I know you’re supposed to read poetry like you taste wine:  read a little bit, swish it around for awhile, and see what you notice.

Well, I couldn’t do that with Margo’s book.  I woke up at 2am, picked it up, and at 3, I was still chugging through the thing.  I loved it.  It was narrative and lyrical, thought-provoking without being cryptic, sad yet hopeful.  Made me want to write poetry.