February 5, 2007

• 1958, tenth grade, Texas Panhandle

  When the results of my IQ test finally did sink in, I started worrying about the other kids finding out.  In elementary school in California, I had been teased unmercifully, called Brain, Egghead, Smarty-Pants (Thanks, Pauline, for reminding me of that one.  I’d forgotten it. ), but never Teacher’s Pet, thanks to my irreverent sense of humor and smart, sarcastic mouth. 

  I had developed some social survival tactics by the time I got to high school.  The most effective one was simply not to put much effort into homework.  I could do my period one English homework during business class in period two.  The old guy who taught algebra wrote each day’s homework assignment on the board before class started, so I could do it while he was up front yakking and writing out equations on the board, and still be able to catch his errors and correct him.  I made points with the kids I cared the most about impressing, the rebels, for pissing off teachers that way.

  Mama wanted me to make straight A grades, and offered me cash bonuses, new clothes, or special treats for each grading period when I did.  It would happen once in a while even though I didn’t try, but usually there were one or two Bs in among the As, and even the rare C in courses such as music or art where intellectual prowess and an eidetic memory weren’t much use.

  I hadn’t really liked school, ever.  In kindergarten, I was insecure, scared, and miserable.  First and second grades were socially agonizing and boring in the academic area because I was already reading newspapers and books by then and could do math up to the level my father could, which stopped at long division.  When I was skipped up to third grade in the middle of the term after my father died, I lost what few friends I’d made and had to endure the mutual hatred with the teacher who had to stay after school with me to try and get me caught up with the class in handwriting.

  I remember one fourth grade field trip where I got to handle snakes.  That was fun.  Then we moved to Kansas where I nearly froze on the playground.  Coming down with the mystery illness that just hung on and on, relapsing and remitting through the rest of grade school, earned me a new nickname, Sicky.  In seventh grade, I had a science teacher I liked, and there was a math teacher I liked in eighth grade, up until we moved away from that school.

  Ever since we’d been in Texas, school had just been a drag, something that took up time I’d rather have spent with a boyfriend when I had one, or watching soap operas and reading books, otherwise.  Other than lots of sci-fi, the entire Holy Bible (King James Version), and Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, during those first two years in Texas I read Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.  A brief fling with Alexandre Dumas got me through The Three Musketeers and Camille. 

  I read a lot of non-fiction, too, mostly archaeology but also everything I could find in local libraries about Anne Bonney, Mary Read, Captain Kidd, Edward “Blackbeard” Teach, Calico Jack Rackham, and other Caribbean pirates of the 1700s.  I’m fairly certain now that this avid interest in pirates was impelled by unconscious past-life associations that finally emerged as conscious memories in the late ‘eighties.

  Home life was preferable to wasting time in school, but not by far.  My step-father’s batty old-maid sister Bee developed a passion for my little black dog (a chihuahua and Manchester terrier mix), Button, and turned the poor little thing neurotic by chasing her down, grabbing her, and stuffing her into a handbag or a big pocket so she could carry her around all the time.  I got used to hearing little toenails scrabbling across the floors, with Bee scuttling after, arms outstretched as she squawked, “Come here, Buttons, come to Mama.”  She couldn’t even get the dog’s name right.

  Bill wasn’t much saner, but he was quieter and less intrusive.  His quirks showed up mostly at the dinner table.  No matter what we were having for dinner (supper was what he and Bee called the evening meal, but it was dinner to me) Bill always had to have a sour pickle (not dill) and a hunk of longhorn cheese (never any other type) with it.  Everything on his plate got a liberal dose of salt and pepper before he tasted it, too.  Mama had commented on those habits a few times before throwing her hands up in frustration and dropping the subject.

  Mama used to throw her hands up at a lot of things.  Shrugging was my favorite gesture.  Mama would even throw her hands up at my shrugs.  Sometimes she’d come into my room and tell me, “Get your nose out of that book and….” do something, whatever she wanted done or thought my time would be better spent in doing.  I resented her efforts to control how I spent my free time, and had little respect for her judgment and little regard for the pastimes she would prefer for me to pursue instead of reading books.  The older I got, the less she and I found to agree on.  Sometimes she’d get all maudlin about how her “baby” was growing up, never mind that my doctors had predicted I wouldn’t live that long.

  Mama wanted me to stay her little girl, and I wanted to do grownup things as soon as I could because it seemed that grownups had more fun and I might not even live long enough to really find out.  The harder she tried to keep me “little,” the more I rebelled, fought her and wanted to get away from her.  When my boyfriend Eddie broke up with me, she was as relieved and happy as I was devastated and humiliated.  After a summer without dates, when school started I started putting a lot of effort into getting a new boyfriend.

  My efforts were hampered by cultural mores and parental restrictions.  Mama said that good girls don’t call boys on the phone.  Everyone said that girls don’t ask boys out on dates.  This more or less narrowed my options down to flirting, and only with the boys with whom I came into contact at school.  I have been trying to recall what “flirting” meant back then.  To the best of my recollection, it consisted of gazing adoringly into a guy’s eyes, fluttering my eyelashes (EYELASHES?!?  What eyelashes?  Mine were as invisible then as they are now, and I wouldn’t start wearing mascara for another five years or so.), listening intently to everything he said, and making the appropriate approving noises.

  As insipid and inane as it sounds, it worked.  The next day after my best friend Peggy brought her new boyfriend Ford (not his real name), with his black leather jacket and ducktail haircut, to our table in Cooper’s store at lunchtime, he was my new boyfriend.  A few years ago, I located Peggy through Classmates.com.  I wonder if Ford is the reason she never responded to my email.  If so, I guess she just doesn’t know how much of a favor I did her and how much of a disservice I did myself by taking her boyfriend away.

  

  • 9:38 pm
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