My friends and I become big time class nuisances. We grew up from being mischievous devils who would hide from teachers under desks with opened umbrellas as shields, to a posse of girls our teachers would refer to as “The Color Party”. Because our names would be highlighted (in neon colors, duh) on the class register, and we were always laughing and talking really loudly (as if we were at a party… I think??). They disbanded us and dispersed us from the back row. Some of us were made to sit up front right under their nose, some of us forced to mingle with the nerds (not entirely bad because this gave me access to good quality/Velda’s homework for my, uhh, reference) (don’t get me wrong, Nut. Your essays were amazing and I’m grateful. It’s just, Velda, actually listened in class and I dunno… Passed her tests), some of us had to shift our entire desk outside of the classroom (LOL. What do you think a teacher’s logic behind this is?)
I’m in a Science class at school, but I already know I’m going to study fashion design in the future. For one, Physics and Chemistry make almost zero sense to me. But more importantly, “that’s a nice dress. Holy shit, I do not have $109. And I’m only going to need MORE clothes once I get out of school and this pinafore uniform becomes irrelevant. I need to learn how to sew dresses ASAP.” I start packing my own salad to school. Every $1.50 saved at recess, is $1.50 earned.
I choreograph a dance for our inter-class competition and make the girl we all love to hate stand in the spotlight while we point at her as Gwen Stefani sings “this shit is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S”.
My boyfriend gets into really crappy metal music and forms a band. Even though I always stick out like a sore thumb in my bright floral sundresses and I can’t stand the noise music, I watch him scream into the microphone in a small, dark and stuffy room weekend after weekend. There is an unspoken all-black dress code at these gigs, and the crowd is terribly mutated with holes in their cheeks and earlobes resting on their shoulders. We get into some trouble when my neighbors rat to my parents that he has been scaling the walls to climb into my bedroom at midnight.
Some weekends we bake loaves of carrot cake. We sell them to friends and family, with all proceeds going towards our Valentine’s Day dinner. In the end, we manage a decent 3-course dinner (soup, steak, dessert) at a cafe with cloth napkins.
I don’t remember very much else from this year except the passing of my paternal grandfather. My siblings would recount stories of a stern and stoic man who would discipline his children using a stick. But all I remember is a man with tanned leathery skin and a really bad posture (he had Parkinson’s) offering me chocolate. I remember him asking me to fetch the newspaper so he could check if he’d won the lottery that week. I remember he liked to go to the cinema and watch R rated movies with my grandmother on the weekends. I also remember him pointing and laughing at me when I slipped in my high-heels and fell on my bum when I was six.
