Franklin Pierce: the College of Silly Walks

     I don't walk to class often, though the campus here is rather small. My preference for driving to class is mostly due to an inability to get my ass moving in the morning, and therefore, a tendency to be late. I am also extremely lazy. Today, though, upon seeing the droopy sky and gray ambivalence of the Rindge, New Hampshire air, I could not resist an early morning stroll across campus, so I plugged my ears with the crooning of "Earth Wind and Fire," and began my pursuit of knowledge on foot.

     While ambling across the field--the moist, muddy grass seeping and bubbling into my absorbent canvas sneakers, (why the heck will that grass never dry!)--I could not help but notice my fellow beknapsacked peers, drifting zombie-like along the sidewalks, heading toward their own morning classes, or perhaps to the cafeteria, where they will invariably enjoy absurdly fluffy scrambled eggs.

The Average FPU Student

     The student body at Franklin Pierce is very unique, for it tends to be comprised of the rejects of other more affluent schools. Though one may see this as detrimental to the scholastic experience, I seriously beg to differ--the professors here are top notch (since when is "notch" not spelled with a "k"?), and the incapable students are pruned out by second semester of Freshman year. Nonetheless, Franklin Pierce attracts a very startling student body--one which is marked, I dare to admit it, by unattractiveness. Snaggle teeth and frizzy hair abound here, so much so that during our first visit to the school,  my mother was rendered practically speechless by the clientèle of the Franklin Pierce cafeteria. "Wow," she said, over and over again, astounded by each student her eyes fell upon. Even I had to admit, it was the ugliest collection of students I had seen thus far in my college search. "This is the college for me," I thought, and for reasons my mother will never understand, Franklin Pierce was solidified in that moment as my top choice.

      Aside from ugliness, one subtle characteristic common to Franklin Pierce students which often goes unnoticed is the tendency for silly walks--really, if you just watch people walk through campus on the average day, the ratio of abnormal walkers to normal walkers is quite staggering (taha, I made a funny). So plentiful are  the silly walking students that I would not be surprised if there is a portion of the application to Franklin Pierce which asks the applicant's favored walking style. ("Check yes if you walk in an awkward fashion. If you checked "Yes," please explain"). From what I have discerned in my three years here, in comparison to the applicants of normal striding behavior, awkward walkers are a shoe-in.

     I will now break down for you a few of the different types of silly walkers which can be found on this campus. In order to fully appreciate these different types of silly walkers, I recommend you get up yourself and test out a few. Also, whether or not you attend Franklin Pierce, it may be wise to ask yourself just where you fit in on the silly walk spectrum.

Among the most common silly walks around these parts is the ol' classic: pigeon toes. Tommy Pickles did it, as apparently did Babe Ruth. Perhaps following in their footsteps (I'm on a roll, here), many students prefer to let their little piggies drift inward and their heels outward, making for an awkward, quirky shuffle. The degree to which the students are pigeon toed varies quite significantly. Some have only a mere hint of pigeon-ness in their gait, while others have toes turned so drastically inward that their knees never seem to part. This is not an attractive feature, for it creates the appearance of a permanently full bladder, and leaves the observer to wonder whether, in conjunction with the seemingly attached thighs, the silly-walker has any genitals at all.

Converse to the pigeon-toed among us are the duck-footed individuals--that is, people who walk with their toes turned outward. This is a rather amusing way of walking, for the duck-toed individual often resembles a cowboy who has just recently dismounted his horse after a long day in the saddle. According to my limited research on the matter, some individuals--young men in particular--resort to this jaunty saunter when donning a pair of overly large pants with loaded pockets. Unequipped with a belt or pair of suspenders, these droopy-drawered fellows are forced to splay their knees in order to keep their entire nether region from exposure. Whether the result of some natural inclination for parted knees, or the result of heavy pockets and a wide waste band, duck-footed students are highly represented here at good ol' Franklin Pierce.

Figure 1

Now we arrive at my very favorite type of silly walk: the dead-armed, ramrod straight, stick-up-the-ass stride. Common especially among scrawny, ill-tempered students with aversions to eye contact, this unmistakable traipse is marked by a very disconcerting feature--the complete immobility of the arms. Now, when the average person walks, runs, skips, gallops, what have you, his/her arms casually swish and swing along his/her sides (See Figure 1). This is not a conscious action--it happens automatically to ensure balance--it's probably even evolutionary for Pete's sake.

That being so, when seeing the dead-armed among us, I am always tempted to elicit a shiver. It's just plain unnatural! To not swing one's arms suggests that the individual is consciously fighting a natural impulse to do so. And why fight the urge? That's like deciding to refrain from ever bending one's knees--it's inconvenient, awkward, and downright silly. (In elementary school, my friend Marie and I used to play a game where, at the end of lunch, we would get in the front of the line and lead the rest of the students up the stairs to class. In an effort to amuse ourselves, we would refrain from bending our knees at all costs, and would take absurd amounts of time swinging our straightened, gangly legs up the two flights of stairs. The resulting traffic jam of frustrated and confused peers provided fodder for plenty an afternoon giggle session).
But seriously, to the stationary-armed out there: please, succumb to the impulse, and let those noodle-y little arms swing free.

Oh, Franklin Pierce. You are truly a breeding ground for unattractiveness and oddities. Contrary to any negativity which may be intrinsic to this post, it is exactly the unconventional aspect of this student body that draws me to it. So, whether one walks silly or talks silly or is prone to possession of the spirits of the underworld, I salute the students of Franklin Pierce. United by our idiosyncrasies, we are a student body filled with fascinating, unique characters. I wouldn't trade the seemingly unattractive or peculiar among us for a million normal-walking, pretty faced drones. That being said, Franklin Pierce, hold your chin up proudly, and walk tall.

My New Favorite Song

"The Hungry Herbivore" from the TV show, "The Dinosaur Train." 

So awesome. 

All for Nothing

Ben's voice was in my ear, so I smiled. It was a miracle, really, that I could hear his words so clearly, even though he spoke them from 2,000 miles away. Sometimes it felt more like 2,000 light years away.
We were talking about money, and I suggested that he needed a job with regular hours, so as to ensure consistent income.
 "No I don't," he said, and I could practically see his face, see the furrow of his brow. "I'm gonna have to work the rest of my life, why start now? I've got the basics. I don't need anything else." Something slid into place in my brain; something clicked.
 "You know what? You're right. You're absolutely fuckin' right. The last thing I want to do this summer is go back to work, to spend eight hours in a cubicle answering phones, wasting time, selling things I only half believe in" I said, getting excited.
"That's exactly what it is, too." he responded. "A waste of time, of life. And you're literally forced to say certain things, you're told what to say. And it's such a competitive environment, and all for money. All for nothing."
"It makes no sense. God, I feel like an idiot. I have wasted so much time, wasted so much energy worrying about money. I have been wrapped up in it for so long. But it really just hit me over the head just now. How meaningless money really is. You know what we should do? We should spend a year or two just like, living in a tent."
"Absolutely, or out of our car."
"I just really feel like I need to get in touch with the things that matter," I said, pressing the phone closer to my cheek.
"Yeah," he said, "and in order to do that, you've got to let go of the things that don't."

Not Getting Stung

    Sitting on a mussed up bed, covers in disarray. Dish soap in my hair. Cake crumbs in my sheets. It was a wild weekend, involving an indoor four-tiered cake fight--but no, it wasn't a "fight" per say; it was more liberating than that. It was more of a cake explosion. Making the mess was fun, squashing fist-fulls of frosting and moist cake between my fingers, smearing it on walls and faces, getting in touch with my animalistic side, the yearn for destruction and chaos.  Cleaning it up was fun, too. On hands and knees in my underwear, scrubbing up the gooey mess, splinters of wood from a smashed up found-it-on-the-side-of-the-road acoustic guitar jabbing into my knee caps.

     And then there was the late-knight kitchen floor slip-and-slide, and the squirts of dish soap and the constant cry: "More water," as Alisha and I skated and pirouetted across the kitchen floor, scrubbing at the encrusted cake with our heels. Starting from the carpet, (that poor depraved carpet), we got a running start and slid on our bellies like otters--we both have bruises on our hips. Alisha brilliantly used our giant inflatable cactus as a sort of flotation device, holding its arms, straddling its trunk, running, jumping, skidding, sliding across the floor with it squelched beneath her. You should have seen it, you really should have seen it. 

     Yesterday felt like spring--there was a barbecue, there was sunshine, there was PBR. I sat on a rock, eating an ear of corn, watching boys throw Frisbees to one another. One boy sat on a rock across from me, and held a stick in his hands. A white string dangled from the stick. "It's a hornet on a leash," he said. And then I saw the string feebly rise and fall as the tethered bee attempted to fly free. My stomach knotted. "Someone should untie that bee," I said, but I knew it wouldn't be me. I wasn't willing to get stung. The boy shrugged, and blew a plume of cigarette smoke at the bee, watching it twitch.

     Last night, I made a new friend, a kid named Steve, a surfer boy with a laid-back laugh. He sat on my floor, leafing through the record collection, talking about Jack Johnson and James Taylor and "Maggie May," and about letting go of vices. He was down to earth, and twirled a glass-blown flower in his hands. 

     I made a new not-friend, a kid who traded "Abbey Road" for a Styx album, wrenching the needle up mid-"Maxwell's Silver Hammer" and tossing the record like it was yesterday's newspaper. He hid behind a pair of dark-rimmed glasses and a self-assured grin. I grimaced as he spun the record the wrong way with his hands, scratching it like a disc jockey. "Stop doing that," I pleaded, defeated, wincing at the whine and screech of the needle. "No, no, I just gotta skip to a better part of the song," he said, and the record player continued to wail. But you have to lift the needle, I thought, and everything started to ache. I wanted to swat his hands away, but I knew I wouldn't, and instead I stood open-mouthed, aghast. I pictured the white string, rising and falling, pictured that plume of smoke. I was stagnant, paralyzed. My insides had gone cold, but I did not intervene--I was not willing to get stung. 

Memoir: Part Two

So here's the next bit I've got on the ol' memoir. I figure I should throw in a little disclaimer, especially since I didn't ask for anyone's permission to use their names and all.... So this is all true, to the best of my knowledge. The thing is, though, that I obviously had to reinvent a lot of the details to hopefully make it interesting to read. The dialogue, for example, is recreated to the best of my ability.  Also, my recollection is admittedly biased, warped, and probably completely incorrect at times. Be that as it may, this memoir is a vivid account of my childhood, as I remember it. So there's that! Thanks for reading. Gee, it sure is nice of you.

By fourth grade, that simplicity had diminished, as had the size of our group, and it all started when a newly mature Kayla Bergeron strutted onto the playground, wearing the uniform jumper and a smear of gloss across her lips. Years prior, Kayla had come to N.D.I.C., a simple, squinty-eyed girl with mousy brown hair and a sweet, simpering giggle. Come fourth grade, though, and Kayla’s innocent demeanor melted away like sidewalk chalk in the rain. It happened as if overnight—one day, jump rope songs and flapping arms dominated the playground politics of my fourth grade female classmates, and the next, shaved legs and glittered eyelids took the blacktop by force. Kayla was the master of ceremonies, the ringleader of the sudden maturation of fifteen some-odd girls, who, in her wake, trashed their Lisa-Frank folders in exchange for those bearing the ultimate starlet, Britney Spears.

By the week following Kayla’s transformation, it seemed that nearly every girl had started wearing the uniform jumper—a choice which was once considered downright ludicrous—to show off their newly-smooth calves. I, myself, stuck to my pleated uniform pants. Not that I didn’t try on the jumper. It didn’t look nearly as good on me; it made me look like a baby shrouded in a plaid tablecloth.

Kayla shook my fourth grade class into a whole new phase of life. The boys, once concerned mostly with football and teasing Justin Laliberte for his stutter, became suddenly interested in their female counterparts. They tumbled over each other, tongues waggling in the fever of love, all vying for Kayla’s hand. Following Kayla’s example, the girls of my class began wearing sports bras, leaning forward in their seats so the outline of their bra could be seen through the back of their polo shirts. I myself purchased a sports bra, and I wore it every day, just to make sure everyone knew I was growing up. I wasn’t though. Underneath the useless strip of cloth, I looked the same as I always had. “You might be better off using two Band-Aids instead of a sports bra,” my mother joked as we perused the training bra section of J.C. Penney.

Recess had changed completely, too. Now, the playground-walkers far outnumbered the playground-players, boys excluded. I played Baby Birdies with a couple of devotees who had not yet adopted Kayla Bergeron’s ways. Alyssa Fondakowski, Katie Biegner, and Marie were sometimes my only birdies. Alyssa hadn’t bought a sports bra yet, and she always had to turn around when we changed for gym. It was hard not to stare at her bare back, hard not to feel her shame emanating from her hunched shoulders and bowed head as she frantically shuffled into her tee shirt. I felt my insides plummet as I heard the popular girls whispering and giggling, furthering Alyssa’s shame. I knew the feeling. I had experienced it earlier that year when I had mistakenly worn my “Arthur” underwear on gym day. Trapped in the relentless hell of the locker room, I stood shame-facedly as Kayla and her nameless cronies bored holes into me with their eyes. They pointed and guffawed as I scrambled into my wind pants, and repeated, “DW?” to each other in incredulous tones, as if sporting the sassy female cartoon aardvark on my undergarments were some sort of sin.

In fifth grade, I fell even farther behind my maturing classmates. I still did not have even a bump to hide behind my sports bra. I was still too short for the MindEraser, and I had yet to exceed 55 lbs. I refused to give up Baby Birdies, and was only good at being friends with boys, not at flirting with them. I watched Kayla obsessively, hoping to adopt her ways, her flip of the hair, her confident swagger. I wore lip gloss and eye shadow and decorated my binders with pictures of Aaron Carter. But when I got home, I would wake up my dolls and cradle them against me, assuring them, “Mommy’s home, now.” I would curl up on the couch and watch “PB & J Otter” and “Franklin” and, of course, “Arthur,” sucking my thumb all the while. I still loved to watch “Rugrats,” but it scared me that I no longer could relate to the brave, loyal, unshakable Tommy. Instead, I saw myself more in poor Chucky, the asthmatic worry-wart with the famous cautionary line: “I dunno, you guys….”

Luckily, that same year, I found a place where I could escape, even while I was at school. That year, I became a reader. I had always loved to read. My mother and I had read together every night for as long as I could remember, laughing together at Junie B. Jones and her endless antics, and sighing at the beauty of Lily’s adventures in Rockaway Beach in Lily’s Crossing. But in fifth grade, reading became an independent venture. My rampant imagination found a new home, nestled within the bindings of countless books, and I voraciously devoured any book I could find. I raced through Roald Dahl’s whimsical tales, was captivated by the Great Illustrated Classics. I poured obsessively over The Westing Game and Holes, staying up far too late, and greedily sucking up the words by the faint light of my closet. And, of course, there was Harry Potter. Harry Potter would become one of my most loyal friends over the remaining years of my adolescence, and his spell-binding tale would leave me forever awaiting my Hogwarts letter, awaiting acceptance into his magical world. 

Around the same time that I became obsessed with reading, I also discovered that I liked to write. I wrote frequently as a child; my parents have folders full of poems written in my youth, poems about God and solitude and the solemn beauty of night, all written in a childish, misspelled scrawl. In fifth grade, though, I was encouraged in a way I never had been before. In fifth grade, my teacher made me feel exceptional.

Mrs. Andrulis was one of the toughest teachers in the school. She was known for her impenetrable stare, and for her yearly debunking of the Santa Claus myth. Her curriculum was rigorous, her grading unforgiving, and her rules of conduct vigorously upheld. I remember those things about Mrs. Andrulis, but more so, I remember her kind smile, her patient voice which never faltered, even when Megan misread our religion book and said aloud, “Life begins with constipation,” instead of “conception.”

It was Mrs. Andrulis’ kind, even voice which read my words aloud in front of my classmates for the first time, citing my assignments as “good examples.”  She would read many of my assignments aloud that year, and even encouraged me to enter multiple contests. Mrs. Andrulis never revealed my name, which I was grateful for, but each time I heard my thoughts read aloud, the blood roared in my ears and my face appeared to have been boiled, it had grown so red. I was embarrassed and unnerved, but filled with such unbounded joy I felt I might suddenly take flight. I had made something great, and, best of all, it was easy! Words seemed to blossom from the tip of my pencil, taking shape on paper with hardly any thought at all. 

That year, I felt a stirring of the old bravery and confidence of my youth—I felt my inner Tommy Pickles emerge. I may be flat-chested, I thought, and I may be short and scrawny, and I may even still suck my thumb, but I can do something, and I can do it well. With the introduction of words into my life, both in creating words and in reading the words of others, I found a new way to soar, a new way to challenge the world, a new way to spread the colorful plumes of my imagination, and take flight.