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. 

Memoir: Part One

I've been working on a bit of a memoir..so here's what I have to start! More to come in due time. 

           

            In the first grade, my mother dropped me off at school, swinging her big ol’ Volvo through the corrals which separated the playing children from the parade of parents in idling cars, who solemnly waved goodbye from behind streaked windshields. I clutched a shaggy yellow rope, suspended between two poles to form a walkway, and made my way toward the swirling, giggling, sprinting chaos of my elementary school playground. 

            “Lauren’s here!” Katelyn Dostaler hollered, and I clutched the rope tighter, as if to brace myself for impact. Katelyn was one of the taller girls, and her wide face peered from beneath a home-trimmed bowl-cut, and from behind a pair of thick spectacles which made her eyes appear two-times the normal size. She ran down the walkway toward me, startling a nervous kindergartener along the way. “Hi, Lauren!” Katelyn yelled, as she unceremoniously scooped my limp form into her arms, twisting me about like a rag doll.

            “Hi, Katelyn,” I said in a strangled voice. She rocked me for a moment longer before placing me back on my feet. My hand flung to the bow in my hair, to check it was still there. If I lost my bow with the pencil on it again, my mom would have my head. She’d had to call the bus company to hunt it down last time, not to mention the time I left it at my friend Marie’s house. My mom always said that Marie’s house was a bottomless pit, hungrily awaiting little odds and ends to gulp down, never to be seen again. Not that Marie’s house was messy; it was actually quite clean. Marie’s family just didn’t get so wrapped up in little things like bows or sweatshirts, or even whether their kitchen cabinets were all painted the same shade of red. Luckily, my bow was still present this time, perched jauntily on my freshly-combed hair.

Katelyn grabbed my hand, swallowing it within her clammy palm, and we walked toward a group of young girls who were flapping their arms and careening about the playground, immersed in play.  “Lauren’s here!” one of the girls announced. Kristy Donahue, a gangly girl with a sly smile, wrapped me in a hug, lifting my feet momentarily from the ground. This was a familiar theme: my friends were always excited to see me and were always trying to pick me up. It was among the disadvantages of being so small—that, and not being able to ride the MindEraser at Six Flags. I greeted my motley group of friends, and immediately joined in their game—an old favorite, and one we would not let go of for many years: Baby Birdies. It was a simple game: a family of birds flew about, facing such perils as hunters, disease, and broken wings. The family was led by a most unlikely mother bird, for she was the smallest of the bunch, but she had a valuable tool: the mother bird could let out a piercing whistle, loud enough to call all the birdies back to the nest. Against all odds, that mother bird was me.

My elementary school years, spent within the walls and limited grounds of N.D.I.C. (Notre Dame / Immaculate Conception) school, was a time of imagination and self-discovery.  The school was small and unimpressive, a squat, rectangular brick building on a stretch of blacktop, next door to Notre Dame church, in a small town in Western Massachusetts. But to my young eyes, N.D.I.C. was a breeding ground for adventure. I love to look back on my elementary school years, back to a time when imaginations were embraced, and when the world was only as large as Easthampton, MA. One particular day from my third grade year floats to the surface of my mind, with images vivid and tangible and nearly within reach.

It was a radiant fall day: the sun was out, pressed into a brilliant blue sky, but the air was sharp and crisp, and my friends’ cheeks were stained pink from the whip of autumn wind. My friends and I stood clustered in a secluded spot of the playground, an area partially hidden by a protruding brick wall of our school building. The small nook always smelt of cookie dough and wet French fries due to a vent which breathed the vapors of the cafeteria into the open air. My group of friends had dwindled in size over the years; some girls had stopped playing at recess, and instead walked around in groups of three or four, circling the blacktop like hungry hawks, gossiping and gabbing and whispering behind cupped hands. But I was not ready to give up baby birdies just yet and still had a solid assemblage of friends of a similar mindset.

“We are all gathered here today,” I said that day, standing before my friends, “to decide whether or not we should kick Kristy out of the group.” I glanced sideways at poor Kristy Donahue who stood in the imaginary witness stand, her bottom lip pushed out in a pout. I paused as a gust of wind tore through our little brick crevice, stirring a stream of dried, encrusted leaves into a dusty whirlwind. The leaves tumbled helplessly, their dainty edges scraping faintly on the blacktop. “Kristy, how do you plead?”

 Kristy shrugged, her eyes following the whirling leaves. “I don’t know. I want to stay in the group. I don’t know what I did that was so wrong,” she said, but her squinted eyes and pursed lips indicated otherwise.

“Objection!” cried Ashley Griffith, dramatically bounding to her feet, her hand shooting into the air with a snap of her fingers. Ashley had done her own hair that day; I had never seen so many colorful barrettes tangled in such short hair. “Kristy pushed me down and told me I am bad at singing!” A chorus of similar stories echoed from the rest of the congregation.

“Order! Order!” I yelled, whacking a stick on the ground, unable to bite back a giggle. I had been dying to say that; it was one of the reasons I was so keen on taking Kristy’s case to court. Kristy was always up to no good, and the girls were continuously petitioning to kick her out of our group. “She’s mean!” Ashley would insist, over and over again. And she was right; Kristy was a conniving child with a mean streak. But who was I to tell her that she wasn’t allowed to play with my friends and me? It just didn’t seem fair. A trial was the perfect solution. Plus, one of my favorite episodes of “Rugrats” featured a trial, as the babies investigated who had broken Chuckie’s favorite clown lamp.

The trial that day ended in a compromise. I convinced the others that Kristy should be allowed to remain in our group as long as she was nice to everyone and let other girls be the youngest birdie once in a while. The others agreed, somewhat begrudgingly, and playtime resumed. I knew the Kristy problem was only temporarily resolved; it was only a matter of time before she broke the agreement. But I just could not cast her out. If I were to be a part of this group (and I hated that it had become as formal as that), I would make sure it was one of acceptance, not of rejection. Like Alyssa Fondakowski! No one had wanted to be her friend before because she was so bashful and quiet, but now we all liked playing with her. It wasn’t nice to turn people away. Maybe Kristy would change, at least for a little while. Regardless, I was happy that recess had become simple again.

A Flatulent Family

      My father is the man who farted on every stair. It is quite the feat; I myself have come close, but have never made it from landing to landing without running out of gas. The secret is to break up an enormous fart into a series of smaller farts, so that there are enough small farts for every stair. It takes a truly monstrous fart to make it to the second floor. My dad is a man of truly monstrous farts.

      For many men, monstrous farts can serve as an impediment in the dating department. Candlelit dinners and dainty lace table cloths hardly provide a setting conducive to freedom of flatulence, and so countless dates withhold their farts, storing them deep within their bellies where they cannot be heard or smelt. This tends to backfire, for these well-intentioned fellows wind up inflated, buoyant and bobbing against the ceiling, their disgusted dates escaping through the back door. 

      Not my father, though. My father knew all the tricks of the trade--he was practically a fartsmith. One night, while wooing my mother, a dainty, small figured girl with an eye for a good time and a load of baggage trailing behind her, my dad fell upon unfortunate bowel discomfort. They sat on a bench in downtown Holyoke, enjoying the song stylings of some local band, but mostly enjoying each other. "He was sweet," my mother recalls. "He even pooped on the downbeats." It was true, my father claims. Stricken with a gullet full o' gas, my father knew the success of the date hinged on his relief of belly pressure. And so, clever man, he waited for the bass-heavy parts of the song and squeezed out bits of gas, one fart at a time. My mother wasn't fooled, however. "I could feel the vibrations through the bench," she claims. Regardless, she was flattered by his efforts; he had her in the bag. 

      As a child, I heard that story many times. For much of my youth, I was perplexed, for I thought my dad literally "pooped" on the downbeats, as my mother insists. I pictured him squeezing out a fresh log, steamy and curled on the end, right on the bench. I should have known better, because my mother only uses the word poop. She finds "fart" distasteful, and avoids it at all costs. It causes some confusion, but it sure is adorable to hear my poised little mother say "poop." 

         My father's flatulence was not always so well managed in the presence of women.  Before meeting my mother, my dad was seeing a local girl, and took her out for a hot date. Unfortunately, the dinner they scored did a number on his belly health, and he sat roiling in pain, purple-faced from withheld gas. The date came to a premature end: "I had to bring her home, I was so uncomfortable," he says. He pulled up to her house, and wished her a hasty "good night." 

         "As soon as the passenger door swung shut, I just let loose." I can only imagine the relief! One enormous fart, containing hours worth of steady air repression, it must have rippled off the leather seats, reverberating throughout the car, jingling the china in the next door neighbors' armoire. Considering the intensity of the emission, it can only be assumed that his date, not having yet paced more than a few feet from the car, must have heard the trumpeting blow, or at least felt the ground shiver beneath her feet. I'll have to ask my dad whether there was a second date. 

     Needless to say, my dad adjusted and perfected his date-farting techniques, and found ways to cope with his flatulence. He certainly found the perfect woman, for though she may roll her eyes, my mother loves every fart that rumbles from my dad's gas chamber. Thank goodness, because otherwise this here fart-fanatic would never have been born.