A while ago, I mentioned the column I wrote for my high-school newspaper. What follows is my first column, published on Oct. 25, 1991. I was 17. It so totally could be a blog entry today, sad to say. I typed it exactly as written and yes, I did cringe a few times. The photo is of a 16-year-old me and the equally young heartthrob mentioned in the column.
My life is surreal.
I woke up one morning before the alarm went off and decided that the things that I perceived to be happening to me simply weren’t. There was no way they could be. I was at Northwestern University, where I chose to spend give weeks of my summer in journalism hell. Ten hours of classes, five days a week. The first few days there I eagerly awaited the weekend, hoping for some respite from monotonous lecture after monotonous lecture. Ha. Instead of happily basking in the sun, I spent my days trying to figure out why my life was such a hell.
The first day at Northwestern, me, my roommate, and two of our friends encountered a group of six or seven guys, all musicians from Michigan. We were staying in the same dorm and they invited us up one of their rooms. We talked to them for a while, listened to R.E.M. and one of them read my tarot cards. Typical pick-up maneuvers.
Anyway, I fell for one of them. I thought my life was going to be stress-free and meaningful and I was going to become one of the “Shiny Happy People.” More importantly, I thought I was going to fall in love. Ha. It meant I was doomed to spend the rest of our time there in limbo trying to figure him out.
We had different schedules and the only time we could talk was during meals and at night. Anyway, we were playing cards in the Common Lounge one night and he gave me and my roommate a ten minute discourse on egos and dating. “It’s mutually beneficial,” he said, “to hit on someone.” Ha.
He asked us what we considered to be the difference between hitting on someone and “just being friendly.” Although he said pick-up lines disgusted him, he used them that night with hilarious abandon.
He kept directing his comments to me, sitting close, asking me opinion as we moved on to more “serious” matters, like the upcoming fireworks on the beach. After he was herded upstairs along with the other musicians for the night by his counselor, my roommate enthusiastically gave her observations of our conversation. “He likes you! I can tell by the way he was ‘making eyes’ at you!” she said.
I was hooked.
I talked to him twice more that first week. He even ditched his choral class to sing me a beautiful song based on a poem by e.e. cummings, one of my favorite poets. I thought, along with all my friends, something good was going to happen. Maybe I would even fall in ove. Ha. He refused to talk to me after that for an entire week. He left the room or hid behind his Evian bottle when I entered the Lounge. He basically refused to acknowledge my existence.
I was hurt, angry and, most of all, confused. I could not believe that a seemingly nice guy like him would treat me, a seemingly nice girl, like that. After racking my brain trying to come up with something I might have done to upset him, I gave up. I decided he wasn’t worth it. I refused to believe anything had ever happened betweenus. Late one night, I almost had myself convinced that I dreamed the entire thing. It was too unreal to have actually happened.
My friend Jenny believes in what she refers to as her Black Box Theory. She thinks we spend our lives in metaphysical boxes. They can be big boxes or little boxes, it depends on the size of your world. Sometimes, at random points in your life, the box turns black. Nothing that happens to you seems real anymore. People wander in and out of your box and you just watch them go by. You’re an observer of your own life. Kind of like an out-of-body experience.
At first I thought Jenny had been watching Pump Up the Volume a little too much or we had listened to the soundtrack one time too many. But after I thought about it, I realized it explained the Northwestern portion of my life completely. It was almost like there were two of me. One lived a relatively normal, relatively boring life wherever I went. But the other me took over when I was exposed to an exciting situation. That was the outgoing me, the bold me - the me that appeared at Northwestern whenever I was around him.
When I’d talk to him I felt like one of me was hovering above us, objectively taking notes on our conversation. After severally of these mentally reviewed talks, I realized he wasn’t an evil person. He was probably just as confused and clueless as me.
We got to know each other fairly well. He eventually stopped hovering behind his Evian bottle and began talking to me again after a week of surrealistic, non-speaking hell. And guess what? He really wasn’t evil and he was as scared of the future as I am and of taking chances.
While I was there, I should have taken a chance with him. Or at least that’s what my friends kept telling me. I still don’t know. I probably won’t ever know. I guess I need to take more chances …
I do need to take more chances. I hang around with the same group of people year after year. Of course I meet new people but they’re really all like the rest of my friends. I love them all but sometimes I feel like I should hang around with someone radically different.
That was on my mind when I went with a friend to pick up our schedules at the beginning of the year. I stood in line, silently observing all that passed me. I realized I didn’t even know over half of the people waiting behind me even though I’ve been attending school with them for the past three years. I also realized I didn’t want to now them. I generally don’t have anything against people I don’t know but I’m afraid to talk to them. If I have a preconceived idea of them, I’m sure they have one of me.
A girl from my old chemistry class serenely glided past me in the hallway as we waited; it was almost unreal the way she passed through my life. She annoyed me all last year with her constant bipsy-like attitude; I know and strongly dislike her. I think everything happens for a reason and I think her purpose in my life is to remind me of what I don’t want to be.
I’m not exactly sure why my life has been so fuzzy lately. I haven’t figured that one out yet. Maybe I’ll ask my newly purchased tarot cards. Maybe they can tell me when I’ll be one of the “Shiny Happy People.”
I think adolescence is a test of my strength. Maybe if I pass and survive the hellish life that I lead now, my life willbe calm and real for eternity. Ha. Dare to dream, anyhow.
I am (Monique) … hear me roar.
∗ Posted by Monique on 12.09.2006
∗ High School
∗ Comments (4)
