Stephieface

(if you haven’t read the post prior to this one, you should, it will make more sense I guess if you read them in order)

Meeting Brian was a boon in my life. I was just lucky I guess. We weren’t friends or anything at the time, just people who both had a habitual issue with being late to class. He was late because he was Brian, I was late because of walking to school when I should have been riding the bus. Once we were caught in the hall by a 6th grade math teacher (who I had as a math teacher when I was in 6th grade, and I thought she was mean) who made us stand in the office while she talked to the prinicipal about us being late. While I internally screamed, knowing that my mother would be called and I would be in…. so ….much… trouble….. Brian decided to strike up conversation I guess he figured there wasn’t anyway to get in untrouble. He asked me why I was always late, I answered because I walk to school instead of riding the bus, he asked where I lived, I told him, he asked why I wouldn’t ride the bus, I told him why, its not like I had anything to lose at that point….. certain that my life would be officially over because I was in the principal’s office. We talked a little bit more before the teacher came out, and (I couldn’t believe my luck) were released without issue (the teacher looking peeved that we weren’t in trouble).

So he walked me to class… well, he walked me to my hallway. The school had three main hallways… the first with the principal’s office was 6th grader ville, the second with the home ec and shop classes was 7th grader land, and the last hallway with all the kick ass science rooms and the art room at the end was the territory of the fearsome 8th grader. He smiled and waved as he walked to 8th grader territory, I waved back as I scuttled into 7th grader land. That was really the only time we ever talked in middle school, except for the occasional “hi” and “how ya doin?” now and again as we passed each other in the halls.

A really bad late snow hit and I was forced to ride the bus, I had already tried walking to school in the snow and I was just not having it again. With fearful trepidation I went to the bus stop of torment. My anxiety hit a peak when I found out that Sheri was sick and wouldn’t be there, and that my sister had started to walk to her friend’s house and catch the bus with her down there…..

But I was unbothered.

The older kids left me alone, with their ringleader giving me a few wary sideways glances. There were no insults, no elbows, no trips, no spitballs, nothing. Was I dreaming? Was I dead? No no… all vitals checked out. What was going on? For the rest of the year they left me alone, suddenly, without explaination.

Summer came and went, the new school year started with me in 8th grade, and my tormentors now off in highschool. 8th grade wasn’t terrible. I often looked about the 8th grade halls, and on days when I was late I secretly missed Brian. I’m pretty sure now that I had a terrible crush on him then.

8th grade finished, summer was summery, then 9th grade began looming near. 9th grade, where I would be shipped off to highschool- once again a minnow in the sea. The troubles on the bus started up again as my long ago tormentors found renewed interest in harassing me again. The difference this time is that the highschool was much too far to walk to. I lucked out when I had no classes with those kids, nor did I have the same lunch period. My troubles were relegated to bus rides only. Confident that highschool, like middleschool, would suck until the last year I once again tried to just “walk off” the crap they would do.

I made new friends (as most of my old friends were on the opposite lunch period) with the drama kids. I sat with these kids who I fell into instantly, the Drama kids and wierdos. As I sat with my new best friends forever Christine and Michelle one day, I looked around at the other people at the table. Some were nerds, some were geeks, some were wierdos, and some were people who could fit in any group because they were so non descript (I was in that group as was Chrsitine and Michelle). Everyone was talking, or trying to talk above the lunchroom din. It was then that I saw them…………

The greenest eyes I had ever ever seen.

Brian was there. Gone was the shorter hair that I remember, replaced with longish hair that was shaved underneath. Gone was the Jean jacket with the arms cut off with a snake drawn on the back with magic marker, replaced with a long black trenchcoat, combat boots, and a baja hoodie that had santa and his reindeer crashed ontop of a outhouse that said “No! I said the Schmidt house!” on it. He waved and smiled the smile I remember so fondly.

He asked, “Hey aren’t you…”, I said yes, he asked how I’d been, I told him, he asked about the bus rides, I told him, he asked what bus I rode, I told him. Then we BSed as kids at lunch always do.

The next morning, I was hating life because Sheri was now getting rides to school from her mom. It was easy for her since she didn’t have to deal with the stuff the kids were doing to us, and in any case her mom worked at the JCPenny’s in the mall that is right next door to our highschool (how’s that for planning? A mall right next door to the highschool). She’d just ride to work with her mom and walk over to the school. Now, I was riding alone. I climbed aboard the bus and sat down, I put my bookbag on the seat next to me to try and keep kids from sitting down in the same seat. I scrunched down, folded my arms, and rested my head against the window, staring out in daydreams hoping to go unmolested this bus trip.

The bus made its usual route, this one longer than the middleschool one since more kids had to be picked up over a larger region. It stopped by King Geroge St, opened its doors, and kids climbed aboard. I was oblivious, I just wanted it over as one of the girls from my stop started smacking me in the head as she over gestured while she was talking, to cover up the fact that she was smacking me in the head. Suddenly someone shoved my bookbag over and sat down. I sat bolt upright and looked over into a smile and green eyes. It was Brian. He held out an open package of kool-aide and offered me some of the powder as candy. It was surreal.

He rode the bus with me to school, and taught me that after school we could walk to the mall, hang out, walk back to school, and catch the after school activities bus home. In the morning at the stop the kids stopped bothering me again, it was awesome. For a while he rode the bus, then he started catching rides to school again as cool 10th graders are supposed to. Yet, I never had any more trouble from the kids at my stop that year, or the beginning of the next after which they got their driver’s licenses and stopped riding the bus altogether.

I found out my senior year of highschool that Brian had kicked the ringleader’s ass. The ringleader himself told me, who then apologised for being an ass all those years. This made me sad at the time, and I’ll tell you why….

Brian was my friend the whole time. I hung out with him, and our other friends afterschool. My junior year we actually had classes together, an Art class and a Social Studies class specifically. We sat next each other in those classes, in Art we were the only people at our table, and in SS the desks were 2 by 2 all through the classroom. We always sat together in the back on the right(if you were looking forward). He made those classes my favorite, because he was there. He would write on my stuff, I would write on his, we’d have pen fights under the desks and come out all polka dotted, he’d write me notes and I’d write notes back. The reason the ringleader’s revelation made me sad was that Brian died later that year.

It was a shock at first, I didn’t believe anyone when I was told that he was dead. I refused to believe it, even when they announced it over the school intercom that he was gone. I was certain that come Social Studies he’d be sitting there next to me writing all over my worksheets as he always did. Social Studies came though, and he wasn’t there. The seat he sat in everyday, now overwhlemingly empty, announcing he was gone. The table in art achingly housing just me, and our lunch table grey with the news… half deserted as a good portion of the group was in the counseler’s office overwrought with grief.

The rest of that school year was a blur, save for the heartache I suffered each day when I attended the classes we had shared together, his seat never filled throughout the rest of the year as if in memorium. New kids would be seated elsewhere as I sat everyday by his empty chair, a constant painful reminder that he was there once but was gone forever.

So you can see why he is my favoritest memory, but one I keep to myself, even now 15 years later I tear up a little thinking about him. How he wanted so much for me (and everyone) to be happy, but then left leaving me (and everyone) with the greatest heartache. He’s so intertwined with my memories of youth that whenever I think about highschool, middleschool, or my tweenage to teenage years I always end up in some way thinking about him. Whenever I see Kool-aide or Fireballs, bajas, or hear Fresh Prince’s “Nightmare on My Street” (which he had made me a tape of) I think of him. Whenever I am nervous about meeting new people or new situations, I take a deep breath and just imagine he’ll do for me now as he did for me then…. smile and wave knowing that everything will be just fine.

On Ravelry, I belong to the “All About The 80’s” group (which is a rockin group if you have a chance to check it out…) and KnitInNature started a thread featuring this question:

Do you have one 80’s moment that is frozen forever in your mind? What made it quintessentially 80’s?

I had to think long and hard about this because frankly I have alot of 80’s memories. This was my response:

“I was also 12. I was at my first middle school dance. I distinctly remember wearing a long jean skirt (that buttoned up the front), ballet flats, entirely too dark for me tan pantyhose, and a red button up shirt with the sleeves rolled up. I was rockin my permed wavy hair and hairsprayed bangs… oh and my Sally Jesse Raphael dark wine colored glasses- I was the hotness

My elementry to middle school crush (Robert, who had exact identical twin named Richard… but I totally thought Robert was way cuter) completely dissed me out that night, favoring to slow dance with some other girl (Who I couldn’t really hate because she was so stinkin nice… that and I envied her slouchy socks constantly). Crushed, I sat in the corner- knowing with absoloute certainty that my entire life was ruined for all eternity. Looking back I realize how lucky I was that no one stapled my hand to my forehead to save me the effort of raising it myself… I was such a drama queen.

The DJ announced that a couples dance was next and for everyone to get their partners. My preteen heart, crushed and broken forever (I will never love again!) forced me to sit glowering in the corner- knowing that the dance still had 3 more hours to go and my mom wasn’t coming until 10.

Richard Marx’s “Hold On To The Nights” came on and everyone started partnering up. Imagine my surprise when a fellow classmate, Matt, asked me to dance. He was wearing one of his older brother’s hand me down brown plaid shirts (where the sleeves were entirely too long and he had to keep pushing them back) and brown courduroys…. which totally clashed with long blonde rat tail and his coke bottle glasses. Through my dramarific sniffles I accepted and stood up, only to realize that Matt was 4 inches shorter than me (and I was the shortest girl in my class). I cursed whatever preteen smiting gods there were and went out to dance with him.

When the song ended and faded into UB40’s Red Red Wine…. he didn’t let go and kept slow dancing with me. I don’t know if he was afraid to stop slow dancing, didn’t know how to stop (The etiquettes of ending a slow dance with a snifflely drama queen), or just liked dancing with me- all I know is that I had a dance partner for the rest of the night.

He moved away the summer before highschool and I have no idea what’s become of him. But whenever I hear those two songs I think of a plucky nerdy little skater boy who asked a girl to dance… even if she was too self centered at the time to realize how really awesome that was.”

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I am nothing if not honest. I was usually a drama queen with those people I felt safe with, like my parents, my sister, my close friends (“But mom… if I don’t get to wear the pink flannel shirt I’ll just die!”). With most people I tended to be quiet and shy. Most of my 80’s memories are tinged with a little bit of sadness in some ways, some heartbreak here, and just plain old abuse there.

My favoritest of all time 80’s memory involved a boy. I don’t often share this memory because while it is my favoritest memory, it came with a high price of torture at the time. The amount of abuse I put up with astounds me to this day. Were I to travel back in time to then, to help my middle schoolian self, I would seriously be kicking some kids-from-the-other-side-of-the-street ass.

Once I started middle school, I had to start riding the bus. The school was not a quick just down the street walk like my elementry school was. I was excited, because as a walker I always envied the bus kids… especially when it rained. So off I went, hop skippity, to the bus stop. The first few months were fine. I waited with the rest of the gaggle of schoolkids for the bus to come, climbed on, and daydreamed as I was driven to school…. the bus driver hitting what I believe was every bump and driving over every curb on the way there.

About halfway through the year the older kids started harassing me. I have no idea, even to this day, why they started picking on me- they just did. I chalked this up to being a sixth grader and for the most part tried to ignore it. Summer came and went. The next year found me in seventh grade with my little sister now attending sixth. This is when it all goes south.

It began slowly, Espirit bookbags “accidently” hitting me in the head, someone “accidently” pushing me so I’d trip and fall in the bus aisle, someone “accidently” hitting me in the face with their keychain as they walked by. It was winter when things got really bad.

I had an 80’s perm, just like any other red blooded girl back then, and like those other girls I often left my house with my hair damp from either washing or scrunching. In winter, sometimes if you leave your house with wet hair and stand at a bus stop your hair will freeze and turn icy. If you are lucky, its happening to the other girls at the bus stop too. If you are unlucky, its happening to the other girls at the bus stop too but they all have decided to gang up on you…. knock your trapper keeper out of your hand… then start calling you “Lice Mop” and then your sister (who they generally have left alone until this point) they start calling “Lice Mop Sister”. Then, for whatever reason they start hurling insults at you, start spitballing you on the bus, start elbowing you in the head whenever they go by, and generally all in all make your middle school life a living hell.

After it escalated to a point where I took a book bag to the face and my glasses got knocked off and sent flying, I decided to walk. I know I could have told my parents, but I also know that had I told them it would have just been made worse. So I sucked it up. I walked to school with my sister, and my friend Sheri. To get to school I had to walk to the elementry school, cross their football/soccer field, through a little valley like area with a creek behind the church, then across the middle school’s back football field, then through their front football field, then down a hill, cross the area used for outside activities, pass the tennis court and finally in to the school. Usually my feet would be soaked through and covered in grass by the time I got there. Occasionally I would wear plastic bags over my shoes, then ditch em at the top of the hill before rounding the woods surrounding the school.

You’re probably wondering, “When is the favorite memory going to come into play? Or if this is the favorite memory… wow what a masochist.”

Walking to school made it easy in general because I could avoid all those kids who made me hate life, but it also made me close to being or actually late. There were a few times when I heard the tardy bell ringing just as I’d get inside and I’d tear off running down the hall to try and beat its last pell.

On one of those days, a running one, instead of making it to class I collided with another kid in the hall making us both late and spreading his notebook all over the hall. I helped him clean up the pages, I was already late by that time… there was no way I could become unlate. He was cute in a year older than me kind of way, and he had the greenest eyes I have ever ever seen in my entire life (including now). He asked me what my name was. I was terrified, I thought he wanted to know because I would be getting beat up later after school or something. I told him though. Then a teacher found us in the hall and yelled at us to get to class.

That was the first moment I met Brian George, the boy who would make my life awesome.

To be continued on Friday………