Early High School Peers

I believed in “the progression.”

By then, it was middle of 5th grade when I was transported to the Bay Area.

There was no way I could win: everyone had grown up together.

And I was a sweet, white girl – not “street urchin” Mexican.

It was a painful ending to that year. I barely learned the 50 states as weathered lack of common language.

Junior high was only slightly better and much more confusing – being launched at last into the fabled “gate” classes, without preparation or warning.

I wasn’t ready for the mixed-culture preppy, high-browed, and narcissistic targeting of my open-hearted inquiry.

They didn’t know what to make of me and called me “tinsel teeth,” “electric light lady,” and not the least segregating, “Little House On The Prairie.”

I got braces early, my mom overpermed my fine, light blond hair, and I wore those types of dresses she still picked out for me.

What was I thinking in expecting that they could handle individual identity? Why couldn’t they see me for me – when I could see them so clearly?

I paid for it when the white, thick tom girl went after me with her chicola sidekick and the strung out, white bean pole tweaker henchman.

In that same long, dark blue dress – where I was doomed for sacrificial lambdom because I couldn’t run from them as it snugged legs tightly – I talked them out of pounding me by using psychology.

I asked the guy why he was doing the white badass girl’s work, and the chicoola what she had invested.

I apologized to the frothing butch if I had trangressed with her, and offered to be friends.

Divide and conquer was an inspired strategy – from where? I was only like 12 or 13!

And once the coast was clear, I did run home – crying and terrified, although the danger had passed and I’d already handled it.

When high school came, I just straight up said to my peers, “We’re older, now.” – and kept hanging around the same ones I’d been with.

By Sophomore year, I was one of them, and life was finally opening before me as I dared to make plans for university.

But, a lot can go wrong again, suddenly.

And just because I believed in continuous growth did not mean they also wanted the benefit.

Years later, I happened upon a boy from the group I’d had a minor crush on, but in high school sitting behind him, had realized he didn’t wash his ears.

Ear goop can put a reality check on any fantasy, and it turned out later he decided he was gay!

He certainly cleaned up nicely in that decision, but his attitude in the elevator was even more regressed with his nose turned up at me.

I don’t understand what people see in me, that they get all defensive and put on a show – as if I’d harm them.

Maybe my visage reflects their own truth to them.

Maybe it’s because when I look at them, I see right through the “glamour” and am ready to explore what being real friends could lend.