For instance, the other day, while laughing to myself about a lie that my son told me, I remembered how prone to lying I was when I was his age. The biggest lie I remember telling was that my grandmother owned a castle in Ireland. Peep this shit, you guys:
That's Kylemore Abbey. I legit tried to convince people that my family owned that shit....with a fucking postcard.
A.
Postcard.
Now.
My grandmother is from Ireland. And she frequently visited Ireland (she promised to take me there one day, but I got the boot from Florida before she could, and honestly, I think Bumpa's health failed not long after, and I don't think she actually went back to Ireland again), so she had plenty of real photos of this place that weren't postcards. But I brought a postcard to school and tried to sell that shit like it was seriously something I stood to inherit.
I do remember one of the school guards calling me on my bullshit by going, "Yeah? I'd LOVE to see photos of the inside."
Biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinch. You know I don't have those. Good call.
I need triggers to remember things that happened when I was younger, because my immediate brain just doesn't need the information so it's all tucked away.
While doing reading for a test that I should be taking right now instead of blogging, I came across a trigger for an embarrassing memory.
I've spoken before about how much my mother loathed me, and how that loathing was super apparent if you so much as looked at me before I was 15. My mom picked out the clothes I had to wear, and thus my sense of fashion was fucking crazy warped. My mom didn't always pick Garfield faux denim shorts with elastic waistbands for me. I will give her credit and say that a lot of what she wanted to put me in were what she considered classic looks: straight leg mom jeans that came up to my neckline, and sleeveless button down shirts. She wanted me to look like every unhip babysitter the 80s ever churned out, but with worse hair and bigger glasses.
There was one shirt in particular that I fucking LOATHED. It was a green, sleeveless, button down shirt. Now, being honest, I didn't enjoy my mom picking out my clothes and forcing her bullshit clothing choices on me, but I didn't have a reason to specifically hate the shirt...UNTIL school.
Sidebar: Florida has a grocery chain called Publix. Publix is the greatest store ever created by god herownself, and none shall besmirch its glorious name. I don't eat meat, and haven't for years, but I did turn a blind eye to meat eating the last time I was in Alabama so I could have a Publix Sub. Two Publix subs. FINE FIVE PUBLIX SUBS OVER THE COURSE OF A WEEKEND. Their subs are seriously the most delicious sub there ever ever ever was for real. Derek does this thing where he sucks in drool and says his mouth is watering just thinking about any certain thing, and it drives me up the god damn wall, but I feel that shit on a spiritual level talking about Publix subs. Moving on, people at Publix back when I was in middle school used to wear sleeveless. Green. Button down. Vests. Like so:
And my sleeveless shirt looked like this:
Are they the same color? No. Does the bottom one have deep pockets like the Publix vest? No. And it doesn't have the keen Publix name sewn on the breast. But it's a green button down sleeveless fucking vest, and kids just had to pile on because making fun of my hair and my glasses and my other clothes and my gangliness and my bookishness wasn't enough, so I got called Publix Girl. And it really got under my skin, because somehow having a job and working for a living was shameful?
Anyway, I got Publix Girl hurled at me all the time by a few really popular girls. I think there was a girl named Erin, and I remember kind of admiring her because she was a gymnast and she could do aerial cartwheels, and I wanted to be able to do those so badly. Erica Morris was another girl that called me Publix Girl, she was also super popular, so if anybody was near her when she called me Publix Girl, I had a few other eager lackeys adding to the fray, creating a rousing chorus of "Publix Girl! Publix Girl!" and I just...I dealt with it because I didn't know what to say. What would I say? Stop it wasn't going to stop it. So I just took it.
Two years. Two years of Publix Girl, and I had had it.
Erin and Erica and a few of their sing-song, snipey little parrot friends were calling me Publix Girl, and this day I was just not having as easy a time letting it roll off of my back (read: I wasn't as willing to just cry hot tears behind the portables, cursing my mother to whatever gods would listen, tearing out my curls, wishing desperately to be dead). I don't know what was going on with me that day, but I think they knew I was boiling over, and I think they wanted to see how far they could push me. So they escalated from Publix Girl to asking me what section of the store I worked in, and I could feel my anger rising as each syllable hit my ears, but I wasn't ready to engage yet. The dam hadn't broken.
And then.
Erin yelled at me, "Hey Publix Girl, how much are tomatoes today?" and everyone laughed and laughed and my face got so fucking hot and I was so upset and this was when I started to cry. But I also had to stand my ground and defend myself. Anybody who knows me knows I rely on swearing to get a point across, but I wasn't using colorful, coded language yet. I had to sling an insult devoid of swearing. I had to be quick. Silver-tongued, Witty. Cutting. Precise. I had to say something that would stop all of the bullying then and there, and then make people revere me for...maybe not my fashion sense, but my ability to deliver a swift verbal blow to all of their egos that surpassed the arrows they had been slinging at me.
I balled up my fists, planted myself into the ground, and yelled back defiantly:
"MORE THAN YOU CAN AFFORD!!!!"
And then I ran off to go cry hot tears behind the portables, cursing my mother to whatever gods would listen, tearing out my curls, wishing desperately to be dead, because my fucking shining moment of standing up for myself backfired. Can you believe it? Yes. Yes, you can. They were all laughing at my retort, and obviously. I've always thought I have a deep voice, and it makes me really self conscious to hear myself speak, but when I was younger, I had a very tinny, tiny, squeaky little voice. So imagine the nerdiest girl you can think of, wearing a bright green vest and horribly high waisted pants, with Richard Simmons hair, Sally Jesse Raphael glasses, all resting awkwardly on a very tall, very gangly body, and then picture a voice somewhere between a timid bee and a child nerd, shouting across the field at all of the beautiful, popular girls with good hair, good clothes, and friends.
I had affected zero change that would trend toward the positive.
I threw the shirt away when I got home AFTER cutting it to ribbons. Had I mentioned I had tried to throw the shirt away before and my mom caught me and chastised me for it? She took it out of the trash, washed it, and I had to wear it not long after. So I destroyed it.
Kids are always going to be fucking assholes, for realsies, but it's not like I made a difficult mark.
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