WHERE IS THE OFF SWITCH?

Okay, this is my last post about high school in terms of me and my therapy. Yeah, I am still doing my internal work that led to my bad decision making later in life.

If you will recall, I mentioned three junior high schools: Wilson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt. Well... my mom and I went round and round about this before I wrote that blog. I kept saying to her that there were four junior high schools, but I couldn't think of the name of the fourth. She couldn't either and she knew the locations of the above three.

She says to me, "If there was a fourth, where was it?"

This was not a fair question. I didn't know where Lincoln and Roosevelt were located. I still don't. Let me put this into perspective for you. After I got my first car, I did minimal driving. I drove from my house to school and back. I could drive to my various friends' houses. However, one night at the dinner table, I said this, "I don't know what I am going to do tomorrow. After school I have to go to Somewhere (on the other side of town) and run some errands and then I have to go back to the high school for play practice (or some sort of practice, I don't remember)." My brother laughed out loud. He was four years younger than me and could easily do this. My parents looked at me like I had grown an extra nose on my face.

Finally, my mother says, "You are kidding, right?"

I say that I am not and they go over the route with me. The only way I knew how to get to school was from MY house. I was having to come at it from another direction and I was clueless. Yeah, this dysfunction created a lot of problems for me for a long time. In other words, I spent a lot of time being lost. It took about ten years for the concept of north, south, east, and west, to actually stop being conceptual and actually be REAL. Once that happened, driving got a lot easier. Yeah, I know. Sometimes book smart and street smart are two really different things. One other thing I learned. Being lost isn't always all bad. You can find shortcuts. Moving on...

I thought of the fourth junior high: Kennedy. I have no idea where it was located, in case you were wondering.


Anyway, our high school was huge. My graduating class was huge. The best thing about the merger of all of these junior highs was that they filled in that socio-economic gap that we had at Wilson. It no longer existed. When that happened, all of the rules changed. In fact, the kids on the hill didn't feel quite so entitled anymore. They were outnumbered here. So, the things that brought people together changed. Of course, people that grew up together and had been best friends stuck. However, a lot of new friendships formed based upon mutual interests. For instance, people who played sports could actually become friends in this environment. At Wilson, that wasn't really possible if one person lived on the hill and the other person didn't. Now, it was. Like I said, the rules changed.


As for me, my friends became 1) choir people 2) theatre people 3) smart people. Yep, I was taking all enriched classes for college, so I had a lot of classes with the same people all day. Guess what? A lot of those people were kids from the hill at Wilson. However, the switch had flipped. Why? Because I was one of the smart people. The rules had changed. Our class had about 300 people in it. I graduated #23 with a 4.0 GPA. I actually got invited up to the hill to study with some of these people who previously wouldn't talk to me. We become pseudo-friends. Study buddies. You know geek stuff. Same went with choir and theatre. Although that was more fun and the friendships were more real. In any event, all the disdain and disrespect that flew at Wilson evaporated at Newark High School. I don't know if it was like that for everyone. But that was what it was like for me.

So, Robin, if life was so freaking awesome in high school where is the therapy coming in? Well, it is that darn tape loop from Wilson that would still play in the back of my head. I didn't understand about tape loops then. I sure didn't know how to turn one off. So, it didn't matter how good things were going, there was always a lingering feeling of doom.


1)You're not enough. You'll never be enough.

That one liked to kick in when things were going really well. Things would go good and that tape would start to play. Suddenly, that urge to look over my shoulder. Check and double check. Just an ick feeling. Something bad is going to happen today.

2) Unpretty.

Boy, that one was completely unshakable. I was an expert at self sabotage. Anytime I thought someone would ask me out, I managed to make that not happen. And if it did. After we were going out for a couple of weeks, the feeling of insecurity ran so deep, that I would break up with the guy. I am too busy with music, theatre, etc. No time for you. Adios. Heaven forbid someone actually make me feel good about myself and pull that tape out of my loop.

3) I am not good at sports.

We only had gym sophomore year. Maybe just one semester. It is funny because I just don't really much remember it. By this time, I really wasn't good at sports. My brain had won this battle. And I read most of the time, etc. I was out of shape. I truly no longer was good at sports. However, this must not have been as traumatic as Wilson, b/c I hardly remember it.

As I said, I was really involved in theatre. I know that I wrote a blog about when Mrs. Booher took over the theatre department. That was this huge blessing for me. We always did a musical in the fall and a straight play in the spring. My junior year we did OKLAHOMA. That was fun. I didn't have any sort of big role. The seniors got those. However, it was fun being in the chorus. I auditioned for the straight play, expecting the same. It was UP THE DOWN STAIRCASE. I hoped to maybe get the role of a student. I actually got a pretty big part. Not the lead, but the other teacher, Bea. I was shocked.



My senior year, the musical was L'IL ABNER and I got the role of Mammy Yokum. That has to be one of the best parts ever. I still have the corn cob pipe. That character was a hoot to play. In the spring, the straight play was ARSENIC AND OLD LACE. There are only three female roles in that play and two of them are the old ladies who keep killing people off with arsenic. It is a comedy, for the record. Had I not just played an old person in L'IL ABNER, I would have been totally jazzed about that. As it was, I was meh. My unpretty tape loop kicked in. The thing is that I was also in Acting Ensemble, and we were putting on shows, and I wasn't playing old people there, and I should have sucked it up. However, my unpretty tape loop was playing.


The worst thing in the world happened. Mrs. Booher asked me what part I wanted to play in ARSENIC AND OLD LACE. She asked me what part I wanted to play. Me and my unpretty tape loop. And I told her Elaine. That was the smallest female part in the entire play. However, she was young blah blah blah. And that is how she cast me! And that wouldn't have been so bad if one of the actresses playing one of the old ladies hadn't sucked lemons. I mean she just couldn't act. Mrs. Booher worked with what she had. She cast a plump girl and a thin girl to play those parts. The plump one was good. The thin one was not. My best friend's brother came to see the play, probably because he had some friends in it, and he actually said to Jennifer, that it was a relief every time I came on stage because that is the only time that play didn't suck. Keep in mind, her brother didn't like me. He found me annoying. So that really was a compliment!


I know that Mrs. Booher had to have regretted asking me what part I wanted once rehearsals began and she saw that this girl couldn't carry her weight in the role. I know that I regret it now. In fact, I have regretted it for years. It never occurred to me that in high school and college would be the only time I would get to play old people until I was actually old. It was a gift. An acting gift. I was so blinded by my unpretty tape loop I couldn't even see it. I wish that she had dragged me into her office and explained to me what a gift it was. Or cast me in the part I was meant to play because it was the right thing for the show. And then say it just like that if I asked why I didn't get the part of Elaine. I feel certain that she asked me what part I wanted to play because she respected me as an actor, and she wanted to give me the gift of a choice. How many high school directors do that for their kids? Not many, I am thinking. I love her for it, but I wish she'd just cast me in one of the lead roles, because high school kids don't have a clue as to what they are doing. Besides, how do you explain you want a small part because you feel unpretty?

Don't forget to turn off my music player at the bottom.

I DIDN'T EVEN NEED A SLINGSHOT

My high school was huge. It was more like a college campus than a high school. All of the junior high schools dumped into the public high school, so it had to be big. I can't remember how many buildings there were, but they were lettered and I think you had five minutes to change classes because sometimes you had quite a walk. The campus was really quite beautiful at certain times of year, and treacherous at others (i.e. winter when it was icy). It turns out I was also really terrible about leaving my umbrella under my chair in a class during the rainy season; it would quit raining during the day and it got left behind. Therefore, every Christmas I got something like five umbrellas. Ridiculous.

As you might imagine, the first day of school was intimidating. I was walking along looking for my homeroom building, and feeling very lost like 300+ other people, when the miracle happened. ::Wait for it:: Kellie popped up beside me. My first instinct was terror, but then she started chatting me up like we were best buddies. My next feeling was confusion. Then came understanding. My last name started with "R" and hers with "S." She, too, was lost and she believed that I was smarter, so she was sticking to me, so that I could help her get to her homeroom. That made me feel enormously better. That day I looked at Kellie for the first time with new eyes and I saw what she never wanted me to see: insecurity. The kicker was that she knew that I knew her secret. That day was the last she and I ever spoke.

I was free.


image found at www.weheartit.com

KEEP THE CHANGE

I've already devoted an entire blog to Miss Fishcher, my English teacher in 11th grade, over a month ago (see THE FISCHER QUEEN) because she was an amazing teacher. Today I was reminded of this letter that she had us all write to ourselves at the end of the school year. Try as I might, I couldn't recall what mine said. I do remember Miss Fischer saying that it could appear in our mailboxes, unexpectedly, at any time in our futures, just to remind us of who we are "right now." As I write this blog, I cannot help but wish that letter would appear in my mailbox today....or tomorrow... or next week. I already know that if I ever receive it, it will make me say things like, "I can't believe I wrote that! What was I thinking?" On the plus side, it will also make me say things like, "I remember that. I miss that. That was THE BEST DAY, THE BEST TIME, THAT WAS SOOOO FUNNY. I had the best friends."

I already know that it won't sound remotely like anything I write today. I have moved enough times and gone through enough boxes of "old stuff" to have discovered that. Each time I come across a box of high school memorobilia (i.e. notes and yearbooks and play/concert programs), I can't bring myself to throw any of it out. Instead, I read it all. That one box takes three hours to go through and I pitch nothing. The notes are the best. They are all about stuff I mostly don't remember. Sometimes there are references to "major" things, but usually there is a lot of talk about clothes/shoes and should I or shouldn't I cut my hair and crushes on this boy or that boy. It all makes me laugh. Those "problems" seemed so big at the time. I would love to have should I or shouldn't I cut my hair be topping my Things To Think About List.

Miss Fischer knew something that we didn't: life was going to get more complicated after high school. Grown ups get perks, but they get matching acccessories (aka problems). I started to wonder if maybe I shouldn't take a time-out today and hand write a letter to me for five, ten, fifteen, or twenty years from now. Maybe there's something about this living thing that I could still learn from Miss Fischer right here in the present.


The more I thought about Miss Fischer, the more I remembered how much she loved Henry David Thoreau. In fact, if my memory was at all accurate, I think she was inspired by him to spend some solitary time in the woods herself, just to see if there was anything to that whole business. I think there was, because she really admired the man. I didn't trot off to the woods this morning, but I did google H.D.T. and all of that time in the woods gave him clarity. I would be happy to have just ONE stellar quote in the history books. He has pages. I went through and picked some of my favorites (okay, I picked more than I planned on, but you wouldn't believe how MUCH there was to choose from!), but this is what spoke to me today. What is amazing is that if I had looked it up tomorrow, you could be looking at an entirely different set of quotes. Isn't that kind of awesome?




I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams.

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?



Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.

Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without.

It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.



Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

There is one consolation in being sick; and that is the possibility that you may recover to a better state than you were ever in before.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

~Henry David Thoreau



So, I ask you, dear reader, must we go to the woods for clarity? Can we learn from another's trip to the woods? Or, perhaps, maybe ~ just maybe ~ can we set aside enough time daily for introspection within city limits that makes that trek unnecessary? Of course, each person much decide how much time is enough time for them. For some, that ten to twenty minutes in the shower and they are good to go. For others, well that is just the tip of a mighty big iceberg. But as ole HDT said, "The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it." How much is peace of mind going for these days?

THE FISCHER QUEEN

Every Tuesday night my mom, step-dad, and I go out to eat at The Pizza Joint. A couple of weeks ago my mom mentioned my 11th grade English teacher, Miss Amy Fischer. I thought Miss Fischer was one of the coolest teachers ever and my mom knew it. She then told me that back in the day she worked with someone whose son was my age and apparently hated Miss Fischer, so his mom was always telling my mom what a terrible teacher Miss Fischer was. I was stunned that anyone with a working brain could think Miss Fischer was anything less than extraordinary. When she told me the source of the story I understood the problem: this student defintely was not a rocket scientist. But I still didn't get how he didn't find Miss Fischer fascinating.

This conversation took place more than two weeks ago and it is still simmering on the backburner of my brain, so there must be something unresolved here for me. Miss Fischer dropped out of high school because it bored her. She got a GED and went on to college. There were days that we didn't discuss anything concerning literature or grammar or anything related to "English" at all. I do remember a discussion of what you would do if you found out that this was your last day to live. There was also an entire period devoted to proving that God was real. Miss Fischer wanted us to think for ourselves and not spit up a rehash of what our parents thought because their parents thought it before them and so on. Things sometimes got rocky in her class. And I imagine that all those people who liked everything to be "comfortable" were very uncomfortable when Miss Fischer stood on her desk or swung from the ceiling beams to get unruly students' attention. She also brought in her record player and played things like Alice's Restaurant and Simon & Garfunkel so that we could have a better sense of what the 60s felt like.

Last, but certainly not least, the summer before my junior year, Miss Fischer donated her summer to a program called Outward Bound. Outward Bound is for teenagers who are facing jailtime. They can do the time or do Outward Bound. So the first day of school was a recap of this trip spent on a boat catching your meals, dropping your pants and doing your business over the side of a boat (the worst of horrors to a 15-year-old girl), then being dropped on an island for four days to survive with a partner at the end. I kept saying I'd pick jail when I retold the story, but I secretly admired Miss Fischer enormously for doing this. What I understand now is she was telling us right from go how much she cared without telling us how much she cared.

There are teachers and then there are teachers. Most of them are not Miss Fischers. Most of them are not interested in challenging your personal beliefs or your thinking process. Most of them don't think about the fact that they can impact the person you will be after you leave the institution known as high school. Most of them don't care like she did. Most of them don't see those 45 minutes a day as teaching moments every day. Most of them don't make you better people when you leave their classroom as opposed to just smarter. I have toyed with the idea of teaching off and on since graduating college. It would mean going back to school for education classes, but that isn't why I don't do it. I would only want to do it if I could teach like Miss Fischer. I'm not convinced that in today's society of rules and regulations that Miss Fischer can teach like Miss Fischer.