A True Story

 The story you are about to read is based on actual events. Some of the storyline has been embellished for the sake of entertainment.

When I was 15 years old I dropped out of high school. I was a child with a very precocious hatred for the establishment. As young as second grade I remember sticking my finger down my throat, standing outside on the wooden steps that led to our little trailer where my classroom was in a courtyard outside my school, hoping it would lead me back inside and then out through the front door.

Things hadn't changed in high school. I was in permanent lockdown in our ISS (in-school suspension) for never really caring to attend class. I do not remember learning anything at that school, only watching American History X with my first husband in our basement classroom. I also made him skip school with me to attend the Arts Festival of Atlanta. 

I was unable to be captivated by my work packet in the ISS room I was to spend the remainder of my school days in, and as my best friend was homeschooled and my brother at home already freed, I made the decision to leave school just shy of my 16th birthday. I received my equivalency diploma at 18, and have a bachelor's of science degree. I enjoy learning now more than most of the people I know.

But before I was a drop out, before I married, before I moved away to attend university, I was still a highschool student. And although my husband and I had shared most of my most enduring highschool memories, aside from those at my first highschool, there was this little romantic tale. 

When I started highschool in 9th grade I was reentering the public school system. I had hated going back to the same kids I knew since first grade, private school was a 2 year hiatus, so I had spent most of 9th grade out in a country school learning again to assimilate. In 10th grade I was back at home.

I was ready because a girlfriend of mine left the private highschool and would be there with me. I was ready because I was too cool for the country. It was the 1990s. We were the alternative kids.  We listened to alternative music stations and called the bands sellouts for being on the radio. I wore the same jeans every day,  so much so that another girl we friended asked me if she could buy me a pair of jeans. These jeans I wore I got off of another girl, probably a size 40 men's Wrangler carpenter pants from Walmart, belted to keep them precariously hanging off of my skinny teenaged hips, I used to like to wear my little brothers red rocket t-shirt, he was 9 years my junior. My claim to fame then was that I looked like Uma Thurman from Pulp Fiction, I had dark bobbed hair and bangs. I'm sure I was kinda cute, but I was extremely shy and antisocial. At least enough to make me feel weird walking through the long stretch of hall entering the building each morning.

But what a thrill it was for me to walk that hall each day, just to see this incredibly cute guy. His name was Thommy, a tall skinny skater dude. He was always sitting outside the library on the floor, every morning, when I got to school. I couldnt wait to see him from 400 ft. away, and probably the only thing I had enjoyed about  going to that school. (my husband and I were only friends then)

We knew who Thommy was because one of the girls in our grade was his band mate's sister. He was a junior my freshman year. In 9th grade all of the band was there, and they were god awful cute. One guy in particular was rockin awesome to all the little alternative girlies. He had really long, dark brown hair and brown eyes, very cool looking guy. Of course he wasn't there in 10th grade, only Thommy was left. I saw him once outside of my homeroom class. it's one of my three memories from highschool. 

Anyway, I was pretty sure he wouldn't have wanted me. I was too young. And so forgetting Thommy, and forgetting my girlfriends on the outside, I dropped out of highschool. 

Real life was my new gig. I spent my days working. First thing, my grandmother got me a job at a local yogurt shop in our town square. I was 16, working alone with the owner, the son of a parishioner who knew my grandmother from church. I like to believe that he was crazy about me and that's why he fired me. Before that he was making my lunch in front of a tv and serving me sandwiches. 

It was after a dramatic incident involving some parfait cups. It was very busy. The drive thru and the dining room were filled. The cups fell and hit me in the head. I became upset with him for the first time.

Then most ridiculously and shockingly he says, "You don't even appreciate this job!"

(I'm 16 and just got pummeled by a large stack of plastic parfait cups)

To which I reply in kind, " Why don't you fire me then?"

And that was it. I don't know how long I worked there, but it felt like a lifetime to me. 12-5 Monday through Friday, week after week. And then suddenly I was out on the street. I don't know what jobs I had next, a few odd ones here and there. Finally, I ended up at a TCBY. It was great. I was back at home. And, funnily enough, working with the old senior hottie dude all the other girls loved, mister long haired, dark and handsome. But even though he tried to talk to me, he even set us up two chairs to sit and chat together behind the counter, I was totally ignorant to his possible advances. I never liked that guy. I liked Thommy. 

One day, this girl who had met my brother at his job down the road, a girl my age from school I'dknown for years, picked me up from work with my brother and gave us a ride home. I am not sure if I knew it at the time or not, but she was madly in love with mister dark hair. She sort of liked my brother, too. He was similar looking, although his hair wasn't as long. She was driving this convertible car of her mother's,  and I was being the same ignorant tag along.

I remember how obnoxious the wind was, and how hard it was to hear when she started telling a story, turning down the radio to be sure I could hear. It was my secret, I thought, that I had liked Robbie. But somehow that terrible girl knew. Because that awful story she told was how he held a bit of mistletoe over the head of a girl in our grade, and how sweet he was and how much he liked her. I knew her! She was our age! She was preppy! 

Cut to my 40th year. I am old now. I have just lost my job. I find a little part time job in a gym, making smoothies. I just went through one of those 21st century crises where you purge yourself of half of your belongings because you can't go on living with 50 t-shirts, you need two pairs of leggings, three shirts, two cardigans,  one pair of slacks and two bras, one sporty, one with lace.

Or something really stupid like that, but that's not how it really happened. Instead I ended up suffering from a loss of personal identity, I had my grown children and one significant other in my two bedroom apartment, and of my two jobs, my little second, my corner booth at the gym,  was my perfect getaway. I could watch smart tv and read for hours. There was no supervisor on site. In the evenings the summer was blissfully mild and intoxicating. It was wonderful. It lasted 6 glorious months. But as always is the case, it ended.

But not before having spent a good bit of time sneaking glances at this one guy. There were a lot of cute guys at the gym, but this one in particular seemed to be aware of my noticing him. Anyway, perhaps that was one of the reasons I felt I needed to move on, I think I felt uncomfortable having become noticed and made him uncomfortable as well. That was the end of this magical sort of summer experience, in this oasis outside the bitterness of my home life. I had found a bit of happiness. 

The interesting thing was how after a year or so had passed, I seemed to have memories of him all the time. They just popped up out of no where. And as time passed, they grew to be stronger. Then one day I looked into my old yearbook and realized that it was my Thommy! The poor guy I was staring at, after all those years......

To be honest, I don't know that it was him. It looked like him. I wanted to write a love story, and in the end, it would have been how I always left, and how maybe if I hadn't left, we may have ended up together, cute right? Or that he had missed me as well, that would have been nice for a change.

My phone is misbehaving.  Make up your own endings.