spectacular

When I was in High School I was terrified of the lunchroom.  I have a social anxiety disorder so I was a senior before I went into one during lunch – because we weren’t allowed to be anywhere else.  I would have overcome this, perhaps, if I didn’t go to a new school each year.  Someone asked me the other day if I knew how to read, because they needed someone to read for them.  I reminded me of when I did time at Leavenworth – well, Leavenworth High School. 

It sounds so much cooler when I approach it from the former instead of the latter. 

During my junior year I ate in the outside area in the front of the school.  It was a strange mix of people who weren’t cool, or perhaps brave, enough to eat in the lunchroom.  I’m not even confident that I knew where the lunchroom was.  I know I was in it a few times when we had to do written work for gym and for our first session of driver’s education.

When it would rain we would move into the lunchroom, stand in the rain, or huddle in the entryway to the school.  I’m not sure what the term in English is for these doors, but it’s one of those where you go through two sets of doors before getting into the main building.  After a bit, the people who had to clean up after us got wise to what we were doing and put up a sign not to eat or drink in there.

I wasn’t an especially belligerent teenager but I wasn’t a huge fan of being wet and cold; and it was in my job description as a teenager to be (on occasion) an asshole.  One day it started to rain at the end of lunch and I was finishing my sandwich in the entryway.  The custodian came in, and in a fit of rage shouted at me, “Don’t you know how to read?” 

Now, there was this girl, and I won’t say that I had a crush on her but I will say that there was something alluring about her.  What made her so damn charming was that she was a very spontaneous person who would do something completely unexpected and it would be very funny.  I do things out of left field but they are rarely funny.  I was smitten.  This girl, her name was Michelle Bloom, would do the strangest things.  She made doing time at Leavenworth a little less miserable. 

I remember walking by the in-school suspension room when they were being walked to the restroom like a chain gang and she grabbed my arm and pleaded that I protect her virtue from thugs from the in-school suspension.  Another time, in a rare and unrepeated social outing, she started saying “stop it, Jimmy, you’re hurting me!” in a movie theater.  She then rushed out of the theater and those of who we were with her awkwardly left as well.  I walked home.  It would be months before I was around the people my own age on purpose, outside of school.

Well, on this occasion when the question was posited, “Do you know how to read?”  Michelle flew into action.  She almost immediately burst into tears and screamed, “he doesn’t know how to read!  You insensitive jerk!”  Please don’t think that I put down my sandwich during this: I ate popcorn through The Passion of the Christ; I am not setting aside food for anyone.  The custodian was speechless after her performance and then began to stammer out an apology, he went in three times and each time Michelle shot him down with another outburst about his completely unacceptable behavior. 

The rest of this memory is in slow motion and I don’t remember what happened, I do remember being at once enraptured by and jealous of Michelle.  I pride myself in my ability to be completely off-topic, random, embarrassing, and spontaneous.  I can never be like Michelle.  It was spectacular. 

I will never love another woman the way that I loved her.  

Comments

[Colleen]

That is hilarious, only because I HATE those kind of people....if I was in that movie theater, I would have thrown something at you.