1980: It was a look that screamed, “Ask me about becoming a sister wife.”
My classmates refused to take me seriously, so I decided to pierce my own nose using a fishhook, but it hurt too much to get it all the way through, so I gave up and then it got infected. So instead I wore a clip-on earring. In my nose. To school. It was larger than my nostril and I almost suffocated. Still, it was the first nose ring ever worn at my high school, and I wore it with a rebellious pride past the principal, who I’d expected would lock himself in his office immediately to stop the Twisted Sisteresque riots that would surely ensue at any moment from all the anarchy unleashed by my nose ring. The principal noticed, but seemed more bemused than concerned, and seemed to be trying to suppress laughter as he pointed it out to the lunch lady, who was bewildered.
And who was also my mother.
And it was her clip-on.
My mom sighed inwardly, shook her head, and went back to slicing Jell-O. Neither of us ever mentioned the incident (or wore that earring) again.
1990: Just as ridiculous, except this time I was dressing myself. (Pro tip: Your faux-Victorian, emo self-portraits in graveyards will look slightly less stilted if you take off your Swatch watch first.)
Having my mom as the cafeteria lady was a mixed blessing, because she’d let me hide in the school pantry if I was having a bad day, but whenever I’d pass the cafeteria I’d hear her stage-whisper, “Sweetie, stop slouching. You look so depressed,” and all the other kids would be all, “Nice hairnet, Elvira’s mom.”
So, yeah, high school was pretty fucking awesome. And a lot of people tell me that everyone has terrible high school experiences, and that’s when I say, “Really? So the high point of your senior year was when you had your arm up a cow’s vagina?” Then they stop talking to me. Usually forever.
My sister, Lisa, never seemed to have any problems fitting in, and distanced herself from me as best she could while still trying to convince me to join some school activities like everyone else. Lisa was in track, basketball, one-act plays, and had most recently been elected to be the high school mascot, a giant male bird named Wally. We were all quite proud of her, as the competition had been stiff, and she took her new role very seriously, practicing bird attack maneuvers in full costume in the living room. While we waited for our parents to get home from work I’d watch and give her pointers about her technique. “Try to shake your butt wing more,” I offered helpfully.
“Tail feathers,” she clarified (with a surprising amount of condescension for someone wearing bird feet), her voice slightly muffled by the giant bird head on her shoulders. “They’re called tail feathers. And if we’re giving each other advice, maybe you could stop wearing black all the time? People think you’re weird.”
“People think I’m weird because I wear a lot of black?” I asked. “You’re dressed as poultry.”
Lisa shrugged indifferently. “That may be true, but I was elected to dress as poultry, and when I walk down the hall in my costume tomorrow, people will smile and high-five me. When you walk down the hall tomorrow, people will spit and avoid eye contact to keep you from putting voodoo curses on them.”
“Okay, first of all, you can’t even get real high fives, because you don’t have hands. And secondly, I’d need to have someone’s hair or nail clippings to put a voodoo curse on them.”
“THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT,” Lisa yelled, pausing her bird routine to cross her wings in frustration. “You shouldn’t even know how to do voodoo curses. It’s bizarre. WOULD IT KILL YOU TO JUST TRY TO BE NORMAL?”