Sometimes, like at that moment, it was easier to make believe that my mother had died. It gave me permission to mourn her loss, appreciate the person she was while still allowing myself to be sad that she was gone. Because how was a person supposed to feel when their mother chose to leave? Was I supposed to love her less because of it?
I pushed those thoughts aside, again, and remembered why I was in there in the first place. Emotionless, I rifled through the hanging clothes, most of which were pretty outdated. My fingers grazed a butter-soft cotton, so I shoved the hangars aside to get a better look. I found myself staring at a flowery whisper of a blouse with flowing hippie sleeves. I stripped off my Bon Jovi T-shirt and slid the blouse over my head. I hopped up onto Dad’s bed to check myself out in his dresser mirror and felt a slight pang when I realized it fit like a glove. I’d finally grown into my mother’s body.
I had a brief glimpse of an alternate life-one in which my mother and I could have shared this moment, giggling about having just doubled our wardrobes-and then dismissed the thought realizing that that scenario was never going to happen. I wondered if she’d feel violated that instead, I was just swiping something out of her closet without her knowledge.
Screw her. I’m wearing it.
I blew my hair out poker straight, but braided a random strip down one side. I threw on some jeans and a pair of strappy sandals-thanking God for my awesome shoe collection-because the look wouldn’t have been complete without some hippie footwear.
I assessed the final product of my work and was happy with the end result. Although, I was going out on a limb there with the retro duds. I figured I’d have to endure a few jabs from the guys, but nothing too traumatizing. I’d gotten used to their relentless ballbusting over the years. Growing up in a neighborhood full of boys helped me to form a thicker skin than most girls I knew. Hell, one night I saw Francine Mentozzi reduced to tears over a pair of zebra-print stretch jeans when Rymer took one look at her and suggested she head back to the zoo. She didn’t hang out too much after that.
That’s something I never understood. How anyone could feel “victimized” by “the cool kids” just because they weren’t a part of them. Unless someone was really asking for it, none of us went out of our way to pick on anyone. We were too busy doing our own thing to care.
But from the outside, did that seem excluding? Did our goofing around come across as bullying? Didn’t those kids know that we got our chops busted every day, too? Maybe that was the difference between the “cool kids” and the not-so-cool ones. Maybe we were just better able to laugh at ourselves and not take any negative comments so seriously. Maybe that was the only line separating the people who enjoyed their school years from the ones who were scarred by them.
I’ll give you an example: Junior year, Roger Vreeland and I were paired up on a science project. We’d meet at his or my house after school a couple times a week to work on it. Now Roger is someone I’d known since kindergarten, but never really hung out with or anything. He was kind of quiet and spent most of his time with the Audio/Visual crowd. But we actually hit it off fairly well during that project. We were surprised to find that I was smarter and he was funnier than we both had previously thought. We ended up getting some good work done in spite of a lot of joking around.
One day, I showed up to his house with a replacement bag of Munchos, because I had demolished the last of his during our previous work session. I mean, it’s just what you do, right? A person would have to be pretty rude not to at least replace a bag of Munchos.
But you know what he said? “Wow. Thanks. You know, it’s funny-I never realized you were nice before.”
I’m sure he meant it as a compliment, but I was all, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
And he actually said, “Well, you know. You were always too cool to talk to me.”
Can you believe that? What the hell? I should have said that the reason we never talked was because he never opened his mouth in my direction, which was the truth. But did I go and jump to the conclusion that we never spoke because he was “too cool” to do so? No. I couldn’t imagine going through life with such a huge chip on my shoulder like that.
I mean, it’s not like we were such a mutually exclusive group who spent our days trying to find ways to torture and alienate our fellow classmates. If anyone ever wanted to be a part of things, all they ever had to do was show up.