A Girl...

Forever Young

According to the number of school dance photos in which I appear on the arm (or back) of highschoolboyfriendDavid, we dated for approximately thirty-four years. That's not a bad thing--to have seriously dated only one person during high school--since he was as a spectacular a highschoolboyfriend as there is, but it does make it hard to figure out what pictures were taken when because we look exactly the same in every one. (That is, the same as ourselves, not the same as each other, although we do share a resemblance in the squinty-eye area.)

Take these two, for instance. One of them must have been '95, and the other '96 (I think).

We look the same. He is even wearing the same shoes. Not that I'm making fun of his shoes. You'll see mine are the same style in the first photo (we coordinated) and, in the second photo, I'm wearing my little brother's ratty hiking boots. And check out my shoes here:

Not only do they clash with the ensemble, but they were already at least a year old at the time the photo was taken and, people, I wore those exact same shoes last Tuesday. That's ten years later if you're counting.

What's up with the wacky dress code, you ask? Those first two pictures were from dances in which the girls asked the guys and then forced them to wear matching outfits, like old married couples do when they vacation. (I think they do it so they don't get lost.) Some of the ladies took terrible advantage of the situation, decorating their dates like Christmas trees, but I was always pretty nice. After all, I had no ill feelings toward my date, no reason to punish or embarrass him, nothing to avenge. Until this:

I look like I'm having fun (and I was) but let's just say I wasn't exactly smiling when he showed up at my house and told me I'd be wearing a grass skirt to the dance that night. It was February. It was the year the weather logs show six days of record-low temperatures in Salt Lake City. We're talking 16 degrees, and I was wearing itsy-bitsy, teeny-tiny little shorts (which I still have but do not wear, so don't even ask, Simon). It may have been my idea to stand on him, and when I did I may have been thinking very heavy thoughts.

Those second two photos were from a dance called MORP ("prom" backward). It was the boys' chance to dress us up and punish/embarrass/avenge in turn. Again, compared to what it could have been, I really lucked out. I could have been forced into a coconut bra, of all things.

We had our share of formal dances too. Below marks the second time I wore the red dress my mom made, modeled on one we saw in a store that wasn't worth the asking price. She sewed up a matching purse and everything, and I felt totally cool. Excuse me for a moment while I thank my sixteen-year-old self for actually being excited to wear a homemade dress to a school dance; considering the general surliness of the age group, the situation could've taken an ugly turn, and I'm glad it didn't because seriously, how cute is it that my mom made my dress? And I wore it twice?

Also so nice I wore them twice, my pointy-toed off-white fancy shoes, which make my already massive feet look like the hulls of a catamaran.

That was Homecoming '95(?). The next (previous?) year, the one I wish I'd found a picture from, was the time I wore the black satin babydoll dress cut up to here. I knew it was short when I bought it (I think my dad was with me), but it wasn't until I caught glimpse of it in the full-length mirror in the bathroom of the restaurant the night of the dance that I realized it was reeeeeeeeally short. Like, a good ten inches above my knees short. A probably-should-have-been-worn-as-a-long-shirt short. But also a perfect-for-looking-back-on-those-days-when-I-had-hot-seventeen-year-old-legs-and-didn't-care-who-saw-them short.

And isn't that what school dance pictures are for anyway? To give us something to look back on and laugh at and cringe over (luckily, I was too young for the Big Hair and Puff Sleeves Eras), but also to serve as proof that we too were once as young as the "kids these days," at whom we roll our eyes with outward annoyance but also a little with inward jealousy? Hopefully the high school years weren't the best times of our lives--no one should peak at eighteen unless he gets in a car crash and dies on graduation night--but, if we're lucky, they sure felt like glory days at the time.

When Simon and I were first getting to know each other, one of the things he asked was how I felt about high school. Did I love it and wish I could have stayed there forever? Did I hate it and wish it'd never happened? My answer was that it was just what it should have been and lasted just as long as it needed to, which is to say that the drama and the angst and the bad lunches were just as important as the football games and the honor roll and the perfect prom dress. I realize not everyone has it so good, so I try not to take it for granted, even though it has little bearing on my life today.

One of my last high school memories is when at the graduation ceremony the principal read the names of the ten students with the highest GPAs; I was fourth, behind the friend who wrote the minimalist concertos about berets (he got his BA at Harvard and is now getting his PhD from Berkeley), behind the super-nerdy kid who took three AP classes every year, and behind Heidi. Heidi had been a cheerleader for three years and was the cheer representative in student government. Heidi had been on drill team and was the vice president of the dance company. Heidi didn't take AP classes, or even honors classes. But Heidi nevertheless had a 4.0, and even though it was made up of A grades in classes like Home Ec and Cooking and Algebra II, she still ranked higher than those of us who could write convincing essays on the causes of the Franco-Prussian War or calculate the surface area of a 3-D cone. But what is baking a casserole compared to diagramming covalent bonds? I was steamed.

After I heard the news that my old driver's-ed teacher had died, I trolled around my high school's website one afternoon, looking at pictures and reminiscing about the faculty. What a surprise to find that the new dance teacher was none other than Heidi herself (surprisingly unmarried; maybe it was halitosis after all). Teaching at the high school she'd graduated from not ten years before. "Ha!" I thought. "Take that!" I thought. My glee at her pathetic outcome turned embarassingly juvenile.

Then, last weekend as I was scanning school dance photos, I remembered something about Heidi. Our senior year, she was nominated for homecoming queen, but no one ever asked her to the dance. She wasn't ugly and she wasn't a bitch, and with Mormons it was never a matter of whether a girl put out or not because none of them did. Maybe she had bad breath, maybe the other cheerleaders spread nasty gossip about her, maybe it was just a bad week. I know for a fact she went to other dances over the years because I have a picture from when she went to prom with my friend (who turned out to be gay as the day is long, although I'm still not sure he knows it yet), but that year at homecoming, all I remember is that she showed up in her dress, dateless but head held high, and stood in line as the winners--Anne and Anne and some other girl--were crowned. For all I know, the other girl was Heidi herself (I'll have to check my yearbook), but the important part was that she got dressed and did her hair and makeup and showed up to something that must have been really difficult. More difficult than the AP Chemistry test? I'll admit it's possible.

So now, ten years later, what do I think about Heidi, the cheerleader with the best herkies, who spends her days the same way she spent them a decade ago, only now she gets to use the faculty bathrooms? I can't say I feel bad for her--she might love what she does and where she does it--but I can say I'm glad I have the life I've chosen--nine hundred miles away, new experiences at every turn, never having to call the skeevy choir teacher by his first name when we pass in the hall.

The pictures prove that I looked the same all through high school, and most people would say I look the same now. Luckily for all of us, thought, I'm not the same, and while that seems like a judgement on the person I was then, it's not. I liked who I was then and I like who I am now, but each only within their contexts. Just because I could wear a mini-dress in public when I was seventeen doesn't mean I should do so at twenty-seven. And just because I thought, at seventeen, I was better than Heidi because I was smarter, more driven, more deserving of praise, well...I don't feel that way now. I've forgotten how to calculate the surface of a cone, and she can probably still make a damn fine casserole and also do the splits. We all grow up in our own ways and our pasts will always be our pasts so we'd do well to make peace with them.

[The last half of this post is brought to you by RookieMom, for awarding me my second Thinking Blogger Award. Thanks!]

Posted by Leah at April 3, 2007 04:29 PM