The First Day of School

I had never been to a real school since kindergarten.  Also I moved the year before high school so I knew no one.  Also I went out for soccer even though there was no such thing as youth soccer where I moved from (Huntington, West Virginia in 1983) so going out for soccer was an outrageous overreach on my part.  One side-effect of "going out for soccer" meant that I had gone to soccer camp during the summer.  I was just ok, it turned out, at soccer.  I had definitely discerned the social hierarchy on the team.  I had not made any friends.

BUT I knew there would be other people I would meet now who would be my obvious, best and long-term friends.   So all the other factors practically receded from my imagination as we bumped along highway 96 on our way to Fruitport Michigan to my first day of high school.

Yes.  This is a "first day of school" story and (spoiler alert) like all the rest of the stories in this genre?  It is a tragedy.

But in order to give the tragedy it's full due, I must first tell a story of strange delight.  A story where sorrow is magically transformed into unexpected triumph.

A story of high fashion.

THE STORY OF THE KELLY GREEN PANTS.

I grew up in in the ironic zipper of two opposing forces:  First, I had a mother who had great taste, wit, and pluck.  She surrounded her family with beautiful things.  Prints of classic paintings, an appreciative ability to distinguish between Bach, Beethoven, and Tchaichovsky, tasteful furnishings, boldly painted rooms and matching shirts -- hand sewn by her in the latest fashion.

The opposing force?  We were incredibly poor. Everything my mom created about our beautiful world was done through good taste, magic and hard work. 

We couldn't afford nice things or new clothes.  Baptist Ministers (like my father) were poor as a matter of moral imperative.  Also holiness and sociological position.  This was not a complication or difficulty for me until I became an adolescent, outgrew matching clothes and started to notice the trends.  Even at this age, my mom was able to procure interesting clothes.  The hand me downs from my cousins and the missionary closet yielded items in good taste that would stand the test of time.  And I did not despise the things that I wore.

However, I would catalogue with longing the number of people whose wardrobes were defined by ... trendiness.  (So many!)

The izod logo on a golf shirt with a popped collar was as inaccessible a dream for me as a DeLorean.

And now I must pause this Tale of Triumph and Delight with a much smaller tale of tragedy.

SOMEONE DIED.

And that's actually all I have to say, really.  Someone who I didn't know, died.  And maybe part of the tragedy is that I have no idea who it was, but the truth is that my father was constantly doing funerals and so all I know is that the deceased was a doctor, his family knew and appreciated my father and (I guess?) must have been keenly aware of how my father's build and height was the same as the deceased because they...

gave his entire wardrobe to my father. 

Now this event happened in 1983 and I was so happy for my father.  He is such a good hearted, unassuming man that even though he has only one single rule regarding fashion ("does it feel comfortable?") I still was extremely glad for him: for the awesome wealth of golf shirts (whose collars he would obviously NOT pop) with expensive logos and trendy khakis and even a pair of KELLY GREEN PANTS.

And it never really crossed my mind in 1983 what was about to happen in 1984 because these things always catch us by surprise.

I had a growth spurt.

(cue the triumphant music.)

So when I got dressed that morning for the first day of school and came downstairs wearing those kelly green pants and a creme logo'd golf shirt with the collar popped?

I knew that I was the central character in a heroic tale.

It didn't matter about the new school, new state.  It didn't matter that I had to ride squeezed in the cab of the VanSomething brothers who I knew from soccer camp all 15 miles on highway 96 to school.  It didn't matter that I had already realized that they were not the polite boys they pretended to be in front of my preacher father but were actually the kind of soccer jocks who were VERY friendly to everyone they didn't know only as a setup for a prank, a scornful shared laugh, a little bullying and then aloof disinterest.  It didn't matter at all that I rode tightly squeezed into that pickup cab because I had on the most awesome Green Pants 1984 had to offer.

Fruitport, Michigan, where the school was located, had a towering yellow water tower near the edge of town with a big smiley face on it.   What does that smiley face mean?  Have a nice day?  Jesus loves you?  Fruitport is awesome?  High School years are the best years of your life?  You're going to love it here?  Smile like your life depends on it because what else are you going to do at this point?

At precisely the moment that I saw the leering grin emerge over the pine tree lined highway I felt the full effect of what was about to happen to me.  I was a stranger and I was going to high school and nothing I knew about any of it was good.  Could my green pants save me?  I glanced down on them and my face turned to the same precise color.

I tried to say to the older of the VanSomething brothers:  "Could you pull over at your earliest convenience?"  But all that came out was:

"Could you...?" - and then all the pancakes my grandparents had cooked for me that morning.

All over my pants.  All over the floor of the cab.  All over my shoes.  Perilously close to both of the VanSomething brothers who were both exclaiming with disgust and veering off the highway.

I have NO memory of the next twenty minutes.  The next memory that I have - I am seated beside the receptionist booth at the main entrance to the school.  I am waiting for my grandfather to arrive with new shoes and new pants.  I reek of stomach acid and EVERY STUDENT IN THE ENTIRE SCHOOL WALKS IN THESE DOORS as the bells rings and (in my memory at least) they are ALL staring at me with horror and hilarity.  I hear the snickers of the younger VanSomething brother; in my brain he has recounted the whole disgusting tale to everyone already.

I know that my destiny is sealed and that high school will be the ugliest season of my life.  That every morning as I drive by, the water tower will sneer and whisper, "Nice pants." and snicker.

There.  I promised a tragedy and it's pretty much real.  I lived through the majority of my high school days as if they had been fated by that moment.  There were moments of happiness, sure.  But the tears and the isolation and the humiliation.  The assured sense that I did not belong were as real as any feelings I've had since.

And yet.

The thing that I know now (and you can feel it in my tone) is that the VanSomething brothers didn't matter at all in the larger scheme.  Gradually I found out other stories, longer stories that helped me recognize that what I thought I was experiencing during all those years - tethered to that horrific memory?  That was not actually the important story.

The thing that I am celebrating today in my #50thingsofvalue is one of my greatest insights as I age.

Memories are both completely stable and also utterly malleable.

And every memory *does* have a trajectory of life that emerges from it that is real, true, viable and consequential, but also?  Once we find out that the memory was a little warped based on things we didn't understand?  We can revise the memory.

And once we revise the memory?  THERE IS AN ENTIRELY NOTHER string of true, real, viable and consequential events that stem from the newer version of events.

The past is as malleable and simultaneously contradictory as our potential futures. And that is a very good thing.

#50thingsofvalue