Memory Monday: My Freshman Year aka All Humiliation, All the Time!

Okay, I lied, it didn't suck that bad.

BUT, someday, when I'm a widely published, I want everyone (who didn't witness it first hand) and my children who think I'm uber-cool, to know that I too, had an awkward phase.  And when I say 'awkward', I mean train wreck bad.  Yes, my friends, this super sophisticated, cool as a cucumber, smooth under pressure, lady of dignity was a dork.  Please.  Stop hyperventilating from the shock.  (I wrote a post a year and a half ago that describes some of this.)

As I've pondered what to take time to remember for my Monday Memory, several illustrations of my awkwardness came to mind..

Illustration #1:  My ambition to become a cheerleader.  Not so bad by itself; except I happened to be an enormous klutz.  When I decided to try-out the end of my eighth grade year, I'm pretty sure my loved ones were scratching their heads over that one.  I didn't exactly fit the bill.  Yet, I persisted.

 The 11 of us trying out were informed that there were only 7 spots and after practicing for a week, my chances of making the squad were slim at best.  But I persisted.  On the day before the tryouts we drew numbers to determine the order in which we would give our self created routines, otherwise known as my one-woman-freak-show.  I drew #1....of course.  I came up with this nifty little number that included lots of arm flailing and a couple of random kicks to me bellowing out every other rhyming word.  Add to that my tendency to speed up when I'm nervous, I basically looked like I was trying to recite Doctor Suess while seizing.

I was greeted with blank stares and the sound of crickets.

Illustration #2:  Miraculously, I made the squad.  (Here's where I should mention that we ALL made it.  Seriously, I'm not being modest.  It was really that bad.)  During the following summer, I received a crash course on all things 'cheerleader' and basically faked it; but by the beginning of football season, I was beginning to feel a little more confidant.

It was customary for the cheerleaders to wear their uniforms to school on the day of a football game.  On one particular day, I was in the hall waiting for class when one of my classmates was waiting for his to start.  He happened to be on the football team and being that I can't stand dead air, I struck up a conversation.  Which eventually came to discussing creating cheers and Juan encouraged me to come up with an impromptu cheer for him. This is pretty much how the following train wreck went down...

Thinking to myself..."Hmmm, how do I spell his name?"

Okay.  Ready.  (More Arm Flailing, a little more deliberate this time since I sort of knew what I was doing.)

"Go, Fight, Win!  G-o-o-o-o-o-o-o Juan!  W-O-N!"

Juan, (blank stare again) "That's not how you spell my name."

Me, "Oh.  sorry."

Awkward.





Illustration #3:  Needs no explanation.  My favorite outfit when I wasn't wearing my uniform was the following:

zebra print cut off cotton pants
coordinating tee-shirt with wild life on the front.  The wild life were cartoon red.  and neon blue...gosh, that's special.

I wore that in public.  A lot.

 How's this one for high fashion?

Lastly, Illustration #4:  My mother had a neighbor who loved to mess with my hair.  After she destroyed my hair with a really bad perm and then themed my next hair cut to the cartoon "Duck Tails" (she thought it was adorable that my hair looked like the butt of a duck) I took matters into my own hands.

My mother cautioned me about the dangers of having split ends and regularly advised me to give my hair a deep conditioning.  Then one day, as I wondered around the local PX, I came across a hair product designed for African American hair.  I'm not a label reader.  All I knew was that the lady on the front had a beautiful mane of hair obviously split-end free.  I snagged it up in a hurry, ran home and prepared to 'deep condition' the split ends out of my hair.  The first thing I noticed when I opened the jar was that it resembled Vaseline.  That didn't stop me from applying approximately half the jar onto my head.  I wrapped my hair in Saran Wrap and 'conditioned' for 20 minutes.  After which I rinsed it out.

Only, it didn't come out.

I rinsed it again.  and again.  No luck.

By this time I started to panic.  I enlisted my mother's help and she proceeded to rinse my hair with vinegar and raw egg.  This basically amounted to me having plastic hair AND smelling like potato salad.  To add insult to injury, she made me go to school the next day...and every day after that for the three weeks it took to get the stuff out of my hair.

I was mortified by the thought that someone would notice and make fun of me.  Strangely, only my closest friends who knew what I did said anything.  Perhaps people were scared that I'd fashion a weapon out my pliable hair and stab them with it.  It remains a mystery. 

Amazingly, even with these and other equally mortifying experiences, I made it through ninth grade.  I even eventually ended high school as a mostly coordinated cheerleader.  Isn't it funny how those moments when we think we are actually going to die of embarrassment, we don't?  Even better is 20 years later when you realize those moments actually made life interesting...and dare I say...fun?

 It's nice to know that now, I'm much more dignified.