"best" friends

03-10-00

Mecca lecca hi, mecca hiney ho!

Anyone else remember that? Jambi's magic phrase from PeeWee's Playhouse. Ten o'clock Saturday mornings, back in the late eighties. I witnessed the PeeWee phenomenon from my seventh grade vantage point, where a fine line ran between being cutesy about watching cartoons and being a big dork. I walked that line. We all walked that line.

PeeWee Herman was cool. Hello, Kitty was not. Mickey Mouse was cool. Other Disney characters were not. (This was pre-Little Mermaid, before Disney made their comeback.) McDonald's Happy Meals were cool. Cabbage Patch Kids were not. MTV was cool. VH1 was not. Tiffani Gray was cool. I was not. Etc.

Seventh grade was a big year in the formation of my personality. I'd like to say that I was always the way I am now, that I never cared about who was popular and who "went with" whom and who sat with whom at the lunch tables. The truth is, I did. I became a fledgling cynic in seventh grade. My innocence and my faith in womankind were shattered. I don't have a lot of positive memories from the 1987-1988 school year.

For starters, I was twelve. I had bad hair. I wanted my bangs to stand up, but they emphatically did not. I got my first period on the first day of seventh grade. I'd been to my first-ever music camp that summer, and I was newly aware that my band class was not challenging me.

My friends hated me. I'm aware that every twelve-year-old girl thinks that. I admit, I was a melodramatic pre-teen. Looking back, though, I think I may have had reason to think they hated me. My "best" friend, Amy, had many, many personal problems, most of which I had little understanding of. Her mother was using cocaine, I think, and abusing her, I know. Amy was perpetually looking for better friends. Every few months she'd sort of disappear on me, and I'd tag along as best I could while she and her "best" friend, Sara, (or Kami, or Kita,) did their best to leave me behind. When Amy wasn't making a new "best" friend, she was busy making me the butt of her jokes with the posse, Kim, Heather, and Jenny.

Every night, in between friend cycles, Amy and I talked on the phone for hours. We passed ten-page notes between classes, filled with doodles and descriptions of the losers in earth science and study hall. Study hall was the real problem, I think. In our school, you could choose between band, orchestra, choir, or study hall. Amy quit the clarinet after fifth grade, sang in choir for one year, and then took study hall. I was, of course, in band. Amy must have felt somewhat leftout when band was the topic of discussion. And I sure as hell felt left out when Kim and Amy started the rag session on the "burnouts" in study hall.

Study hall was filled with the coolest, and the uncoolest, kids in the whole school. Corrina, the goddess (and president) of the eighth grade, was in study hall. Tracy, the skater-dude with a seven inch mohawk, was there. Braquelle, a very cute sixth grader with a tendency toward insanity, was in study hall. Tubby was in study hall; you can imagine where that nickname came from. Countless other kids were bonded together by the boredom of study hall. I met each day Amy after first hour, when she had study hall and I had geography, and handed her a note about Mole Patrol, the geo teacher, and she handed me a note that typically read like this:

Rae is picking her fingernails with her pen. Now she's biting her nails. Taste good, Rae? OH MY GOD!!!!!! Braquelle just stuck a paper clip in the light socket and it ZAPPED HER!!! Tubby is drawing on his high tops. He went to sleep before and drooled all over his desk. Now he's drawing on his arm. I went over to Frank's last night and his brother was telling me about this party they had where Frank, Randy, Tracy, Brian McAnally, Kami, Amber and him all went out in the woods behind their house and they drank wine coolers and lit a fire. They were burning up leaves and stuff when they saw these lights flashing through the trees and they all took off without putting out the fire. Well, the bell's gonna ring in two minutes so I'll finish this next hour. BYE, Amy.

Through study hall, Amy got involved with the skater crowd. I became involved with the skater crowd, as much as I could. Skaters were cool. And of course, each person in our group had a thing for one of the skaters. Kim's was Tommy. Amy's was, uh, shit, I can't remember anymore. I guess that's a good thing. I staunchly refused to give them the name of a guy I liked. In the end it was my downfall.

The Game

Amy came to me after study hall one day and said Brian McAnally asked her to ask me if I'd go with him. I'd never spoken to Brian. He was an eighth grade skater, and I was a too-tall seventh grader with flat bangs, thick glasses, and blue neon high top sneakers. Amy and Kim pestered me about Brian for days. Every day we discussed Brian over our chocolate ice cream, Cool Ranch Doritos, and grape soda. Every day I laughed and told them to tell him I was thinking about it. When I saw Brian in the hall I'd jerk my head back in greeting, and he'd look at me funny.

Then I found out that Yvonne and her "best" friend, Lauren, hated me because Yvonne wanted to go with Brian. Competition? Did somebody challenge Betsy? I told Amy to tell Brian yes, I'd go with him. She headed gleefully to study hall that day. A week passed, and we didn't say much about Brian anymore. The shit hit the fan: I found out Amy had told Brian I said yes, but didn't tell me. We'd been "going together" for a week, but I'd been ignoring him in the halls. Ay.

Look. Look here! A choice bit from my seventh grade journal, circa 1987:

BUT today was the worst day of my entire life. 1st I started out by telling Jenny Soto I was mad at her cause she's a fag and has no respect for other people's privacy. She told everyone else, and then in Home Ec. Kim told me I was a faggot and No boy would ever like me and 3 people out of three thought I was a bitch. I asked her if Brian REALLY aked me to go with him and she kind of smiled, embarrassed, and said "I'm gone now!" Then I asked her who the 3 people were, she said her, Amy, Jenny. Then Nancy came over and said "Our table looks lke it expanded!" cause I don't usually sit there so I got up and said "Fine!" Kim said I didn't have one friend left. Then Jenny told the entire world about our conversation(ha!)

I went on to describe the scene at lunch that day. I sat by myself, and (this is embarrassing—I know you all appreciate me exposing my adolescent stupidity) I hooked my feet under the bars of the lunch table and leaned backward until my head rested on the floor. I know. I must have looked so cool that way. When Yvonne and Lauren—the catalysts, remember—asked me if I was going with Brian, I said I didn't know. When they asked what I was doing, I said meditating.

Here's an interesting bit I'd forgotten: when I got home from school that day, knowing my friends had played the worst of all malicious tricks on me, I fell down the stairs. Symbolic much? I don't think I've trusted women from that day on.

I pretended to, of course. I was always the laugh-it-off type, saving face so nobody would know how I felt. Within a week, friendship was uncomfortably reinstated between Amy and me. With Kim it took a few tries, but we were all in love with Amy, so it had to work out eventually. And in the end it didn't matter. Amy and I went our separate ways in high school. I fretted over the loss of the friendship for a couple of weeks, until I got a shred of self esteem. I even saw her once, after I'd been in college for a year and she'd moved to Texas and back. My mom and I ran into her in a restaurant; she was with her own mother. Our mothers chatted for a few minutes. Amy was shy, but mostly the same pixie-type as ever. I was ages different: curvy, with spirally hippie hair, contact lenses, ice maiden skin and dripping with self confidence. We exchanged "hey"s.

I don't miss her one bit, but she made me the way I am.