Image is Everything (We Must Not Drink Sprite) <
Author's Note: I feel very silly and I feel like "my writing is wood compared to your wild contraptions." All of you who read my livejournal, the few of you that there are, are excellent writers, and my offering seems quite pitiful.
The other day, I met up with a friend from Cedarville, and it was all quite depressing and hurtful and I got into a rage and instead of ranting to someone as a normal person would, I wrote this, with many tears and speculations to why-am-I-so-lost-today. This chapter would go somewhere in the middle of the book, and it is not entirely complete because I would like to have a "fictional" character with experiences that are happening at the present that causes her to reflect on her past. What I have so far are the reflections. I still need to figure in the present experiences the character is having, and don't worry, I will have more humorous light-hearted reflections...but with an equal amount of dark-hearted ones as well.
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At Reedersburg, sociability must be sacrificed in order to maintain coolness. I quickly learned the art of pretending to not know people, even though I did know them. “You had to be friendly on other people’s terms” was the unspoken standard. Being a Reedersburg student meant that generally you were too cool to let on you had sparkle behind your robot eyes.
Most sadly I was misinformed about these bizarre social habits, because I observed them most resolutely for a long time afterward.
Long after I graduated, I met up with a friend from college for lunch. I spent the whole lunch baffled, wondering how could us two ever been friends, as she scoffed at my silly tissues that I had received as a gift from one of my clients and laughed at my cluelessness at the proper decorum on where to sit during a lunch.
“We aren’t on a date,” she ridiculed me as she moved across the table from me.
Do people not from Reedersburg fuss about where is the proper place to sit across from a friend at lunch? Do people not from Reedersburg have friends who jeer at you for having illustrated tissues? No, I decided, they did not. We weren’t in damn high school anymore.
When I came to Reedersburg, I was naïve, wanting to befriend everyone. I wanted to let Reedersburg know that I had walked its halls. I found myself immediately disliked, though in my naivety I did not understand why. I had not yet discovered tweezers and their valuable use to eyebrows. I had not yet worked at Kauffman’s, so I was unaware of latest fashions; I had been happy to wear $5 shirts from K-Mart and thought myself fashionable enough. Having a good hair day was a matter of luck. My flirting ability ranked at a 0 from a scale of 1 to 10; batting my eyelashes and making perfectly normal shirts look sexy were not my forte.
I still lived in another dimension which was unsettling similar to high school. Reedersburg girls still wanted to befriend other girls who they knew would help them befriend guys which would end in a match with an upstanding Christian guy. Sporting neglected eyebrows and bringing the Goodwill-look back would not help them in their quest.
I was bruised and battered from high school. I was tired of the whispering ridicule of my music and my prehistoric fashion and my whole person. I did the only thing I knew to do. I sold myself.
In the end, I still had nothing. My sweet, innocent nature had been sacrificed to please people who sneered at fun and caricatured tissues. I joined their elite crowd but not in whole.
My friend Rachel would say to me, “Let’s go on a fatty run to get ice cream” or “Let’s have a fatty night and eat a bunch of junk food while we watch The Patriot.” This bothered me, that I was the token fat friend. It seemed that if she must feel bad about being fat, so did I. Our motto became “Single, Fat, and Happy.” I wanted to tell the “You-must-be-on-the-path-to-marriage” mentality that I didn’t care. I don’t think I convinced anyone in the end, not even myself.
In my pursuit to be accepted, I decided I must become comical. Someone at Reedersburg told me once (and in my muddled swirl of thoughts, I came to believe that his statement was pointed directly at me, and not just a comment in passing) that the funniest people were fat people because they had to make up for their poor appearance. I decided I would become funny because I saw fat as my major flaw. Every quip or bit from tv shows and movies and other people that I enjoyed I took to become my own material, logged away for the perfect moments.
Much later, after I had finally “transitioned” to being normal by Reedersburg standards, Rachel and I would giggle about my previous naivety. Rachel would list off all the people who discussed my former idiosyncrasies, and I giggled in agreement how grateful I wasn’t like that anymore though I really wanted to run to my room and weep. I now plucked my eyebrows, wore high heels and v-neck shirts to make myself look slimmer, my makeup bag overflowed to three. I am fashionable, but I lost out in the trade, making a pack with the Devil that I cannot see myself of worth unless it is so.
Kelly tried to warn me. “You don’t need to look Egyptian,” she would mention in passing. When I spent the day with her, she always discouraged me from rushing off to check my makeup or fix my hair. She and a few scattered, kind souls stood alone in the battle for my self-image, reassuring me that I was of worth even with atrocious eyebrows and Kmart attire.
Much later it was that I finally realized these edifying statements and small kindnesses distinguish the true friends from the posers.
I chuckle to myself as I stare at my credit card statement, and it stares back at me and says, “Even after your valued-customer-thousand-dollar-increase, you are at a stalemate.”
It is a living testament to the lengths to which I have gone to make myself liked by men and befriend girls who also want to be liked by men.
The other day, I met up with a friend from Cedarville, and it was all quite depressing and hurtful and I got into a rage and instead of ranting to someone as a normal person would, I wrote this, with many tears and speculations to why-am-I-so-lost-today. This chapter would go somewhere in the middle of the book, and it is not entirely complete because I would like to have a "fictional" character with experiences that are happening at the present that causes her to reflect on her past. What I have so far are the reflections. I still need to figure in the present experiences the character is having, and don't worry, I will have more humorous light-hearted reflections...but with an equal amount of dark-hearted ones as well.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
At Reedersburg, sociability must be sacrificed in order to maintain coolness. I quickly learned the art of pretending to not know people, even though I did know them. “You had to be friendly on other people’s terms” was the unspoken standard. Being a Reedersburg student meant that generally you were too cool to let on you had sparkle behind your robot eyes.
Most sadly I was misinformed about these bizarre social habits, because I observed them most resolutely for a long time afterward.
Long after I graduated, I met up with a friend from college for lunch. I spent the whole lunch baffled, wondering how could us two ever been friends, as she scoffed at my silly tissues that I had received as a gift from one of my clients and laughed at my cluelessness at the proper decorum on where to sit during a lunch.
“We aren’t on a date,” she ridiculed me as she moved across the table from me.
Do people not from Reedersburg fuss about where is the proper place to sit across from a friend at lunch? Do people not from Reedersburg have friends who jeer at you for having illustrated tissues? No, I decided, they did not. We weren’t in damn high school anymore.
When I came to Reedersburg, I was naïve, wanting to befriend everyone. I wanted to let Reedersburg know that I had walked its halls. I found myself immediately disliked, though in my naivety I did not understand why. I had not yet discovered tweezers and their valuable use to eyebrows. I had not yet worked at Kauffman’s, so I was unaware of latest fashions; I had been happy to wear $5 shirts from K-Mart and thought myself fashionable enough. Having a good hair day was a matter of luck. My flirting ability ranked at a 0 from a scale of 1 to 10; batting my eyelashes and making perfectly normal shirts look sexy were not my forte.
I still lived in another dimension which was unsettling similar to high school. Reedersburg girls still wanted to befriend other girls who they knew would help them befriend guys which would end in a match with an upstanding Christian guy. Sporting neglected eyebrows and bringing the Goodwill-look back would not help them in their quest.
I was bruised and battered from high school. I was tired of the whispering ridicule of my music and my prehistoric fashion and my whole person. I did the only thing I knew to do. I sold myself.
In the end, I still had nothing. My sweet, innocent nature had been sacrificed to please people who sneered at fun and caricatured tissues. I joined their elite crowd but not in whole.
My friend Rachel would say to me, “Let’s go on a fatty run to get ice cream” or “Let’s have a fatty night and eat a bunch of junk food while we watch The Patriot.” This bothered me, that I was the token fat friend. It seemed that if she must feel bad about being fat, so did I. Our motto became “Single, Fat, and Happy.” I wanted to tell the “You-must-be-on-the-path-to-marriage” mentality that I didn’t care. I don’t think I convinced anyone in the end, not even myself.
In my pursuit to be accepted, I decided I must become comical. Someone at Reedersburg told me once (and in my muddled swirl of thoughts, I came to believe that his statement was pointed directly at me, and not just a comment in passing) that the funniest people were fat people because they had to make up for their poor appearance. I decided I would become funny because I saw fat as my major flaw. Every quip or bit from tv shows and movies and other people that I enjoyed I took to become my own material, logged away for the perfect moments.
Much later, after I had finally “transitioned” to being normal by Reedersburg standards, Rachel and I would giggle about my previous naivety. Rachel would list off all the people who discussed my former idiosyncrasies, and I giggled in agreement how grateful I wasn’t like that anymore though I really wanted to run to my room and weep. I now plucked my eyebrows, wore high heels and v-neck shirts to make myself look slimmer, my makeup bag overflowed to three. I am fashionable, but I lost out in the trade, making a pack with the Devil that I cannot see myself of worth unless it is so.
Kelly tried to warn me. “You don’t need to look Egyptian,” she would mention in passing. When I spent the day with her, she always discouraged me from rushing off to check my makeup or fix my hair. She and a few scattered, kind souls stood alone in the battle for my self-image, reassuring me that I was of worth even with atrocious eyebrows and Kmart attire.
Much later it was that I finally realized these edifying statements and small kindnesses distinguish the true friends from the posers.
I chuckle to myself as I stare at my credit card statement, and it stares back at me and says, “Even after your valued-customer-thousand-dollar-increase, you are at a stalemate.”
It is a living testament to the lengths to which I have gone to make myself liked by men and befriend girls who also want to be liked by men.