LJ Idol Week 6 - "Not of your world"
This is an entry for therealljidol. The topic this week was "Not of your world"
I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, literally. The Metro-North train line split the town into two sections, with 98% of people living on one side, and the rest of us crammed into an older neighborhood between the rail line and the next town over.
The neighborhood wasn't bad in itself. Comprised of tiny, windy streets and small house, it was full of older residents who had lived there for years while the McMansions cropped up on the other side of town. Many of the houses had been moved, mine included, when they flooded the nearby reservoir, and a house around the block claimed George Washington as a inhabitant for a while during the revolutionary war. The neighborhood had personality, which counts for almost nothing when you're a child.
Luckily most of the kids I grew up with never saw where I lived, thanks to the fact that my parents rarely let us have people over. The truth of the matter is my parents were never really parents in any meaningful sense, letting their own vices give way to neglecting the four of us. A lack of social interaction with kids in grade school eventually lead to my being a clear target once we hit middle school.
By the time girls are twelve and thirteen, they're mastering the art of being mean, throwing hushed whispers and secret notes across the classroom, giggling and glaring all the while. There was one girl in particular who seemed to be resolved to make me crack for her own amusement. The ringleader of a crew of spoiled children, she rode the same bus and had an almost identical class schedule. Looking back, nothing she did was so atrocious, but at twelve, it seemed like my world was being smothered by the smug look in her eye.
“You're wearing the same pants today,” she pointed out one day in our social studies class. I was lucky enough to sit next to her.
“Yes.” I replied. I was wearing the same pants. When it's a gamble whether or not your parents will have done laundry on any given day, this is an obvious and regular outcome.
“Look. She's wearing the same pants she wore yesterday!” she pointed down at my jeans and up to our tablemates. The girls giggled and the boys looked blank-faced at us like we were speaking another language.
“So what?” I asked, not caring for an answer.
“I can't believe she's wearing dirty pants!” she exclaimed again.
Interactions like that peppered the school year and the ones to follow. There were days that I just wanted to scream at her and tell her that her parents loved her sister more than they loved her, that she was the baby they adopted before they had their own. I never did, deciding each time not to stoop to that level, to just take the comments and remarks and file them away with things that didn't matter.
A few years later I went to apply for a job at CoffePlace. The second I saw her behind the counter I knew I wouldn't get the job regardless of how well I interviewed. It was no surprise to me when I never heard back from them.
My husband (who wasn't my husband at the time), worked with her and approached her one day about me. He came to me a few days later and explained that he had tried to explain to her where I came from, what my family had been like. I was in disbelief.
“How'd that go?” I asked.
“She didn't get it,” he stated with a hint of bewilderment.
“I didn't think she would.”
I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, literally. The Metro-North train line split the town into two sections, with 98% of people living on one side, and the rest of us crammed into an older neighborhood between the rail line and the next town over.
The neighborhood wasn't bad in itself. Comprised of tiny, windy streets and small house, it was full of older residents who had lived there for years while the McMansions cropped up on the other side of town. Many of the houses had been moved, mine included, when they flooded the nearby reservoir, and a house around the block claimed George Washington as a inhabitant for a while during the revolutionary war. The neighborhood had personality, which counts for almost nothing when you're a child.
Luckily most of the kids I grew up with never saw where I lived, thanks to the fact that my parents rarely let us have people over. The truth of the matter is my parents were never really parents in any meaningful sense, letting their own vices give way to neglecting the four of us. A lack of social interaction with kids in grade school eventually lead to my being a clear target once we hit middle school.
By the time girls are twelve and thirteen, they're mastering the art of being mean, throwing hushed whispers and secret notes across the classroom, giggling and glaring all the while. There was one girl in particular who seemed to be resolved to make me crack for her own amusement. The ringleader of a crew of spoiled children, she rode the same bus and had an almost identical class schedule. Looking back, nothing she did was so atrocious, but at twelve, it seemed like my world was being smothered by the smug look in her eye.
“You're wearing the same pants today,” she pointed out one day in our social studies class. I was lucky enough to sit next to her.
“Yes.” I replied. I was wearing the same pants. When it's a gamble whether or not your parents will have done laundry on any given day, this is an obvious and regular outcome.
“Look. She's wearing the same pants she wore yesterday!” she pointed down at my jeans and up to our tablemates. The girls giggled and the boys looked blank-faced at us like we were speaking another language.
“So what?” I asked, not caring for an answer.
“I can't believe she's wearing dirty pants!” she exclaimed again.
Interactions like that peppered the school year and the ones to follow. There were days that I just wanted to scream at her and tell her that her parents loved her sister more than they loved her, that she was the baby they adopted before they had their own. I never did, deciding each time not to stoop to that level, to just take the comments and remarks and file them away with things that didn't matter.
A few years later I went to apply for a job at CoffePlace. The second I saw her behind the counter I knew I wouldn't get the job regardless of how well I interviewed. It was no surprise to me when I never heard back from them.
My husband (who wasn't my husband at the time), worked with her and approached her one day about me. He came to me a few days later and explained that he had tried to explain to her where I came from, what my family had been like. I was in disbelief.
“How'd that go?” I asked.
“She didn't get it,” he stated with a hint of bewilderment.
“I didn't think she would.”