from the archives
ENTERPRISE VILLAGE OR THE GAPS IN BETWEEN
Still sifting through ancient artifacts of my own life, I scan photographs from age 10-17. Someone next to me points out that I looked older then-- in some way, at sixteen I looked older than that I do now. And I did really, it was like my face had aged too quickly, or my body had developed too early. I want to say how I was older then, how we were fending for ourselves, how at one point we were almost literally raised by wolves, but I don't say anything-- I just shrug, laugh a little, keep eye contact, you know sometimes stories are not worth telling unless you can start from the very beginning. Unless you can say "In 1985, I was born in a blizzard," unless you can say "In 1995, I was more reasonable than I had ever been," unless you can say "2005 really was 'The year of virgin sacrifices' until you've run out of decades. But who has twenty years? Who has twenty minutes?
The 5th grade was like magic. There's this sign on one of the subway cars that says something like "You remember your first grade teacher's name- who will remember yours?" My 5th grade teacher was Mrs.Uhl. In her classroom we read Where the Red Fern Grows and Old Yeller and all I wanted was a dog. If I believed in God during the fifth grade, I would have prayed for a puppy. But I was so practical at this point, if I recall correctly I either tried to reason with- or black mail my father. This could have been the most practical part of my whole life, the most reasonable year ever.
We went to Enterprise Village- this place the size of a shopping mall where you spend a day, have a job, get a paycheck and train your 10 year old body that this is society. You see, in the fifth grade I went to work with my classmates. I had the career that I had been pining before- being on television on The Home Shopping Network. I didn't care that the person who got the manager position for my store made fifty cents an hour more than I did, because I was going to be a star on the big screen. Or, I guess the little screen, in a simulated society. I was smug about the whole thing as I passed my classmates who were working at Blockbuster or McDonalds, I did not make eye contact with them, because ah, I had arrived, I had arrived and they had not. We went through a day of tasks like balancing our checkbooks and cashing our pay stubs( I spent most of my paycheck at Eckerd's Drugstore on a Caboodles make-up kit.) We were all grown up, this was the real world.
And I remember thinking, "you know- this is really great, this is really awesome." And in you know, in 1995- I could get out of bed in the morning, I could go to work &balance my checkbook. I could excel in society, no matter how simulated it was.
Back in the classroom, we got ready to start the DARE program. We received bright red t-shirts with black font on them (years later I traded shirts with one of my high school boyfriends, opting for a black shirt with red font.) We went to the school cafeteria where speakers came in and told us the woes of doing drugs.
We watched a cartoon about doing LSD. Apparently, if you did this drug, you would be very likely to jump out a building because you thought you could fly, or maybe you'd even kill a loved one.
It seemed terrifying. We went once a week and took some kind of pledge, swearing to remain drug free.
You see, when I was 10 years old, when i was 11- I wasnt going to do drugs. I was going to go to Enterprise Village and sit in Mrs.Uhl's class and write short stories about road trips with my family.I had no desire to look like a muppet that was all raged out tripping off of nanny's slippers because water still tasted clean to me and even pain was still pure. Pain just hurt. Things felt bad. I knew that running down the street, riding a bicycle, swimming in the ocean, spilling orange flavored drink down my puprle shirt-- I knew these were solutions to make problems go away. There had not yet been and introduction to anything else. It never really happens like that. No one tells you in the fifth grade that one day you are going to wish- that you are going to wish that you could submerge your whole head in orange drink until the high fructose corn syrup fills your lungs and the whole show is over because pain is not always going to feel simple and clear like a skinned knee, a broken arm, or mass confusion that you will get to repress for another ten years and another ten essays.
You're going to be on television, you're going to be a star.
You're going to be in pictures.
You're going to be a basketball player.
You're going to be
You're going to
And you really are
That's the thing, you relaly are
That year our class song was "Ironic,' by Ilanis Morisette. We were allowed to listen to it in class- it was a big deal. We played it the morning that special guest speakers were coming in. Two high school students, a boy and a girl. They were there to talk to us about abstinence. I remember wondering if they had sex together, then imagining them having sex. For years I had no idea that sex actually felt good for women- I thought it was something you did to prove something or make someone happy. And they talked to us about STDs and how they were waiting until marriage and all of these things.In the 5th grade, we were not having sex. But I wondered what it would be like with the boy from Blockbuster video, with the boy from Time Warner cable in class. The things we could do at Enterprise Village.
So you see, none of my friends in the fifth grade knocked any girls up, so no one was crying in the bathrooms about their abortions or their boyfriend that overdosed on drugs. We were ten years old and totally sober. I could sell you a home gym, you'd never have to get up off the couch. But it was wonderful. It was worth everything, and they were right for putting us behind those chairs, in those desks. In those dress skirts and suits like our parents didn't wear but could have worn.
There was something to be said for the whole thing and even though I am reflecting on a pile of photographs from a school field trip on the eve of my twenty-fourth birthday, contemplating the age of twenty-three and the age of ten with equal ambivalence I am still glad I had those moments. I do not know why I talk like this--- about these things like they are fleeting, not just the memories. But I have kind of been talking this way my whole life. You'd be eleven with that checkbook balance baby, and this would be the year we'd fucking have it all.
- Jan. 13th, 2009 at 1:25 PM
Still sifting through ancient artifacts of my own life, I scan photographs from age 10-17. Someone next to me points out that I looked older then-- in some way, at sixteen I looked older than that I do now. And I did really, it was like my face had aged too quickly, or my body had developed too early. I want to say how I was older then, how we were fending for ourselves, how at one point we were almost literally raised by wolves, but I don't say anything-- I just shrug, laugh a little, keep eye contact, you know sometimes stories are not worth telling unless you can start from the very beginning. Unless you can say "In 1985, I was born in a blizzard," unless you can say "In 1995, I was more reasonable than I had ever been," unless you can say "2005 really was 'The year of virgin sacrifices' until you've run out of decades. But who has twenty years? Who has twenty minutes?
The 5th grade was like magic. There's this sign on one of the subway cars that says something like "You remember your first grade teacher's name- who will remember yours?" My 5th grade teacher was Mrs.Uhl. In her classroom we read Where the Red Fern Grows and Old Yeller and all I wanted was a dog. If I believed in God during the fifth grade, I would have prayed for a puppy. But I was so practical at this point, if I recall correctly I either tried to reason with- or black mail my father. This could have been the most practical part of my whole life, the most reasonable year ever.
We went to Enterprise Village- this place the size of a shopping mall where you spend a day, have a job, get a paycheck and train your 10 year old body that this is society. You see, in the fifth grade I went to work with my classmates. I had the career that I had been pining before- being on television on The Home Shopping Network. I didn't care that the person who got the manager position for my store made fifty cents an hour more than I did, because I was going to be a star on the big screen. Or, I guess the little screen, in a simulated society. I was smug about the whole thing as I passed my classmates who were working at Blockbuster or McDonalds, I did not make eye contact with them, because ah, I had arrived, I had arrived and they had not. We went through a day of tasks like balancing our checkbooks and cashing our pay stubs( I spent most of my paycheck at Eckerd's Drugstore on a Caboodles make-up kit.) We were all grown up, this was the real world.
And I remember thinking, "you know- this is really great, this is really awesome." And in you know, in 1995- I could get out of bed in the morning, I could go to work &balance my checkbook. I could excel in society, no matter how simulated it was.
Back in the classroom, we got ready to start the DARE program. We received bright red t-shirts with black font on them (years later I traded shirts with one of my high school boyfriends, opting for a black shirt with red font.) We went to the school cafeteria where speakers came in and told us the woes of doing drugs.
We watched a cartoon about doing LSD. Apparently, if you did this drug, you would be very likely to jump out a building because you thought you could fly, or maybe you'd even kill a loved one.
It seemed terrifying. We went once a week and took some kind of pledge, swearing to remain drug free.
You see, when I was 10 years old, when i was 11- I wasnt going to do drugs. I was going to go to Enterprise Village and sit in Mrs.Uhl's class and write short stories about road trips with my family.I had no desire to look like a muppet that was all raged out tripping off of nanny's slippers because water still tasted clean to me and even pain was still pure. Pain just hurt. Things felt bad. I knew that running down the street, riding a bicycle, swimming in the ocean, spilling orange flavored drink down my puprle shirt-- I knew these were solutions to make problems go away. There had not yet been and introduction to anything else. It never really happens like that. No one tells you in the fifth grade that one day you are going to wish- that you are going to wish that you could submerge your whole head in orange drink until the high fructose corn syrup fills your lungs and the whole show is over because pain is not always going to feel simple and clear like a skinned knee, a broken arm, or mass confusion that you will get to repress for another ten years and another ten essays.
You're going to be on television, you're going to be a star.
You're going to be in pictures.
You're going to be a basketball player.
You're going to be
You're going to
And you really are
That's the thing, you relaly are
That year our class song was "Ironic,' by Ilanis Morisette. We were allowed to listen to it in class- it was a big deal. We played it the morning that special guest speakers were coming in. Two high school students, a boy and a girl. They were there to talk to us about abstinence. I remember wondering if they had sex together, then imagining them having sex. For years I had no idea that sex actually felt good for women- I thought it was something you did to prove something or make someone happy. And they talked to us about STDs and how they were waiting until marriage and all of these things.In the 5th grade, we were not having sex. But I wondered what it would be like with the boy from Blockbuster video, with the boy from Time Warner cable in class. The things we could do at Enterprise Village.
So you see, none of my friends in the fifth grade knocked any girls up, so no one was crying in the bathrooms about their abortions or their boyfriend that overdosed on drugs. We were ten years old and totally sober. I could sell you a home gym, you'd never have to get up off the couch. But it was wonderful. It was worth everything, and they were right for putting us behind those chairs, in those desks. In those dress skirts and suits like our parents didn't wear but could have worn.
There was something to be said for the whole thing and even though I am reflecting on a pile of photographs from a school field trip on the eve of my twenty-fourth birthday, contemplating the age of twenty-three and the age of ten with equal ambivalence I am still glad I had those moments. I do not know why I talk like this--- about these things like they are fleeting, not just the memories. But I have kind of been talking this way my whole life. You'd be eleven with that checkbook balance baby, and this would be the year we'd fucking have it all.