For God Back

A continuation of my story, click to read...
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

I remember in the 4th grade how all the girls stopped playing at recess. The boys continued to play and get dirty and get in fights, but the girls...

They stood in the shade and looked at magazines and talked about boys - particularly Chet Zachery, who was in the 5th grade. They talked about clothes and make-up and sometimes, the really daring girls would raid their mother's make-up bag and bring...lipstick!

Oh the days when someone brought lipstick...

Before the first class was over, EVERYONE knew about it and everyone was jockeying for position with the lip-stick bearer because EVERYONE was hoping to get a chance to color their lips at lunch time. And the morning classes would be filled with so much anticipation and anxiety. Alliances made while working on division problems might be dissolved before we got to word-problems. And the girl with her mother's lipstick held within her hands (or hidden in her locker) the power of social control - nay, perhaps even world domination...

I remember the pull to join the Lipstick Club. Essentially, it was the only reality. ALL the girls were either part of the Lipstick Club, or for the unlucky ones (or poor ones, or colored ones, or dirty ones) - they wished to be part of the club.

I didn't.

Didn't want to be part of the club. Didn't become part of the club.

I still wanted to play - I was the 4th grade, for crying out loud!

But the boys wouldn't play with me because I was a girl (this realization had just begun to dawn on them, as before we played together all the time before) and the girls wouldn't play with me because they didn't play.

And so I became mist - that indefinable, almost intangible, almost invisible thing with the slightest hint of color - white.

All the way through highschool, with a few exceptions, I was simply mist. No one hated me. I wasn't a nerd. I wasn't a geek. I wasn't anything. I just drifted into class, whispered answers to the questions and then dissipated when the bell rung. Everyone just saw right through me.

And of course they would. There was a highschool reality and I was not inside that reality. I made no sense, and like people everywhere, my classmates were only able to see what they had words to talk about.

My dad always says the most important thing you can do for yourself is to never tell yourself lies. Very profound. Of course, he also says...

"You can't rollerskate in a buffalo herd, but you can be happy if you have a mind to."

I have no idea what he's talking about with that one. But the point is, I didn't tell myself lies. I didn't pretend to care about lipstick when I didn't. I didn't pretend to care about Chet Zachery when I didn't.

I'm thankful for the decisions I made. I'm really, really glad.

Here are a two times when I stepped out of the mist.

1) When the really tall, really big football player grabbed my butt while walking down the hall - my first response was to apologize - really, I did, I said, "I'm sorry!" But he just kept walking and laughing with his friends. And then...the sound of books hitting the floor...and I was running after him. I caught him by the back of his collar and threw him up against a wall. And then, I came to my senses and thought, "What am I going to do now?!" He was screaming, "let go of me, bitch!" over and over again. My volleyball coach and my physics teacher were just staring at me. His friends were staring. Everyone was staring. So finally, I said (yeah, you're going want to write this down) -

Don't you EVER do that again!

There's one for the books - a quotable quote if ever there was one.

2) When I made the dance team - suddenly popularity was laid at my feet - the quarterback wanted to date me. I was enough of my own person by that time, that for a while I lived the popular (but good girl) life. And I enjoyed it. But when the popular girls starting making fun of a guy friend of mine from band, I told them to shut up because he was my friend and that was the end of the popularity run.

And all throughout these times, I kept dreaming of horses and telling God that I was so thankful for being rescued and saved and loved that someday...someday I was going to do something for God back.

posted by Headless-in-GR @ 1/13/2005 10:20:00 AM