In my last post I said that my sister chickening out bothered me because of the sense of personal responsibility I feel for her awesomeness. This is true. It’s my parents’ job to make sure she becomes a well-adjusted, well-educated, contributing member of society. It’s my job, as her sister, to make her awesome. It’s also my job to occasionally make her life hell and pick on her, but that’s unrelated. Or maybe it is related because it should toughen her up.
I realized later, however, that I also hold my mom responsible for this phenomenon. At 22, I am just getting my feet wet in Lake My Mother Is Responsible For All Of My Problems. I assume I’ll spend a few more years here before moving on to The Sea Of Disturbing Ways I Am Becoming My Mother (Which Makes Her Responsible For All Of My Problems).
My mother has never been big on rules. She was raised by incredibly strict parents and became one of the few kids to actually live up to that silent vow to never be like their own parents. She has gone out of her way to be the exact opposite. When my grandfather describes his three kids, he tells you to imagine that there is a brick wall in their way. My middle-child aunt, will be the one to find a logical way around it. My Uncle (the baby of the family) will try to talk it down. My mother? She’ll just run right through the damn thing. I think this is crucial to understanding my crazy-but-wonderful mom.
Have you ever seen Chitty Chitty Bang Bang? If you haven’t, you should regard your childhood as inadequate. Your life is inferior to what it could be so you should go watch this movie and remedy this problem. My mom often let us skip school to go to Six Flags because the park was empty on those days and as Dick Van Dyke said, we needed to “give the other kids a chance to catch up.” (In my 6th grade rebellious stage, I learned that good grades were a sort of contingency for my parents’ seemingly unwavering lawlessness.)
Also in the 6th grade, my mother fought the good fight for her weird daughter’s right to express herself. This would not be the last time she would fight the battle on behalf of her strange children; a few years later we moved from Los Angeles to rural Missouri, and people just didn’t know what to do with kids who dyed their hair unnatural colors.
My middle school had a fairly strict uniform policy for a public school. I first learned what the ACLU was by searching the internet for information on the legality of this phenomenon. (The fact that this is how I spent my free time when I was 11 should not be surprising.) I learned that there wasn’t really a lot we could do, but that my school must have some sort of uniform waiver policy.
The uniform banned denim, print or logos of any sort (aside from the school logo), t-shirts (collared shirts only — but not with full buttons…basically just polos) and limited us to about four colors (navy blue, khaki, burgundy, and forest green; we were also allowed white for shirts and black for pants/skirts). This magical uniform waiver did not allow me to wear jeans, or printed clothing, or even t-shirts. It did, however, eliminate the color restrictions.
My mom spoke with several administrators and eventually got that waiver (she had already spent time with those administrators when my older brother was there). We went out and bought brightly colored polo shirts. It was all very scandalous.
When the day came for me to wear my hot pink polo to school, I chickened out. It takes a lot of balls to willingly be different in middle school. I was 11. I had just started there and the kids were all so big and suddenly I’m not quirky and well-liked I’m just fucking weird and oh my god this place is scary.
As everyone was getting ready to head out the door, I ran back up the stairs to change into a uniform-accepted polo shirt. My mom was not having this. She yelled at me and told me to get in the car. I cried and begged her to let me go change, but it was no use. I was wearing the damn shirt.
That was the most stressful ride to school I had ever experienced. I was desperately trying to figure out what I could to avoid this situation, but I couldn’t think of anything. I trudged through the school to my homeroom with my head down, convinced I was being stared at and ridiculed for my stupid fucking hot pink shirt. I walked into class certain that my teacher was going to yell at me and that the laminated yellow piece of paper that said “Uniform Waiver” would be useless.
Before the bell rang to start class, she called me up to her desk. I was already starting to tear up again. This was even more humiliating than the shirt. I was in middle school now, damnit. Now I was going to break down and cry in front of my entire homeroom and commit social suicide two weeks into my middle school career. Just fucking great. “That’s Nicole. She wears pink shirts and cries all the time. She’s super weird. Stay away.”
These are the things that happened inside of my 11-year-old brain. I guess I was lucky to have this pink shirt be the pinnacle of all my life’s struggles at that point, but I don’t think that this knowledge would have taken the edge off. It was more stress than my five-foot-tall-ninety-eight-pound body could handle.
I loved my homeroom teacher. I only got to spend that ten minutes a day with her because she was a special needs teacher, but I always wished she would have taught my other classes too. The only teacher I loved more was my English/Western Civ teacher. This day was part of why I adored her. I handed her the card, she read it, and confirmed that the terrified, choked-up student before her was telling the truth. She then spent the remaining minutes before the bell calming me down and telling me that everything was going to be all right because I had this card and if anyone asked me, I would just show them the card and everything would be fine. In fact, after I showed it to a few faculty members that day, I would probably hardly be asked to show it again. (She was right.)
I was still a little anxious for the rest of the day. I was also a little cranky, probably because that stress level was just plain exhausting. But the point is that in spite of all my irrational hysteria, everything was fine.
There was a similar episode with a Halloween costume in the 5th grade, but that story is for another day. My mom didn’t yell often. When she did it was either because we broke something, or we did something to frustrate her. For my part, instances like this comprised most of my mother-irritating behavior.
She was not going to allow us to to punk out. Fear of roller coasters and haunted houses were always handled a little differently — it was less running through the brick wall and more trying to talk it down and build us up. Either way, I owe so much to the fact that she was willing to let me cry it out.
I don’t think my family gives her enough credit for that, either. The family is quick to make light of her leniency with our lack of bedtimes and junk-food-filled bellies. She generally let us have our way. We were spoiled. But that’s because she picked her battles. The one year I made poor grades? Things were different. All of those little instances where I was embarrassed by being myself? She refused to stand for it.
OK, maybe things would have been better for me in high school if I had been less willing to be the weird purple-haired girl. But since I’m being so honest, I think it’s safe to say that while the mass of purple hair didn’t do me any favors, my endless angst and feelings (you know, the ones that eventually made me want to punch myself in the face?) probably did most of the damage.
My sister seemed to be filled with bravado from the start. She was always a gregarious and fearless little kid, and being the baby of the family, I think we all sort of missed it when adolescence started to take its toll and reel in our favorite little lion. Of course, she still has her fearless moments, and I do my best to give her proper credit.
Maybe my mom shouldn’t have let me miss that critical first day of multiplication so I could go ride Ninja and stuff my face with delicious funnel cake. Somehow, I managed to work it out anyway. But if she hadn’t held her ground on the hot pink shirt and made me suck it up, things like three years of Rocky Horror never would have happened for me. I can’t imagine a world where looking like a hot tranny mess every Halloween wasn’t a significant part of my college career. (Speaking of which, if you are in the D.C. area, you should obviously make sure you attend GW’s Sweet 16 production of Rocky Horror. It’s going to be magial.)
So I say this with the utmost sincerity: Thanks for just letting me cry, Mom. I’d hate to think of what a timid little punk I’d be if you hadn’t.