Damn it, More Glass Raising

School started that next Monday morning. I arrived wearing my best back-to-school outfit with my shiny new green backpack slung over my shoulder. I felt very old, very mature. I was a SIXTH GRADER. I knew all the teachers, the principals, the secretaries and the janitors. I knew which teachers would let a little hall-pass-free wandering go unnoticed and which would whisk you off to detention. And I knew that chili day in the cafeteria was a day that Mom most DEFINITELY had to fix my lunch. I was a total eleven-year-old badass.

That morning I found out I had been placed in the class with the COOL kids. Until that moment in the gym, waiting in unairconditioned heat for my room assignment, I was sure the cool kids were paying off the administration so they could sit in classes together, trading purple pens with cool feathers on the top and sneaking bubble gum between the aisles. In fact, I had already resigned myself to being in the totally UNcool and UNrad Smart Kid Class.

Oh, you didn't know there were cool Smart Kids? WELL YES THERE ARE. Smart Kids have just as much of a hierarchy as anybody else. In fact, sometimes the Smart Kids totally take over the Popular Kids group and form a new, totally BITCHING Cool Smart Kids group. For as long as I had been living in Mississippi (2.5 years) I had seen the distinct separation amongst the Smart Kids. I'm not sure if words were exchanged or if the better looking kids were just genetically predisposed to form a Smart Kids Group of their own but there were DEFINITE lines drawn. Lines you JUST DID NOT CROSS.

Guess which group I was in.

So much to my surprise I was placed in the classroom with the Cool Smart Kids, something that even my SUPER EXTRAORDINARILY smart self saw as a very strange and possibly VERY BAD twist of fate. You see, even though the Grudzien boy had been sporting the too-tight t-shirts and crooked teeth, he had somehow, SOMEHOW, infiltrated the Cool Smart Kid group. I often wondered how he did this as he was a transplant, much like myself. Though, of course, the Grudzien boy did not start his period in front of 27 other nine-year-olds. THIS PROBABLY HAD A LOT TO DO WITH IT.

After the assignments were given, the students dutifully marched in single file to their assigned classrooms. BUT OF COURSE I LIE. We ran helter skelter through the hallways, looking for room 102 or 204 or the nearest janitor closet to hide in. And so it came to pass that I met Mrs. Auqouin (pronounced oo-qwen, emphasis on second syllable), who would become my all-time favorite teacher. Though on that first day I cursed her with every vile curse word known to any sheltered eleven-year-old. Why?

She was seating us alphabetically.

This means nothing to you, obviously. So here's where I sidetrack a bit and explain why this is bad. His name was [redacted]. Mine? [redacted]. SEE HOW I JUST GAVE UP TOTAL ANONYMITY? DO YOU SEE? I figured it was going to happen sometime and really, who cares. Prospective employers, relatives, friends and small woodland creatures be damned. If you google me you'll find that I'm mentioned, briefly, in an article that was actually written about a friend of mine - [redacted]. I think it mentions that we were co-anchors at the University of Central Arkansas television station. Other than that I am a completely innocuous human being.

So back to the ACTUAL story. As we were seated alphabetically, the Grudzien boy was placed DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF ME. I almost passed out I was so nervous. What if it turned out the he was smarter than me? What if I PRETENDED that he was smarter than me and I could casually ask for his help on an algebraic equation, scrunching my face into an adorable mask of confusion until BING! with his calm and patient help I was able to break through the algebra barrier! And what if I tripped on the way to the pencil sharpener? He would think I was a total spaz. But what if I stumbled delicately, right by his desk? I could grab his arm for balance and he would take my hand, look deep into my eyes and ask with genuine concern if I was okay. I'd laugh gaily and make self deprecating jokes about my clumsiness. He'd be impressed with my self confidence and IMMEDIATELY ask me to go the football game with him on Friday.

Thankfully I never put any of my plans into action. I just sat in petrified silence for the first weeks of school, afraid I would commit some mortally embarrassing act of heinousness and be forever banned from his presence. But at the same time, I would have given my right arm to sit someplace else, a seat where the [redacted] boy couldn't see, hear or LOOK at me.

Now during this time of petrification due to boy exposure I was actually making some new friends of my own. Not BOY friends, naturally. I couldn't come within spitting distance of a boy without freezing into an immobile non-speech-having block of wood. But, and here was where I was truly floored, I had started to make friends with a popular girl! A real live popular girl! Her name was [redacted] and she was the epitome of eleven-year-old perfection. Her blonde hair was smooth and straight-- never frizzy or curly-- and her bangs HER BANGS were always perfectly curled into a delicate and beautiful poof.

This was 1991. Give us a break.

I was terribly jealous of Lacy's wardrobe (she always wore Guess or Gibaud jeans, normally with a matching shirt to coordinate) her hair and her ability to speak freely, AND IN WHOLE SENTENCES, with the boys in our class. We had come to be friends ofasort through a semi-dork friend of my own, who happened to be friends with a girl who rode the popular fence who was definitely friends with Lacy, who was so far in the popular field most of us had to squint our eyes to see her. But in the way of eleven-year-olds, sleep overs were always more fun when extra girls were present. So when Tiffany (the fence rider) invited Ella (my friend) who invited me (the true dork) to join her and Lacy (the popular queen) for an evening of fun at her house (with a pool! and a cute older brother!) I would drop anything I was doing to beg my poor mother to drive 30 minutes to Tiffany's house and leave me with her chain-smoking hack of a mother. (My mother was unaware Tiffany's mom was a chain-smoking hack and remained so until well into my late teens and after we had moved two states over.)

After six or seven sleepovers I felt confident enough to share with my friends my ridiculous crush on the Grudzien boy. It was a Saturday afternoon in mid-November and we were sitting in the floor of Tiffany's bedroom. Now this girl's room was decorated in every conceivable item deemed marketable by the handlers of New Kids on the Block. This was WAY before they became NKOTB and tried to pretend like they couldn't remember the time when eleven-year-old girls put posters on their walls, bought Jordan sleeping bags and cuddled up to their super fuzzy blankets adorned with their floating heads. But back in the day, Tiffany's room was the SHIT. My mom would NEVER have let me decorate with boy band crap, much less put their posters on my wall. I had a white bedspread with primary colored hearts on it. And I had four heart shaped pillows in red, green, purple and orange that I arranged across the back of my white metal daybed on those times when my mother convinced (forced) me to make my bed. Buy Tiffany's room... I remember it fondly to this day. Though not 10 months later she was begging her mother to let her redecorate it (ah, the fickle pre-teenage mind). Denied, we spent one of our sleep-over nights attempting to turn her New Kids on the Block bedspread into something socially acceptable by coloring it in with red markers. Obviously this was a bad idea. But again, I digress.

When I told my friends of my secret crush they were supportive and excited in that way that only pre-pubescent girls can be. Don't let them fool you. THEY KNOW you have no chance. But they'll do everything in their power to help your crush along. And then bad-mouth you behind your back, of course. But Lacy was the first one to step up that afternoon, telling me that we should CALL the Grudzien boy and find out if he liked me back.

So we stole the phone book from under Tiffany's mom's bed (a strange place for a phone book) and looked up the Grudziens. Only one listing. And Lacy, in her pert, blonde and perfect way, picked up the phone and began to dial.