junior-high memories; un-green in their resistance to disintegration.

I spent several years vacillating between being embarrassed about being pretty and being embarrassed about being smart.  (The puzzling element of this sort of vacillating is no longer a puzzle, given my recent comprehension of how ADHD works, and how it's affected me since I was small, but I want to nit-pick the one see-saw just highlighted for a minute and see where it goes.  I'm sure I'll work some of the opposing pieces to death and beyond at a later date, so if you were really, really hoping I'd be squeezing my brain to the choking point on a separate subject, be sure to come back for the exciting series! on opposing-personality-overanalyzation! that will follow this, or, you know, remember how I operate and face the fact that I'll n.e.v.e.r. do this particular study again, merely because I said I would.  *face crumples*)

So.  Embarrassed about being pretty.  Embarrassed about being smart.

And never really making much of either asset.  For, surely, they were that.  Assets.  I see, as an adult, an adult who eats her own heart out over having lost opportunities, having been too busy with the mortification of being in possession of natural gifts that others did not inherit, shame that I was selected for wit (such as it is - ah-ah!, *there* you are, self-deprecation, just in the nick of time, too - I was about to start feeling slightly positive about my minute slice of the smarty pie - don't dilly-dally, now, self-dep; just shove on in and guide me away from taking note of my potential.  Keep me from enjoying it or even acknowledging it without the regular sledge-hammer of shame and guilt!  Do your damn job, self-dep.  Holy stupidity.  Where would you be without me, you fiendish predator?, I mean, favorite lover/hater of all time?).

Maybe I should just quit while I'm ahead and refer to the pretty/witty as asshat rather than asset.

They do both share a commonality, after all; ass.

*********

Trying again!  Sticking my fingers in my ears and ignoring self-dep!  Lalalalalalalalalacan'thearyouselfdep youareataselfdepconferenceforasshattedassetsbye!

*********

I vacillated all those years (though, quite obviously, not anymore, *ahem*) about having been smart and gregarious and attractive.  I seemed to have an easy time making friends.  I had some kind of gift.

And then some people didn't like it, my gift, and they stomped on me.  Eighth grade.  A rainy day under the eaves at middle school.  Amy, and yes, it's her real name, because if she ever stumbles on this, I'd like her to know how it still stings, this darkly-lit pinpoint of my memory, Amy wanted to pick someone's hair out with an eighties perm-pick.  Black.  With a long handle.

No one would let her, and I didn't either, but she decided to just start in on me anyway.  Some backstory: my hair was, while thick and coarse throughout my youth, fairly straight until pre-pubescence, when the DNA gods saw fit to bring it to a new plateau of horrid, and I developed tight ringlets.  This was just beginning to happen, but I had no awareness of it as yet, and had chopped my hair off in the seventh grade *after* a very-Brady-perm (I KNOW) left it soul-glo-quality-gerry-curled.  So was growing out a perm and it was still in a fairly awkward period of re-growth.  I didn't really have an arsenal of managing the largess of my locks, yet, because of this new precedent of curliness taking place, and, in fact, developed it only as a result of the following event.  Amy began picking at my hair, and I continued to quietly complain, saying no, don't, stop it, but quietly.  And others began to use their fingers to back-comb it, and suddenly it was The Lord of the Flies, with my supposed best friend, Marisha (also another real name, and another person who I hope feels shame if/when she ever reads this, because I want her to know the sting this still holds), laughing hysterically.  So many kids had descended on my head that I felt a little wild.  The arms, the hands and nails grazing my face, the pulling and tugging and the little stabs of pain, and then I noticed it was raining next to my leg, there were drops of water.  I thought it strange, given the giant eaves under which we had taken refuge from the weather, and then it occurred to me I was crying, *I* was making those drops land, sizzling, on the cold concrete.  I leapt to my feet and threw my arms out, yelling, banshee-like, FUCKKKKK! OFFFFF!, and dashed inside and into the nearest bathroom, hunkering down into a stall in the middle and sobbing.

Jade (you, too, you heartless wretch) and Amy chased me down.  They got into a stall on either side (a chess move I hadn't foreseen else I'd have taken a corner stall) and climbed onto the toilets, choking down laughter through their speech, "Debbie -- heehehehehehheee -- are you -- gasppp -- okaaaaay??"  BWAHHHAHAHAHAHAA!, and there were kids gathered outside the door, laughing like a group of monkeys.  Cackling and gasping and maniacal.

I spent the rest of the afternoon in the councilor's office.  (One of the adults working there was Amy's mom.  Well, technically, she was the office secretary.  But she was present.  And knew why I'd been molested.  There wasn't a lot of eye contact made by her with me that day.  Go figure.)

I tried, in vain, to get all of the hair into the tiniest knot possible, with the aid of bobby pins scrounged by the kind councilor, and a rubber band.  I didn't return to classes until the next day.

With my hair in a band and kept bound around my face with all the pins I could manage. 

For months.

Months without end.

I don't just have hair shame because of that event.  I have shame about my bigger-than-life personality, a thing highlighted by the gigantic frame of hair. 

Only, you know, I'm starting to realize that the pain and the power of that episode is ebbing.  At the conference this year, I still grappled with the guilt over my enormous energy x hair x voice x non-stop verbal stream, but it was less than last year.  I told Gwen the story about the eighth-grade hairmare (as I panicked while late, again, to one of the conf. parties, in a desperate hunt for a hair tie), the utter desertion by my supposed best friend (some best fucking friend), and my almost-compulsive need to have at least one hair band and one hair pin (but two or three are better) on my person at all times.

And the telling didn't hurt as much this time.  I didn't want to cry.  I didn't feel devastated.

That's something.

Comments

[motherbumper]

People can be just plain mean and so transparent with their envy and need to stomp on those who have things that threaten - like beauty AND brains. Because you are the entire package plus a bag of chips. I think many of us have similar experiences but the difference between yours and mine, it still hurts to remember (even when it's just in my head).

[nonlineargirl]

Saw Traci today, who asked about you and oohed and aahed over my pictures of you (and that cool dress with the hearts on it).

[Suebob]

Well that fucking sucks and I am sorry it happened to you. Gah. I can't imagine. I cried when too many people at a SALON that I was PAYING were messing with my hair, so I would have had a super duper flipout at that treatment, too.

I think your hair is amazing and wonderful like the rest of you.

[jen]

you are smart, pretty, and you can heave a fridge over your head.

flaunt it, i say.

(beautiful post, love)

[Kathi D]

I don't have a hair picking story from school, thank goodness. But I was "blessed" with a little wit and a lot of talk (and raging ADD) and I still spend an evening being funny and witty and then come home and agonize over how I wouldn't shut up for a second and everybody must hate me for being such a boorish pig.

[cynematic]

Oooh, what Jen said. Fridge, over the head!

[slouching mom]

oh i hate little girls sometimes.

when i was in fifth grade, my once BFF sabrina convinced everyone in my class not to speak to me for the entire day.

it was my tenth birthday.

[Nadine/Scarbiedoll]

You know, I'm really sorry that I haven't been here in a long long time. Because you and I have so much more in common than either of us realized.

I was always wicked smart and my sister and I both think we have ADD. My dad has ADD -- not diagnosed but he definitely has it.

I was also popular until I switched schools in 7th grade and then was bullied for being smart. Also had enormous curly hair, so I have been straightening and ironing for years.

So much of who I am today comes from what happened to me in those years. Next year, you and I will have to have a sob and a hug before going out, getting obnoxiously drunk and then verbal diarrhea-ing all over the place.

[Kyla]

God, I love you.

Next year I'm bringing you a hair tie and a bobbie pin.

[roo]

Don't let the assholes
(even the ones that are just in your memory) get you down.

I've been there (maybe not that locker room, but one like it) and I feel for you.

This is really dorky, but I'm a big fan of singing "This little light of mine" when people seem to want me to feel unpretty or unsmart.

Pretty AND smart? Let it shine!

[Feral Mom]

God fucking dammit! My comment got eaten. Anyway, what I was trying to say was: you rock. And that pretty and smart is my favorite combination. And that your hair is freakin' awesome.

[magpie]

Oh, children are cruel. Horrid.

I love your hair and your outsized personality. Meeting you was a highpoint of BlogHer.

[magpie]

Oh, children are cruel. Horrid.

I love your hair and your outsized personality. Meeting you was a high point of BlogHer.

[Pattie]

I once cut my own hair (rather poorly) and a few mean girls chose to taunt me every day until it grew out.....Jackie, if you read this, I hope YOU are embarassed *ha!*

[Kelly]

Ugh. I just want to go back in time and kick some 8th grade ass. That sucks.

But I'd venture to guess you have them beat, by a fucking mile.

[Gwen]

You know, Deb, if you were either smart OR pretty, this would actually be a dilemma.

(See what I'm good for again? emotional distance, baby.)

Okay, no seriously. Awhile back I read this book called Odd Girl Out, about the very behavior of which you speak. The author, in her foreword, talked about her own experiences with relational aggression in middle school. But then, she also admitted that she had been, at times, the aggressor, too. That, in fact, many of us have been both the hurter and the hurtee. I know that kind of sucks to admit it (even though in my case, I admit it pretty readily, self-dep as much my friend as yours--and dude, why is this comment box so narrow? i'm losing my train of thought) but maybe there's something in realizing that propensity to do damage to others comes from a universal place, one we (hopefully) exercise more control over as we age. Perhaps, then, we can see that the damage done to us was not about our hair, or our brains, was not about us as specific individuals at all but about something in the damager, something that we, in fact, share with the person who hurt us.

Did I just totally lose you? 'Cause I kind of lost myself. Even though I still think I agree with me.

(Note to self: bring ample supply of hair bands and pins to next BlogHer.)

[jaelithe]

I thought your hair looked pretty at the conference.

I always wanted curly hair when I was a young girl. Always. I would try to curl my hair, sometimes, for parties or dances. I would use a hot iron, or douse it in gel and sleep on curlers. No matter what I did, it would all fall straight within two hours of my unwrapping it.

Now of course I know that all people with curly hair think it's annoying and wish they had straight hair like mine. But I think I'd still trade.