Remember

We're getting close to the end of the school year now, so there's less and less to do in some of our classes. In one of my classes today, for instance, the teacher spent the entire period telling us about Found Magazine, which I'm totally addicted to now; I've been browsing through all the old Finds of the Day all afternoon. I find that kind of thing really fascinating, because you can't see the people who wrote the notes. But at the same time, you can. You can see inside a little portion of their brains. Which is something you don’t get from just looking at them. Or even talking to them, really.

I’ve gotten discouraged with myself many times over the course of this blog project—one of the many reasons why I haven’t been that faithful of an observer at times.
I’d love to think that I’m imagining people complexly when I write this blog. But the thing is, I can’t always know that I am.
Every time I wrote a blog about a person, even though I was trying to imagine them complexly, I ran the risk of being too judgmental and completely wrong about them, without even knowing it. And sometimes that really killed me.

That’s the main reason why I started copying notes I found on campus straight into the blog. With those notes, I didn’t have to imagine complexly, and didn’t have to take the risk of imagining wrong. I could just put them here exactly as they are, the way Found Magazine does.

I’m still trying to find the balance between observing and imagining, fact and fiction; and most importantly, keeping the judgments to a minimum. It’s tricky. And even though I’m leaving high school soon, I do intend to keep this blog up, so hopefully I can get better. (I know, I know. I don't have the best record of blogging when I say I will. I can’t make any promises, but I’ll try.)

In the meantime, here’s one last observance from high school.

There’s a girl in one of my classes who’s really sweet; I’ve gotten to know her through a few different extracurriculars this past year. She moved to this high school her freshman year, from across the country, but she still visits her hometown and her church there during most school breaks.

When she came back from spring break, she had the word “Remember” written in blue ink on the inside of her left wrist, with a little heart drawn next to it. Every morning in first period, at some point, she looks at her wrist for a minutes, and remembers to remember.

When she notices that the ink is fading, she gets a pen out of her backpack and retraces the letters. She does this in class once every day or two, and she hasn’t let the word fade away completely yet, not for the weeks she's had it there. I don’t know yet what she wants to remember. Maybe one of these days I’ll stop just wondering, and open my mouth and ask her.

Whatever it is anyway, she really doesn’t want to forget it.

The Kid With The Braid: Part 2

Observer’s note: Somehow this post got a little personal, which I try to avoid. One of the various reasons why I’ve been avoiding updating. Meh. Here goes.

Being the same kind of quiet, studious types, The Kid With The Braid and I have become sort of friends over the years. At first it was just because nobody else would pick us when we did group projects—The two of us just wound up working together, and acing every project. Soon we just made a habit of it. Now, whenever we need partners for something, we tend to make eye contact and nod.

And this is how, several months ago, I ended up carrying The Kid With The Braid’s camera around campus all day, taking photos of Le Cafétéria and La Bibliothèque and Le Professeur de Musique for a French project.

And being your faithful observer—observant to the point of invasive and borderline creepy—I took the opportunity to flick through his photos.

I saw a lot of things.
The Kid With the Braid at wrestling matches, ready to take his opponent down.
A gruesome car accident on the side of the road, the car going up in smoke—The local paper ran a thing about that accident a few months back.
A pink cake with Felicitations written on it, on a picnic table, under the trees in the park.
And a lot of photos of the family gathered around the picnic table—Lots of kids, lots of teens, lots of adults, lots of old people. Big family, with big smiles.

And then a lot of photos of just The Kid With The Braid, alone. Standing in front of his bathroom mirror, taking pictures of himself with his camera.

There was one of him shirtless. And one of him wearing a shirt that was much too tight, in an attempt to look more filled out.
Another of him wearing a V-neck and opening his eyes wide and pressing one finger, curved, against his lips.
Another of him with makeup layered across his face—his cheeks blushing red and his eyelids heavy with green eyeshadow and lined with mascara.

I shut off the camera then.
I don’t think he meant for anybody to see those photos. So I tried to forget it.

I debated for a long time, whether or not I should post about it on the blog. Because even with all the lengths I go to, to ensure my blog subjects’ privacy…This seemed a little too…secret. Too much of a secret, and not my secret to tell.

It’s just that... Sitting in class, watching someone from across the room, looking at how they dress and the makeup they wear and the things they say and how they pop their gum… There’s only so much about a person you can get out of that. But the Kid With The Braid’s camera gave me something else entirely. It gave me a picture of him.

I don’t often have an opportunity to see into people quite like that.

And as creepy as it sounds, those photos are something I will hold close to my heart. Even though I’ve managed to mostly forget about them, even though I will never mention them to anyone at school. I don’t even think of them anymore when I see The Kid With The Braid around campus. But those photos are something I will cherish.

Big

She’s big. There’s not much way to put it politely.

She’s from the South. Or, closer to the South than this little town, anyway; she moved here when she was in seventh grade. And I know, being from the South shouldn’t have anything to do with it, but I’ve read about how obesity is much more common in the South than it is in any of the other states. So, she’s big. I don’t know if she’s obese, but she’s big.

With many girls who are significantly overweight, you look at them and you not only see the largeness of them, you can see all the grief they’ve had to go through for it. In their body language, their downcast eyes. You can see every time they’ve been bullied, every time they’ve been mocked, etched into their faces; you can see the self-loathing in their eyes.

But when you look at her, you see something else.

Yeah, her body is large, but at the same time, her body is beautiful. I mean, I’m straight, but I can appreciate these things. She has beautiful curves and smooth, olivey skin. Her hair is light brown and whooshes down her back, and her eyes are big and brown and pack in a lot of shine.

What she lacks in conventional beauty, she makes up for in boisterousness. Her voice is loud and carries well, and she puts it to use by taking part in the school drama productions. Being a drama kid, she’s extra friendly, extra talkative, and extra huggy. Being her, she’s extra smiley. You’ll rarely, rarely see her without a smile.

And she laughs a lot, too. Even at lame jokes that teachers make, that most kids don’t find funny—She just doesn’t hold back. Her eyes get lost in the smile on her face and she doubles over in her seat and this big, booming laugh comes rollicking out of her—Long and loud enough that often the nastier of the students in class will yell at her, “God, shut up!”

Obviously, she’s been bullied as much as any of the other “fat girls” have—If not more so, for additionally having what some might call an “obnoxious” personality. But she rarely lets it bother her.

I mean, yeah, we all have down days. Some days the mockery and downright bitchiness of everyone here, kids and adults alike, just get to a person. Some days when she gets yelled at, she goes still and quiet and moody. But those days are rare. Most days, she just doesn’t care when she’s mocked.

And it’s not necessarily because she loves her body—She’s told me before that she’s been trying out different diets. She tries not to talk about her size a lot, or even acknowledge it, really. When idiots make fun of her, the last thing she’ll do is snap back with an “I’m Big and I’m Beautiful” rant. I’m sure on the inside, she’s still uncomfortable in her skin. But hell, isn’t everyone?

The difference is, she doesn’t let it show. She doesn’t let it bog her down, as much as others try. When she gets yelled at in class for talking, for laughing, for being herself, be it by other kids or by the teacher, she just smiles, says sorry, stifles her laugh, and moves on, that smile still hovering round the corners of her mouth.

Letters to Eighth Graders

In band, one of the recent assignments was to write letters to kids in the local middle school’s band, encouraging them to take part in band when they come to high school. I found a couple of these letters on the floor of the band room recently. The first was written by a boy who has a slight mental handicap, and his penmanship is clumsy, like that of a much younger kid.

Dear [name censored],
Hi I’m [name censored], I’m a member of the .... High School Wind Ensemble (Advanced Band) and I play Bass Clairnet. I understand you play alto saxaphone. The alto sak is a fun instrument to play. At the High School you will enjoy the music offer we have for alto. At the High School we also have fun with Home foot Ball games, 3 Boy’s and Girls Basket Ball Games, Marching Band competitions, 4 concerts a year, and we go to some cities for band compotition. I forgot to mention that I am a junior (a senior your freshman year.) I hope to see you next year,

Your friend,

[name censored]

The second is also written to the same alto sax-playing eighth-grader. This one is in much neater, more feminine writing, and the writer of the letter draws hearts under her exclamation points, and she includes lots of smiley faces. Even though the letter is handwritten, she still draws her smileys sideways.

Hey [name censored],
What’s up man! I haven’t seen you in a while but I will soon since your joining band next year! Your going to love it! Believe me it’s like three million times better than middle school band :) And all the alto sax players are incredibly nice and funny so you’ll fit right in! I can’t wait to see you and hey even though at times it might seem a little hard stick in there, cause you’ll regret dropping out. And one more thing the Band is a family and once you join you’ll always be part of it. Band is a blast and we do some pretty amazing shows so whatever you do stay in band and rock your alto sax :) Can’t wait to see you next year with all the other soon to be new freshmen :)

Love always,

[name censored]

She signed with a big heart drawn around “love.”

Friendship Bracelets: An Update

I heard her boyfriend broke up with her because she did something horrid to him, like cheated on him or something like that. Apparently this happened months ago, but the bubbly personality that Friendship Bracelets once possessed has yet to come back. I see little bits and pieces of it sometimes, but it’s not as constant as it used to be. Some days she sits on the floor, with her head rested in a friend’s lap and her eyes dark and brooding, like her boyfriend’s were that time I saw them together.

She came into class late today, walking with small, cautious steps, her shoulders still, her entire body held very tight. She sat down like she hardly dared touch anything, and her eyes hardly dared look at anything. She was much tidier than usual. She was like a porcelain doll, moving so fragilely and held together so neatly. Every article of clothing seemed perfectly placed, every dab of eyeshadow or mascara, even every golden strand of hair on her head.

Her hair is usually long and free and flowing. Her hair has motion in it. Her hair is hair that doesn’t care what it looks like, where it goes, what other people thinks of it.

But today her hair cared. Today her hair was perfectly still. Her hair was as tidy and perfect as the rest of her, and she had clearly been crying.

Getting through a bad day in high school without showing it is an art, and it’s a difficult one to master. The strategy many people adopt is to go completely still. Just freeze. Make your mind go blank. Some people lay their heads down on their desks, some people look straight forward, some people get out their phones and stare at their empty inbox for five minutes straight. If you let anything distract you, let anything touch you, it could all come crashing down in a second. You just have to go still as a statue, and concentrate on holding it all inside.

That’s the way Doodle Hands does it, the way the Paper Passer does it, and Friendship Bracelets does the same. She can clean herself up as much as she can, she can make herself look perfect, she can stare straight forward in class and pretend to listen. But it’s only so long before her thoughts return to whatever it was that made it start. And then her eyes turn red and shiny, and the frustration with herself just whooshes out of her lungs in a long sigh. She closes her eyes tight, dabbing at the tears with the sleeves of her jacket, and using the edges of her fingernails to fix her eye makeup.

Makeup Girl

I really don’t know where to start with this girl. Despite how quiet she is most of the time, I have so many notes on her, and I could take many, many more. However, perhaps fittingly, most of the notes I have on her are focused on her appearance. Her clothes, and makeup. She puts a lot into it.

She always wears a lot of black. There’s one pair of black arm warmers that she wears almost every day, that have little bats on them. But she always contrasts that black with some other solid color—bright pink, or vivid dark green, or neon purple. She has lots of accessories; she often wears bright colorful flowers in her hair. Her makeup is always done to match her colors, and is different every single day.

She has many different varieties of eyeshadow, eyeliner, even face paint. Some days her eyes are just thick with black eyeliner. Other days her eyes are edged with spiderweb-like patterns; other days, there’s a colorful starburst around her entire right eye. Or a rainbow painted across her entire face.

She remembers every holiday, even little ones like Mardi Gras. On those special days, her makeup is always holiday themed. For Halloween, she made herself look like a zombie; at Christmas, her eyeshadow was red and white and green; on Valentine’s Day, she wore lots of pink and red, and around her eyes were lots of small red hearts. On Mardi Gras, she wore lots of greens and purples and colorful beads, and painted her face with purple and green feathery strokes to look like a mask.

“Do you plan out your makeup before you do it?” I asked her once. “Like, do you do sketches of it, or do you just make it up as you go?”

She just shrugged. She does a lot of shrugging. Always has.

In middle school, she shrugged a lot, and spoke even less than she does now. That was back when her makeup was just black eyeliner, and she wore the same black sweatshirt every day, zipped all the way up, even on the most sweltering hot days of the year.

“Aren’t you baking in that sweatshirt?” other kids would ask, and she would just shrug, her mouth looking scared to form words. She never took that sweatshirt off.

She’s totally blossomed in the past year or so. When she started painting her face with makeup each day, she started to come loose a little, let herself out.

I mean, there are parts of her that are still hidden up inside. She still wears those arm warmers, and she still doesn’t talk much. But when she does talk, her voice is loud and her words very clear. She keeps her head up and walks with big steps: her arms swing with confidence, and her heels don’t touch the ground.

The Note

A note from your faithful observer: Passing notes used to be a significant portion of high school culture. However, with technology, notes have become much more uncommon around schools these days; we all just text each other instead of passing notes. So when I do find a note that was passed back and forth in class, or even see a note being passed back and forth in class, I get pretty excited.

Following are the contents of a note that your faithful observer may or may not have fished out of a trash can.

What’s going on with you and [Michael]? I saw you talking after 2nd, are you still together?

We had to break up.

why?

because his mom wants him to focus on homework and if his grades go down anymore then he has 2 go with her when she moves back to [the city.]

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh….
FUCK THAT.

yeah so he had to but i understand why he did it.

why cant you just not tell her?

she found out last time we tried to do that. he wants to just wait until after graduation before we do anything anyway

you should just date me to make him jealous :P

hon we’ve been down that road before.

lol yeah