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.