Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Karma Whitticker (n) undefined

The first thing we need to establish is this: I’m not an elitist nor am I some sort of snob. I know that’s what some of them thought, in school. They looked at me, sitting at lunch with the Booksih Girls, and they saw the way I looked away and they thought She’s a snob. Or a bitch. I guess they could have thought that, and I guess I might have my moments, but I’m not, I promise. But sometimes, I just didn’t have the patience for them. I get it. I know the world judges. It’s what we do best, what we were raised doing; comparing and judging is a way of lives for us. But I hate it, and maybe I’m a hypocrite, because I guess I judged them, too, but that doesn’t mean I can’t say I hate it, okay?

Admittedly, I was different in school, but I have my reasons. Not necessarily great reasons, but I thought them good enough. When I showed up at school, I didn’t want to stand out. I didn’t want to be susceptible and I didn’t want them to find anything to pick at, which sounds horrible in retrospect, because why was I so afraid of being myself anyway? They’re just kids I went to school with, y’know? But that’s the thing. The kids you go to school with are sometimes the most terrifying people you know and I knew this. So I didn’t want to stand out and I was content to hang out with the Bookish Girls because they weren’t obnoxious or overly pretentious and we didn’t spend every lunch period gossiping. It’s not like we discussed great literature every time we hung out, because we had crushes on boys and we told each other about it, but it wasn’t like wandering over to some of the other tables where people were talking about each other.

Hanging out with the Bookish Girls made me feel… intellectual, I guess. Higher than a bubbly girl. And that’s the thing. When people first meet you, if you babble and you talk a lot and you laugh that obnoxious laugh, they’re going to think Gee, isn’t she a bubblehead and then they write you off and your opinion has no weight or matter and that’s all you are to them. Just some vapid blonde.

That semester was horrible and I’d never been so happy to get out of a school. As soon as my fingers clutched that diploma, I was free and nobody told me liberty felt so amazing. Like I could do anything and I could finally be who I’d always wanted to be. I didn’t have to pretend to be a Bookish Girl, because while they were fine and they seemed happy with their lives, maybe they weren’t. Maybe they felt stuffy and boring and that’s why they were Bookish Girls: because they were also afraid t be who they were or maybe they didn’t even know who they wanted to be.

So, the very next day, I woke up I bagged up my school clothes and I pulled on a vibrant orange t-shirt and I paired it with the sort of obnoxious yellow jeans that would have made people stare and I slipped in to purple flats and I went to the edgiest stylist I’d found in town and I told her to chop my hair off. Chop it off, make me look different, make me look raw. And after she hacked at my hair, after she cropped it so short in the back and left these long chunks in the front and tapered it up, we added dark pink peek-a-boo highlights, because I’d dreamt myself like that once.

And when I looked in the mirror and we studied myself, me with my pink streaked edgy hair and she in the faux-hawk sharing a reflection, I just knew. I wasn’t wary or anticipatory about my hair. I didn’t feel nervous and I didn’t even feel like I’d made a mistake. Never before had I been so certain about anything. Not even about my Nokia, even though everyone else around me swore on their Canon Rebels. And it wasn’t just the hair or the color. My certainty was of more than that.

It was that I liked who I was about to become. I liked the person inside me, who was ready to finally break free. The bubbly, babbly, intellectual, wise, foolish, silly, loud, obnoxious, nosy, brainy, witty, emotional, edgy, bold girl who had been begging, for so long, to break out.

I didn’t just like her. I loved her.

That was the day I went home and sent that e-mail to Crickette. And yes, I did choose Comic Sans on purpose. And yes, I realized I sounded vapid and ditzy and she would probably judge me. But, maybe it was the hair or a renewed faith in my sense of self, but I could handle it. And, maybe, if I could have my way, I would change her. Change her mind, change her opinion. Take her by surprise.

She could judge all she wanted, but I would prove this girl wrong. I was more than just a vapid bubblehead.

1 comments:

Joana said...

Very lovely, my lady :)

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