From the Redneck Diva:
After a hastily spent summer filled with church camps, trips to see family in The City, sleeping in more mornings than we didn’t, Vacation Bible School, the procurement of two new puppies, and a float trip to round it all out, things are finally settling back into routine here at the Redneck Diva Headquarters. My vacation was appreciated and my editor assures me I still have a home here at www.WelchOK.com. I guess if you’re reading this, he wasn’t joking.
This year I have one child in elementary school, one in middle school, and one in high school. This will only happen one more year. There’s no award for such an accomplishment, but it sure makes parent/teacher conferences a joy what with all the running to three different buildings. I guess I should probably count myself fortunate that we live in a small district and I’m not finding myself running across town to separate campuses altogether.
I’ve thought a lot lately about my years as a fourth-, seventh-, and ninth-grader, and some of those thoughts bring back smiling memories of my carefree youth. Others bring back cringe-worthy moments. Some bring back tears. Most make me very thankful I am an adult now.
In fourth grade I had a curly perm. And not a pretty spiral perm with bouncy curls and ringlets. No, yours truly sported a ‘fro that would make Little Orphan Annie jealous. And I’m talkin’ the 1982 version of Annie, where Annie petitioned Oliver Warbucks to love her all the while looking like a young Carrot Top, not the 1999 version where Annie apparently had a Chi iron at the orphanage. Fourth grade was the year I thought my mom had forgotten I was supposed to dress up like Martha Washington for some assembly thing at school and made myself physically sick over it and ended up having to be picked up by my mother who had been home all morning furiously sewing said Martha Washington costume. It was also in fourth grade when I slid across the wooden bleachers to chat with my friend Kristy Fink and ended up with a three-inch splinter in the back of my thigh and had to have it removed by a doctor. Fourth grade ushered in a three-year period I now refer to as “The Chunky Years,” during which I became a pro at eating my feelings. My fourth grade teacher had been my mother’s fourth grade teacher. She really liked my mom. I like to think she would’ve liked me even if she hadn’t taught Mom first. In fourth grade I tried desperately to lisp when the lady from the speech lab came to do speech testing, but she totally saw through me. Fourth grade year, I also had a 110 camera and took a lot of dumb pictures of my dog.
The summer before seventh grade I had managed to drop about 30 pounds, thus beginning my junior high career as less of a social leper than I had been the previous few years. My seventh grade year was the first year we could wear shorts to school. It was also the summer my mom had spent furiously sewing my sister and me pair after pair of “jams.” I started my seventh grade year wearing a white t-shirt, a pair of red jams covered in tiny teddy bears, and a pair of Keds with hand-painted teddy bears on the toes. I began my junior high career with a mullet—a lovely, “feathered” lady-mullet. My favorite outfit that year was a pair of loud, floral jeans, a forest green plaid shirt, and a pair of slouch boots. I think it goes without saying that fashion and my own personal sense of style was very important to me, even while it was insanely hideous. I started the year with braces and ended it with a retainer. Michael J. Fox adorned the walls and door of my locker, and he had Bonne Belle lip gloss prints all over his face. The new girl, Lottie, in the locker below me had the same passion for him I did, and when she mysteriously checked out of school one tearful afternoon not knowing where she was going or why, she sobbed as she solemnly taped her favorite poster of him into my locker and hugged me good-bye. I still think about her from time to time. I tested for the gifted program and got in by the skin of my teeth. It wasn’t that I wanted or needed an intellectual challenge—I was just scared of a mean girl in P.E. and knew if I could get out of the gym I might make it through the year with all my teeth. That year I thought boys were stupid and kissing was gross.
My Freshman year is kind of blurry. I don’t have a lot of specific memories from that year of school. I look back at pictures from that time and cringe—a lot. Sun In was a popular thing to do to your hair during that time, and I did it with much gusto and fervor. Essentially I dried my hair out with so much peroxide and lemon juice that it was not only the color of summer hay but also the texture. I finally grew out the mullet by my freshman year and began my first set of baby mall bangs, not knowing that by the time I was a senior I would own those six-inch high bangs and be the envy of underclassmen. Freshman year was the first time we could eat off-campus, and one day while chugging back my Diet Coke as I ran toward the building as the bell rang, I swallowed a yellow jacket who had just wanted to partake of the diet-y goodness himself. I was the talk of the school for about four hours because my tongue swelled up to science-fiction proportions. Freshman year was the year I finally realized I was never going to be any good at playing the flute and moved to the percussion section where I put my seven years of piano lessons to good use by playing the bells [Editor's note: bells are a sort of marching xylophone, for you non-band types]. That is, until the bass drum player quit, and I was recruited to haul around a giant drum my 5’2” self couldn’t see over, around, or past. I saw a chiropractor for the first time that year. I learned to program the VCR so I could record Saturday Night Live and decided it was the funniest show on earth. I also got my first kiss. I still thought it was gross.
Now with my own children at these ages, I take great parental satisfaction in sharing the photos of myself and my friends from those times in my life. They moan and groan and cringe some along with me, declaring that they will never regret their fashion decisions, which right now are shirts with a giant cartoon character’s face covering the whole front, sloppy buns piled high on top of their heads making them look like homeless ballerinas, long basketball shorts and tall cowboy boots, socks with sandals, and wide plastic bracelets with sayings like “AWKWARD” and “I <3 sparkly vampires” on them. They watch a kid-friendly show full of sketch comedy and quotable skits, and instead of having to manually program a VCR they just fill my DVR up with episode after episode of “So Random.” My kids have had their fair share of bullies and rather than begging and pleading to have their intellect tested to avoid the conflict, they have all met the challenges head-on and are better people because of it. Granted, my son had to serve a Saturday school for boxing a kid in the face when he was cornered, but funny, that kid doesn’t bother him anymore. Principals are still grumbled about, teachers are still “unfair,” and algebra is still hard. Friends are still fickle, the cafeteria food is still iffy, and the bathrooms still smell the same: a combination of industrial cleaner, heavy floral air freshener, and hormones.
I can’t believe my daughter, who mere years ago was a Pre-K dropout, is walking off-campus with her boyfriend, away from the scrutinizing eyes of teachers who only wish to squelch any exchange of kissy-face or tonsil hockey, and is eating Cheez-Its and convenience store chicken strips for lunch. I plead with her to eat a piece of fruit occasionally, for cryin’ out loud. She just rolls her eyes and digs the toe of her cowboy boot into the carpet, but I’m pretty sure she’s really wondering if I will enforce a mandatory fruit rule and dock her some coolness points by adding fiber and antioxidants to her diet.
I look wistfully at my son’s orthodontically embellished mouth and think that soon after that metal comes off, he will start shaving that little boy face and will start thinking about tonsil hockey even more than he does now. I also get a little misty-eyed when I think back to last winter when my husband and I told him that rubbing his upper lip would cause his mustache to grow in faster. The kid walked around for a week with his finger continually to his face before his older sister spoiled our twisted glee. He’s not always going to be so innocent and gullible. He does have a pretty sweet right hook already, though.
That nine-year old of mine has no Little Orphan Annie curls to speak of, but the homeless ballerina bun on top of her head will be giggled and groaned over just as much someday. She will soon be met with the challenges her older siblings have faced already, as well as generations before her. She’ll have her own bullies, fashion faux pas, orthodontia and, much to my chagrin, she will more likely than not receive her first kiss from some boy who will probably be wearing something stupid like socks with his sandals. Or maybe by then the trend will be underwear on the outside. It wouldn’t surprise me.
Schools may have started out with the purpose of educating, of molding young minds into the people who will change our future, of helping youth find a purpose and a meaning for their lives, but today it has morphed into a place we send our fashion-conscious children for seven hours a day so they can learn how to plank, send a text message without ever looking at the phone they have stashed in their hoodie pocket, and become champions at playing tonsil hockey while their friends are on the lookout.
Really…things haven’t changed. Much.
Diva
Kristin Hoover is the Redneck Diva. A local blogger and stay-at-home mom, Kristin has won Okie Blog Awards for her humorous take on the rural life of a natural-born diva who married a redneck and produced three offspring. Visit her online at http://www.theredneckdiva.com.
