Seventh Grade Returns

In the seventh grade, easily one of the top three most excruciating years of my life, I signed up to be an office aide for one period of the day. I believe the gig was billed as "providing valuable office management skills," which, if I'd had any perspective at all on life's grand offerings, I would have recognized as a pretty bleak promise. Had I known then that most of my twenties would be spent wilting under fluorescent lighting trying to find the end of the internet, I would have signed up for something more promising, like getting my fingers slammed in a variety of doors for 45 minutes a day.

Anyway.

As a valuable office management trainee, my job most days was to go pick up the attendance sheets. This involved making a circuit of the entire campus, picking up little perforated strips of colored paper which were supposed to be affixed to a clip outside each classroom door within the first few minutes of the period, the idea being that attendance was of course a teacher's most pressing priority when settling a classroom and preparing to vomit forth a litany of standardized test prep patter, all once the mind-numbing school-wide announcements were done broadcasting.

Not surprisingly, most of the clips were empty, and also not surprisingly, my timid little knocks at the door were received with the enthusiasm you'd reserve for a peddler of dead fish. I hated it. Door after door of that "Oh fuck, you again" look. I began to realize that to the teachers I was a walking symbol of all that was wrong with the Texas public school system, a bright-eyed, bespeckled little nerd here to check up on their prompt compliance with administrative paperwork. So I started skipping doors. At first it was a survival technique, a little deal I made with myself where I weighed the relief of not knocking on another teacher's door against the awkward explanation of a light count to the attendance secretary. At first it was only a few, and I got by with saying things like "She just said no one was missing," and "He's sending it later." Then, like any good junkie, I got hooked and my stories got more outlandish and the count got even lighter. "There was no one there." "Nope, that's all the classrooms." "They were singing or something-- it looked like I shouldn't interrupt."

The funny thing is, I seem to recall that you had to have a certain GPA to get this gig in the first place. So in effect, my little honorable toadie position turned me into a more and more creative liar and lazy worker. Hurray, administration!

Anyway, the reason I remembered this period in my life is that I'm going through an intense seventh grade phase out here in the Great Basin desert lands, in a town far smaller than any I've ever lived in before-- smaller even than the West Texas hamlet my folks are from (take that, Snyder Tigers!)-- and all the intervening years since I was 13 seemed to have dried up and disappeared. I am breaking out again from anxiety and I can almost feel my braces digging little channels into my inner cheeks. Every social foray with Pants' new uber-competitive "tip of the spear" Navy coworkers and their wives feels like an episode of "Curb You Enthusiasm," which, by the way, I had to ban a few years ago because I would break out in a cold sweat watching Larry David torpedo yet another routine interaction with his total lack of interpersonal skills. I am Larry David now. Or else, everyone else is.

Last night I had to bring food to a potluck dinner/ combat lecture, and I worked for two days in advance to assemble two massive meatloaves and a Black Russian cake, all while juggling baby naps and meals and laundry and pet emergencies and getting no writing done on the book. Also on the list of things undone: I hadn't showered in two days, there was no other food in the house besides the massive public meal under construction, and somehow I missed the line on the invitation that said I should also flat-iron my hair, trowel on the make-up, and rig my boobs for saucy public display in a cute little dress.

So let me paint the picture as it was: me in jeans and flip-flops and a ripped neck T-shirt with Little Man strapped to my chest in the Bjorn, my hair in a sloppy ponytail, oven mitts on both hands and a fifteen-pound roast pan loaded down with two meatloaves and their special glaze and a cake balanced on top. I am sweating and cursing with my car keys in my teeth trying to kick the car door shut, and behind me, a fleet of BMWs and Tahoes pulls up, and out pile The Wives, a phalanx of them, heavily scented and oiled in glittery necklaces and impossible cleavage, lines up behind me, each with a somehow discreet little covered dish in its own handy snap-together caddy. On top of this, Little Man, who is normally a good-natured ambassador for all Babykind, suddenly morphs into a somber, growling little gnome, spurring his sharp little heels directly into my lady parts and glowering at everyone.

Suddenly I am 13 and knocking at a door no one wants to open. And here's the thing: I still don't want to knock. I still wish I could dodge whatever imperative I imagine is compelling me to do this to myself. So, like before, I can see myself starting to form those little lies that will lead to big lies: "I didn't get the Evite" will somehow turn into "There was this fire..." And what did I do while I wasn't collecting attendance? I took a walk. And it was nice. I want to take a walk again.