Millington Central High School, 1989-1993. Home of the Trojans. Adolescent educational center of mid-Southern Americans: an unconventional admixture of Navy brats, the rural poor, and bused-in African-American youth.
I was an outlier, in so many ways. My parents were impoverished Navy brats whose idiotic conservative worldview ineluctably encouraged me to sympathize with "other" demographics. The story would have ended there, except for the fact that I was born too sensitive for my own good. So sharp I cut myself, time after time.
My firstborn daughter Eris will be starting her senior year at Robinson Secondary School next week. I gave birth to her when I was the same age my bipolar mother gave birth to me.
I was Eris's age when I first read Stephen King. You have to realize, I was a "gifted" student -- I took every AP class my high school offered. All 3 of them. I was an absurd intellectual snob who only indulged pop culture because of the soul-destroying pre-Internet information desert.
SO. Senior year, rural TN, 1993. Less than a month before Homecoming. Elite football quarterback found himself disgraced due to personal scandal: according to all & sundry, he had physically struck his girlfriend, precipitating a scandalous, dramatic breakup.
Quarterback boy happened to be in my Econ class. He actually talked to me. That year, 1992-93, was the frigging height of my social life ever -- everyone was aware that I'd ranked high on national math tests, aced the SAT, and was applying to Stanford, Harvard & Yale*.
I wasn't even surprised when the football star, who'd lost his status in a too-soon-maybe #MeToo moment, decided he had nothing to lose by asking the genius chubby chick to the dance.
Even now, 25 years later, my hypnagogic half-dreaming mind contrives occasional hallucinations of killing him -- and everyone else -- at Senior Prom. Fortunately for the world, I have excellent impulse control. I just said no to bloody vengeance.
That moment of generosity has colored all my life choices ever since.
*Thank DISCORDIA I wasn't accepted; high-status universities are fucking full of fratboy rapists, after all.
I was an outlier, in so many ways. My parents were impoverished Navy brats whose idiotic conservative worldview ineluctably encouraged me to sympathize with "other" demographics. The story would have ended there, except for the fact that I was born too sensitive for my own good. So sharp I cut myself, time after time.
My firstborn daughter Eris will be starting her senior year at Robinson Secondary School next week. I gave birth to her when I was the same age my bipolar mother gave birth to me.
I was Eris's age when I first read Stephen King. You have to realize, I was a "gifted" student -- I took every AP class my high school offered. All 3 of them. I was an absurd intellectual snob who only indulged pop culture because of the soul-destroying pre-Internet information desert.
SO. Senior year, rural TN, 1993. Less than a month before Homecoming. Elite football quarterback found himself disgraced due to personal scandal: according to all & sundry, he had physically struck his girlfriend, precipitating a scandalous, dramatic breakup.
Quarterback boy happened to be in my Econ class. He actually talked to me. That year, 1992-93, was the frigging height of my social life ever -- everyone was aware that I'd ranked high on national math tests, aced the SAT, and was applying to Stanford, Harvard & Yale*.
I wasn't even surprised when the football star, who'd lost his status in a too-soon-maybe #MeToo moment, decided he had nothing to lose by asking the genius chubby chick to the dance.
Even now, 25 years later, my hypnagogic half-dreaming mind contrives occasional hallucinations of killing him -- and everyone else -- at Senior Prom. Fortunately for the world, I have excellent impulse control. I just said no to bloody vengeance.
That moment of generosity has colored all my life choices ever since.
*Thank DISCORDIA I wasn't accepted; high-status universities are fucking full of fratboy rapists, after all.
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