onlysweetpea
Bluelighter
Flashback. Catching the tail end of a song on the radio and I'm wondering why it made me shiver a bit.
Memory.
Damn pain in my ass.
When I was in 7th grade, catholic school, mind you, yes, nuns and such, we had a writing assignment. We had to write an original poem. Being a writer, I should have been ecstatic. My one moment to shine during my dismal youth plagued with asthma attacks and bad haircuts.
When I tried to write, I drew a complete blank.
I waited till the last minute too.
Shit.
So, that Friday morning when we had to pass our poems up to the front for collection and grading, I handed in the lyrics to "Dream On" by Aerosmith as my own.
Sister would have no IDEA who they were...right? Aerosmith didn't EXIST in Malta, where she, and the majority of the nuns in my school were from, right?
Monday afternoon, the following week, I was called into the principal's office right before recess. My classmates were set free to run around the parking lot for a half hour and I was being called to the dungeon, my stomach bottoming out. It would be just my luck that someone in the convent was a Steven Tyler fan.
When I got to the lobby of the office, its pale green walls making me dizzy with fear, I noticed something behind the glass inset on Sister Rita's door that almost instantaneously moved my bowels. Bigger than the fear of the principal, bigger than the fear of being caught plagiarizing, bigger than the fear of God...
My mother.
Pacing.
In front of Sister Rita's desk.
She was supposed to be asleep. She worked the night shift at the hospital. She was still in her nurses uniform.
I stopped dead in my tracks and decided that I would stand there until something happened, but nothing was going to make me voluntarily open the door or enter the room. Nothing.
Nothing but the receptionist/secretary who said my name out loud. My mother turned around and saw me. Sister Rita stood up from her desk. The receptionist opened the door and it swung slowly, creaking eerily in the silence.
I stood my ground for just a minute longer, staring at them, disturbed. The expression on their faces was far from the anger I knew very well and expected. Sister Rita and my mother have the same stern look of disapproval that I grew accustomed to get both at school and at home. No, it wasn't the creased forehead skin and the red hot anger I expected.
It was more a look of brow-furrowing concern.
Sister asked me to sit down and I finally walked in and took a seat on the brown itchy ottoman serving as a chair.
“I called your mother here today to discuss something important in regards to your writing assignment you turned in yesterday,” Sister Rita began. I nodded.
“We’re concerned with the content of your poem,” she continued. “It seems rather mature for someone your age and it also seems like it could be…”
I swallowed hard and tried to keep the tears from falling. They were welling up in my eyes already. I always took such great pride in my work and hated when someone else in class would steal my ideas for art projects or even copy my homework assignments. It would always be the one thing I tattled on. I refused to let anyone ride my coattails of brilliance…except for that time I failed a Social Studies test and so did Kyle, who sat next to me in that class. Ass had the nerve to get mad at me for not studying hard enough so both of us could pass.
And here I was, riding the coattails of a rock band. Stealing. It all sounds so trivial, yes, but at that moment, I wanted the universe to swallow me whole.
“Well, it seems like it could be a cry for help,” she finished. It was this point my mother let out a strange sound, almost like something between a hiccup and a bark. I looked over. She was crying. Sobbing.
“We’re concerned about you, dear,” my principal said and reached across her desk for my hand. She held it, sort of awkwardly, like she wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. My gaze was still fixed on my mother. I had never seen her so broken.
“Suicide is not the answer.”
The initial fear had melted and turned into a weird numb sensation. I had no idea what to do. I had no idea what to say. The tears that I had, rolled down my face sorta haphazardly, but without any real emotion at all. So this wasn’t, at all, about me ripping off rock band lyrics?
“But-“ I started to say. I had no idea what was going to come out, but my mother beat me to it. She started hiccup-bark-speaking.
“You never talk to us,” she said. “You sit in your room, you listen to your music, you write in your book, you wear headphones everywhere, you don’t ever talk to us. You need to talk to us. You can’t- you won’t-you need-you will-you need to talk to us.”
“But-“ I tried again, but to no avail. Sister Rita jumped in before me.
“I’ve talked to your mother and we decided that it would be good for you to see a counselor once a week or so.”
“But, I-“
“You need to talk to us,” my mother repeated.
“It’s not-“
“This music these days,” Sister Rita continued. It was like I wasn’t even in the room. “I know you kids like this Judas Priest, but those kids, those two boys who killed themselves….so sad.”
“But I don’t even list-“
“You can’t listen to that anymore,” my mother said and hiccupped again.
“But Mom I don’t-“
“Your sister doesn’t like that kind of music.”
At which point I shut up. She was right. My sister liked Expose and NKOTB. I was ousted to therapy because heavy metal was suicidal and because I plagiarized a song because it was the first one that came to mind that morning on the bus the day the assignment was due.
“When we get home, I’m going through your tapes and I’m taking your Judas Priest away,” she said. ”All your Judas Priest.” (side note: that line makes me think of ”all your bass belong to us”)
Wouldn’t she be surprised to find that I did not own one single Judas Priest album.
I did go to counseling for awhile for this whole episode. I dreaded going at first. I felt like I had been wrongly accused and now had to serve my time. The hot fetid stench of injustice left such a bad taste in my mouth. Being a bit rebellious to begin with, this fueled the little punk inside of me. I was still a geek. And a loser. With my bad mall perm. But being wronged and misunderstood…made me feel very punk rock.
I also picked up my first Judas Priest album (British Steel) after the fact. I threw away the tape cover and hid the actual tape inside the sleeve of ‘Wham! Make It Big’.
The whole incident made me cranky, surly, sneering like Billy Idol in a music video.
When I first walked into my new counselors office, I was prepared to take her on. I had no qualms about picking up furniture and shaking it in a rage.
But when I saw her, her mousey brown hair, her thick square glasses…and when she introduced herself, her soft comforting voice…I knew I couldn’t pick up her paperweight and launch it out the window ala Johnny Rotten.
Joanne was…Joanne was a godsend.
She was young, maybe just out of college. She sorta looked like no matter what I said, she wouldn't judge.
And so I talked. I talked and talked and talked. It was fantastic. When time was up, I was sad. She gave me a notebook I was supposed to write in and our following session we would talk about what I wrote and how it ties into what we discussed. I couldn’t wait to go back.
What adolescent girl wouldn’t love talking about herself for an hour with someone actually listening to her?
I was coerced into therapy I didn’t really need, but I loved. Weird.
Sometime around our third or fourth session, I caved and told her the truth of how I got there. I told her about hijacking ‘Dream On’ as my own and how that made me a plagiarist with suicidal tendencies. I told her how, at the time, I didn’t even own a Judas Priest album to listen to backwards so I could be brainwashed into killing myself.
Joanne tried her best, but couldn’t contain it for very long. The small frame of her body shook and her face scrunched up. She brought both hands to her face to rub her eyes and try to hide her expression.
“It’s ok,” I told her. “Feel free to laugh.”
To which she broke out and did just that. I laughed with her. This whole thing could have been remedied if I had just admitted to ripping off a song, but somehow, that answer eluded me. I’m glad it did though, because then I would never had met Joanne and I would never have gained an affinity for a lil’ Priest now and again.
Imagine my sister’s surprise when she decided she wanted to wake-me-up-before-I-go-go and reached for her tape and popped it in without really looking.
Who was at the foot at the stairs when she hit play and the crunch of guitars filled her room, loud enough to cover her shrieks of terror?
Mother.
Breakin’ the law, breakin’ the law!
Memory.
Damn pain in my ass.
When I was in 7th grade, catholic school, mind you, yes, nuns and such, we had a writing assignment. We had to write an original poem. Being a writer, I should have been ecstatic. My one moment to shine during my dismal youth plagued with asthma attacks and bad haircuts.
When I tried to write, I drew a complete blank.
I waited till the last minute too.
Shit.
So, that Friday morning when we had to pass our poems up to the front for collection and grading, I handed in the lyrics to "Dream On" by Aerosmith as my own.
Sister would have no IDEA who they were...right? Aerosmith didn't EXIST in Malta, where she, and the majority of the nuns in my school were from, right?
Monday afternoon, the following week, I was called into the principal's office right before recess. My classmates were set free to run around the parking lot for a half hour and I was being called to the dungeon, my stomach bottoming out. It would be just my luck that someone in the convent was a Steven Tyler fan.
When I got to the lobby of the office, its pale green walls making me dizzy with fear, I noticed something behind the glass inset on Sister Rita's door that almost instantaneously moved my bowels. Bigger than the fear of the principal, bigger than the fear of being caught plagiarizing, bigger than the fear of God...
My mother.
Pacing.
In front of Sister Rita's desk.
She was supposed to be asleep. She worked the night shift at the hospital. She was still in her nurses uniform.
I stopped dead in my tracks and decided that I would stand there until something happened, but nothing was going to make me voluntarily open the door or enter the room. Nothing.
Nothing but the receptionist/secretary who said my name out loud. My mother turned around and saw me. Sister Rita stood up from her desk. The receptionist opened the door and it swung slowly, creaking eerily in the silence.
I stood my ground for just a minute longer, staring at them, disturbed. The expression on their faces was far from the anger I knew very well and expected. Sister Rita and my mother have the same stern look of disapproval that I grew accustomed to get both at school and at home. No, it wasn't the creased forehead skin and the red hot anger I expected.
It was more a look of brow-furrowing concern.
Sister asked me to sit down and I finally walked in and took a seat on the brown itchy ottoman serving as a chair.
“I called your mother here today to discuss something important in regards to your writing assignment you turned in yesterday,” Sister Rita began. I nodded.
“We’re concerned with the content of your poem,” she continued. “It seems rather mature for someone your age and it also seems like it could be…”
I swallowed hard and tried to keep the tears from falling. They were welling up in my eyes already. I always took such great pride in my work and hated when someone else in class would steal my ideas for art projects or even copy my homework assignments. It would always be the one thing I tattled on. I refused to let anyone ride my coattails of brilliance…except for that time I failed a Social Studies test and so did Kyle, who sat next to me in that class. Ass had the nerve to get mad at me for not studying hard enough so both of us could pass.
And here I was, riding the coattails of a rock band. Stealing. It all sounds so trivial, yes, but at that moment, I wanted the universe to swallow me whole.
“Well, it seems like it could be a cry for help,” she finished. It was this point my mother let out a strange sound, almost like something between a hiccup and a bark. I looked over. She was crying. Sobbing.
“We’re concerned about you, dear,” my principal said and reached across her desk for my hand. She held it, sort of awkwardly, like she wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. My gaze was still fixed on my mother. I had never seen her so broken.
“Suicide is not the answer.”
The initial fear had melted and turned into a weird numb sensation. I had no idea what to do. I had no idea what to say. The tears that I had, rolled down my face sorta haphazardly, but without any real emotion at all. So this wasn’t, at all, about me ripping off rock band lyrics?
“But-“ I started to say. I had no idea what was going to come out, but my mother beat me to it. She started hiccup-bark-speaking.
“You never talk to us,” she said. “You sit in your room, you listen to your music, you write in your book, you wear headphones everywhere, you don’t ever talk to us. You need to talk to us. You can’t- you won’t-you need-you will-you need to talk to us.”
“But-“ I tried again, but to no avail. Sister Rita jumped in before me.
“I’ve talked to your mother and we decided that it would be good for you to see a counselor once a week or so.”
“But, I-“
“You need to talk to us,” my mother repeated.
“It’s not-“
“This music these days,” Sister Rita continued. It was like I wasn’t even in the room. “I know you kids like this Judas Priest, but those kids, those two boys who killed themselves….so sad.”
“But I don’t even list-“
“You can’t listen to that anymore,” my mother said and hiccupped again.
“But Mom I don’t-“
“Your sister doesn’t like that kind of music.”
At which point I shut up. She was right. My sister liked Expose and NKOTB. I was ousted to therapy because heavy metal was suicidal and because I plagiarized a song because it was the first one that came to mind that morning on the bus the day the assignment was due.
“When we get home, I’m going through your tapes and I’m taking your Judas Priest away,” she said. ”All your Judas Priest.” (side note: that line makes me think of ”all your bass belong to us”)
Wouldn’t she be surprised to find that I did not own one single Judas Priest album.
I did go to counseling for awhile for this whole episode. I dreaded going at first. I felt like I had been wrongly accused and now had to serve my time. The hot fetid stench of injustice left such a bad taste in my mouth. Being a bit rebellious to begin with, this fueled the little punk inside of me. I was still a geek. And a loser. With my bad mall perm. But being wronged and misunderstood…made me feel very punk rock.
I also picked up my first Judas Priest album (British Steel) after the fact. I threw away the tape cover and hid the actual tape inside the sleeve of ‘Wham! Make It Big’.
The whole incident made me cranky, surly, sneering like Billy Idol in a music video.
When I first walked into my new counselors office, I was prepared to take her on. I had no qualms about picking up furniture and shaking it in a rage.
But when I saw her, her mousey brown hair, her thick square glasses…and when she introduced herself, her soft comforting voice…I knew I couldn’t pick up her paperweight and launch it out the window ala Johnny Rotten.
Joanne was…Joanne was a godsend.
She was young, maybe just out of college. She sorta looked like no matter what I said, she wouldn't judge.
And so I talked. I talked and talked and talked. It was fantastic. When time was up, I was sad. She gave me a notebook I was supposed to write in and our following session we would talk about what I wrote and how it ties into what we discussed. I couldn’t wait to go back.
What adolescent girl wouldn’t love talking about herself for an hour with someone actually listening to her?
I was coerced into therapy I didn’t really need, but I loved. Weird.
Sometime around our third or fourth session, I caved and told her the truth of how I got there. I told her about hijacking ‘Dream On’ as my own and how that made me a plagiarist with suicidal tendencies. I told her how, at the time, I didn’t even own a Judas Priest album to listen to backwards so I could be brainwashed into killing myself.
Joanne tried her best, but couldn’t contain it for very long. The small frame of her body shook and her face scrunched up. She brought both hands to her face to rub her eyes and try to hide her expression.
“It’s ok,” I told her. “Feel free to laugh.”
To which she broke out and did just that. I laughed with her. This whole thing could have been remedied if I had just admitted to ripping off a song, but somehow, that answer eluded me. I’m glad it did though, because then I would never had met Joanne and I would never have gained an affinity for a lil’ Priest now and again.
Imagine my sister’s surprise when she decided she wanted to wake-me-up-before-I-go-go and reached for her tape and popped it in without really looking.
Who was at the foot at the stairs when she hit play and the crunch of guitars filled her room, loud enough to cover her shrieks of terror?
Mother.
Breakin’ the law, breakin’ the law!
