So there’s a time in my life that I don’t like to think about, let alone talk or write about. But I recently wrote a YA novel about a pair of high school soccer players, and I discovered that inhabiting their minds for months on end brought me spiraling back to my own teenage-hood, better known as the years-long period of my life when I felt actual despair. Hopelessness, even. Like my character Jamie, if not for soccer, if not for the endorphins, the team goals, the chance to inflict my anger and frustration legally and with encouragement on a small leather ball and larger, less leathery opponents, I honestly don’t know how I would have made it through junior high and high school.
I’ve heard a lot of people say they hated their secondary school experiences, including my own sister. It’s not something we talk a lot about, but as a teenager, my older sister struggled with suicidal ideation, much of it revolving around the two-year relationship she had with another girl. I found out about my sister’s girlfriend from Aaron (not his real name), one of the identical twins who lived in my neighborhood. Aaron was the more dynamic of the two boys, i.e. the one who suggested he and his twin Adam switch clothes and classrooms every so often in elementary school. We could all tell them apart, of course, but the adults? Not so much.
Rocking the pageboy in the early 198os.
Aaron was also the boy who, in seventh grade, announced to the lunch table that my older sister was a “dyke.” Apparently he’d forgotten the reputation I’d made for myself in second grade when I beat the crap out of any boy who dared steal my soccer ball or put me down for being “just a girl.” I mean, it had been five years, so maybe his memory lapse was understandable. Or maybe he just thought that now that we were in junior high, I would act more like a “regular” girl and less like a tomboy, despite the fact I favored tube socks, Puma sneakers, and a Kate Jackson pageboy haircut.
Either way, he seemed to realize his mistake almost immediately, because as my fists clenched and my eyes narrowed to slits, his eyes widened and he backed away.
“Take it back!” I roared, pushing away from the lunch table.
Homodramatica 