I miss light-up shoes and footie pajamas.
      Before I started school and into preschool, I was dressed entirely from the thrift shop. My mum wasn't cheap or poor or anything. She just liked shopping there. I didn't mind. I ripped holes in everything regardless of which store it came from or how expensive it was. If I didn't like it much, it might mysteriously acquire bigger holes much more quickly. My clothes were cute enough, but usually that was unrecognizable beneath the dirt, chocolate, popsicle juice, and anything else that came into contact with my grubby little hands.
      I was an easygoing kid, and I only remember one time when I absolutely refused to wear something. It was a pair of plaid shorts. I don't remember them as being all that ugly, but it's more than likely that I was just exercising my four-year-old independence. My mum eventually forced me into them by telling me that I was going to school naked if I didn't wear them. She used that threat whenever I took too long to get ready in the morning. She still does sometimes.
      First through third grade I mainly dressed in my school outfit. I went to a Christian private school for some reason. My parents aren't religious at all, but they felt the need to send me there. My school uniform was a white or navy blue tee-shirt or button-down (tucked in) and a plaid skirt with optional leggings or tights. On cold days girls were allowed to wear khaki pants like the guys. (I don't remember what the minimum temperature for a "cold day" was, but I remember thinking it should have been higher.)
      That was almost all that was in my wardrobe for those three years except on the weekends when I put on my soccer outfit for games/practice and when I delved into the dress-up bin to be a witch or a princess.
      My hair was a mess when I was little. It still is sometimes, but back then it was terrible. One day I got so fed up with it that I cut it off. Not shaved it with a razor or anything, just went at it with a pair of those scissors with the rounded tips. I wasn't trying to make myself look better, and I certainly didn't achieve that. It reminded me of the haircuts that little girls give to their Barbie dolls, the kind I might have given to my Barbie dolls, had they not been decapitated and shot into the Eucalyptus tree within hours of the box being opened. (kind of reminding myself of Claudia here . . .)
      Before I moved to the Bay Area, I had the preconceived notion that everyone in Berkeley wore tie-dye, all day long. When I moved, one of the first places my parents took me was Telegraph, which of course only corroborated my theory. The next Saturday I dyed most of my wardrobe tie-dye with a few of those packets you get from summer camp. My mum was peeved, but my punishment was that she wouldn't buy me anything to replace it for a while.
      For the remainder of elementary school, I was a total tomboy. I wore my brother's old over-sized tee-shirts and guy's pants a lot. I wore hammer pants, but mine were extra loop. My dad's a handyman and I idolized him when I was little.
      I was so excited about my 4th grade gorilla Halloween costume that I wore it every weekend for almost an entire month. Most of October and even into November. It was already ratty and scruffy by the time the 31st rolled around, though it did give me an advantage because I already knew how to walk in it. I could go to twice as many houses (and therefore get twice as much candy) as my friends who stumbled in their capacious clown shoes and futilely tried to see through their power-ranger masks.
      Middle school is an awkward time for everyone I think. At least, that's what I gather from looking back on the thousands of pictures I took. My step-sister tried to take me under her wing while I was in middle school. That's what she called it. It might be more accurate to call it experimentation. I was her guinea pig.
      It did not end well. She tried to put me in skirts and dresses and plaster me with makeup. Then she tried to dress me from Abercrombie which I couldn't stand. She did anything she could to get me out of my tomboy stage, but I wasn't very cooperative. She finally gave up on me about the time I got braces. (Again. I had them twice. Damned incompetent orthodontists.) And I fell back into my habitual jeans + tee-shirt. I tried out jewelry, although she had scared me off makeup for a while to come. I got bored too and dyed my blond hair magenta.
      The dye eventually died as well, when my hair was about to. By the time I was through with neon orange, green, and purple, my hair was like a washed up rockstar; once so vibrant and bright, it just sat there listless and sagging, waiting for something to happen. It was the color of the ocean, the consistency of straw, and threatening to fall out or kill itself if I didn't do something about it. So I dyed it black, which helps according to the hairdressers.
      Eventually I escaped middle school and went to high school where . . . well . . . I didn't do a whole lot. I don't like shopping, I hate stores, I abominate malls, and I'm just about the laziest person you will ever meet. I don't care enough about what I look like to get my ass out of bed before 7am, so I didn't change much after that.

I wish I weren't such a nice person, so I could post all the middle-school pictures of my friends. Or maybe it's not my altruism. Maybe I'd just be scared for my life if I did put them up...

[edit: I decided to risk it. These are too much fun. See any of your classmates? But don't worry, Lyla, I wont put up the candycorn one from Reno.]



I would like to point out that the following two pictures were taken on two totally different days, thus proving that this is how Jamie always looked in middle school.

Except for that one time, when he looked like this:

One of the very few pictures of Mr. Poole:

Being a band geek:

Lyla hasn't changed at all:

This wasn't even Halloween:

Ever the diva:




Okay, that was worth it, even if I'm about to be killed. Wasn't middle school fun, guys?