Make Me a Match

So, let’s move on from the formative elementary years to those juicy middle school years. By sixth grade, I had picked up a small group of friends, so things were looking up in that regard. I had zero understanding of female grooming habits, no boobs, bad taste in clothes, a weird sense of humor, and a hopeless case of boy fever. Oh, and abnormal parents. That’s probably all you need to know to get a good taste of how things were going to go for the next few years.

I was a creative kid, and I was interested in the performing arts (which is weird, considering that, as an adult, I’m really introverted and hate being in crowds or, God forbid, talking in front of a group of people), so it seemed natural to try my hand at singing. I could belt out “Straight Up” by Paula Abdul in the shower like nobody’s business. “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” by Whitney Houston and “Girl You Know It’s True” by Milli Vanilli were also on Desiree’s top shower hits of early middle school. And anything by Bobby Brown. (I’m not ashamed to say those songs and artists are on my grownup Spotify playlist.)

My parents totally couldn’t sing. Mom would sing Placido Domingo songs outside while she gardened, her favorite pastime (gardening, not singing), but she didn’t care at all what anyone thought about that. I thought it was awful – but then again, I thought everything she did was awful. Dad never sang unless he had to (church, funerals, and “Happy Birthday”), and when he did – ouch. But you know, who cares? It’s not like either of them would ever sing in front of a crowd.

Luckily, I was convinced that I’d gotten the recessive, great-singing gene in the family. In sixth grade, I decided to put it to use – in our annual vocal/instrumental contest, called the Bland Competition (not because we were all boring, but because it was named after some person named Bland, I think. I don’t recall, and who really cares, but now that we’re thinking about it, Google tells me it’s a state-wide arts competition for a scholarship and – spoiler – I didn’t make it to the state level; more on why in a minute). Let me take a moment to share why I chose this particular moment in time to unleash my talent on the world, which I think might come as a surprise even to my closest friend at the time (still a friend after all these years) – let’s call her Rose. (She’ll be making a guest appearance in a future embarrassing story, which she totally deserves, since she tells this story about me at the Bland Competition all the damn time, even 30 years later.)

It wasn’t for the glory. It was for a boy.

Man, could he sing. He had a beautiful voice. I just thought he was so handsome – in my mind, he was totally like Patrick Swayze in “Dirty Dancing.” For those of you who know who he is because we grew up together in this ridiculously small town where everyone knew everyone, I’m sure you’re laughing right now to picture tweenage Desiree comparing this guy to Patrick Swayze, but there’s really no reasoning with hormones. Ask any pregnant woman. Anyway, he sang in contests and, if I remember right, he sang at the fair one year (that’s like the tiny town equivalent to Madison Square Garden). I had this recurring dream that he and I would fall in love while singing a duet together (sometimes in my dream we were singing in the school gym, sometimes at the fair, sometimes in the school auditorium – the place didn’t matter, just the movie closeup of our eyes locking on stage while we sang, like in any good movie of the 80s or 90s). In order to make that dream a reality, I’d need to prove myself worthy of duet-singing, and what better way to do that than to win this contest! I’d have been fine to just do well enough to get a decent score and get his attention. I won’t share the long backstory, but suffice it to say, I did not at that moment in time have his attention, despite my best efforts. (That was pretty standard for me at the time: putting forth my best effort to get the attention of a crush and getting totally rejected).

I was part of the choir, and that (singing in school classes) was the extent of my voice training. You’d think that my music teacher’s face the one time I sang alone for her that year when she was helping me decipher my range would have given me a hint that I was not as naturally gifted as I suspected, but I didn’t pick up her vibe. She helped me pick the song “Matchmaker” from Fiddler on the Roof – this is an incredibly awful song, in my opinion, and I had never seen the musical, but whatever. I was going for it.

I wish I could say I practiced diligently, but that wasn’t the case. I had my natural talent to fall back on. When I practiced in front of my parents in the living room, they clapped politely and told me how proud they were of me. As a parent myself now, I totally appreciate their predicament – what do you say when your child sucks at something? (One lesson I learned from this story that I took with me into the present is that I have no qualms telling my son when he’s not good at something, which I claim as a parenting win so far). At the time, I just basked in their praise, because they loved my song, clearly. They were BLOWN AWAY. Their faces gave it away.

Fast forward to the night of the contest. You’ll recall that I mentioned that I had the fashion sense of a blind person picking clothes from circus hand-me-downs (I was oblivious to this defect at the time), so my choice of outfit that I was sure was gonna knock ‘em dead, um, didn’t. A tea-length black-and-white polka dot dress with ruffles that emphasized my lack of bustline, accented with a giant black bow on my head. It probably wasn’t as ridiculous a bow as it is in my mind’s eye, but in my memory, it looked like this (but black):

Rose is always quick to remember the outfit if you talk to her, but luckily, I don’t have a photo to share with you here. Regardless, I felt like a princess at the beginning of the night, ready to dazzle the world – until I walked out on stage. That was probably the first time I had performed alone in front of an audience; it was definitely the first time I had competed on stage alone. The stage is a weirdly quiet, still place when you are about to deliver a solo performance – you can see the dust in the air floating in front of those hot, white lights; you hear the rustling and murmuring of the audience, a sea of black heads. You can’t pick out a friendly face. You can hear yourself breathe. You can feel your sweat beading and pooling. Your tights squeeze your stomach and you can’t decide where to look. It’s hard to swallow. You miss your cue, but finally start singing.

If you’re performing in any generic auditorium, you’ll find the acoustics are designed to amplify the sound from the mike and direct it precisely back to you. When you sing alone on stage, you hear your voice very clearly, just as the audience hears it. The sound of the notes that your voice makes goes right into your ear and into that part of your brain that judges whether a sound is pleasing or not, and if it’s not pleasing, your heart drops to your stomach and the realization hits you that, shit, you actually can’t carry a tune. You sound like Roseanne Barr singing the national anthem. You sound like Brittany Spears without autotune. Okay, those are anachronisms, but they give you a good sense of what I was hearing that night when my own voice found its way past my certainty of my singing ability and right into my little tweenage heart. My brain was trying to process the awfulness I was hearing, and it couldn’t also recall the lyrics at the same time. It improvised for a bit by having my mouth sing the same line over and over, but at a certain point, there was no finding its place in the lyrics, so it gave up. I faltered, stopped singing, and ran off stage in tears.

There was no romantic duet in my future. There was no winning the contest and no more singing solos. No more singing, period, the next school year. That was the first time my impression about my perceived ability at something came directly in conflict with my actual lack of ability; that is really crushing. I’m sure we’ve all faced that deflating moment at some point. In the long run, it was a good lesson to learn, but when you’re 11 or 12, the wound stays raw for a while. Embarrassment cuts deep when your whole life feels like an endless embarrassment (the definition of middle school, I think). I still channel that moment on stage sometimes when I have to speak in front of people, so in that way, maybe I came away with the wrong lesson implanted in my brain. That’s the problem with those kind of rip-the-veil-from-your-eyes moments; sometimes your brain chooses the wrong takeaway, and then you’re kind of stuck with it. No golden flashes of brilliance have come to me from writing this, alas. Maybe everything isn’t a teachable moment. Some moments just suck, and we move on.

All that Sparkles

When I was little, I absolutely loved sparkly things. I collected any and all sparkly things and put them in little boxes. The list included but was not limited to: puffy stickers with glitter (are you a child of the 80s too? If so, you’ll understand about puffy stickers); little plastic rhinestones that I picked off things I shouldn’t, like shirts and jewelry; broken necklaces; pieces of colored glass and plastic; and buttons. I would sit cross-legged in my room and dump my treasures on the floor and stare at them possessively, like a dragon. A ferocious little 9-year-old dragon.

My parents were constantly ticked off at me when they discovered some sparkly thing I’d taken (or broken). Totally unfair, I know. For my birthday one year, my mom gave me a little red rhinestone ring, and I pried open the setting and added the stone to my collection. I may or may not have done the same thing to some of mom’s jewelry. Maybe I also pulled the fake diamond buttons off one of her dresses, and I possibly even took one of my dad’s cufflinks that had abalone shell embedded in it (or something equally shiny). I’m not sure if I really looked at these transgressions as punishable offenses at the time. I mean, I felt so happy when I was looking at my little treasures that I didn’t feel that it was fair for my folks to be upset that I had simply moved the sparkly thing from once location to a better one. You understand.

Mom collected Swarovski crystal animals that were gifts from a good friend of hers (he may have been a former lover, actually – but that’s another story altogether). They were beautiful. If sparkly things caught my eye because they reflected light in some pleasing spectrum that spoke to me, then these creatures with their many facets of cut-glass fabulousness were like beacons lighting my way home. To thievery. I would snatch them, one by one, when she wasn’t looking (which was often – but that’s also another story), huddle under the table, and pry off the tiny crystal eyeballs, ears, or tails. Oh, and wings. Those delicate wings on the majestic, glimmering crystal swans – those were lovely. And that flower on the bunny! SO. SPARKLY. Whichever pieces I thought I could capture in a moment when no one was around, those would find their way right into my sweaty little fist and onto the operating table. I’d then replace the poor creatures on their lonely little shelf facing in whatever direction would make their amputations less obvious from across the room.

Aside from loving things that sparkled, I also loved having friends. Well, I loved the idea of having friends, none of which were in my possession at any time through early elementary school. There was one girl I had sleepovers with at some point during that time, but I recall her telling me her mother didn’t like me. Really, I’m not sure what I was supposed to do with that.

Anyway, at some point (in third grade? Or maybe fourth grade? The exact year is fuzzy), these two loves merged in my brain – which, as we recall from the last episode, was awesomely creative, though not accomplished in forward-thinking – and crystallized into an excellent scheme worthy of any stupid 80s sitcom plot. You see, we had this (weirdly out-of-place, ostentatious) crystal chandelier hanging over the formal dining room table. I coveted it. When you turned the fake plastic candles on that served as the light source, it was like a kaleidoscope of light shooting in every direction – like a disco ball, but softer and more romantic. So, like a disco ball… in a hotel room. I don’t know, you get the idea. And then it came to me one day: I’d just take some of those. I mean, who’d miss them, right? How often do you look at a light fixture?

Speaking as grown-up Desiree for a second, may I say, I look at my light fixtures quite often. Little Desiree had no idea the noticeable-ness of household items to adults – especially the expensive (weirdly out-of-place, ostentatious) ones.

My cousin Katy will thank me for cutting her out of this photo. You're welcome, Katy.

So, one night, I climbed on top of the dining room table (with my dirty feet, yup, right up there where you eat and everything, smearing that foot dirt all around), unhooked several chains of crystals, and absconded with them up to my room. I (of course) kept the prettiest ones for myself, but I brought the rest to school and handed them out to other kids. I don’t recall what my criteria was for who got some of these, nor do I remember what I said to the recipients, but the overall gist of it was: here’s a sparkly thing. I love them the best. Will you be my friend?

Needless to say, I did not come away from that plan with any lasting friendships, as far as I can tell. (Please raise your hand if you got one of my crystals and still like me, 30+ years later.) In fact, with my awesome powers of hindsight, I realize that I probably just gave those kids one more reason to think I was totally weird (and pathetic). I vaguely recall, though, being super proud of myself and VERY GLAD that I pulled off the brilliant heist without getting caught.

But of course, I got caught. It took my mom a few days to notice the lopsided, romantic (denuded) disco ball, but as soon as she did, she knew which dragon had done the deed. Now, normally I was a girl who could take her licks, but this time Mom came totally out of left field and made the craziest, most horrible demand you could imagine – she wanted the pieces back. All of them. It didn’t matter to her that it was supremely embarrassing to ask the kids to return my stupid gifts; nor did it matter to her that it would make me look incredibly loser-y. (If that’s not a word, it should be.) Shocker: we didn’t get back all the pieces. Another shocker: going to school over the next several days was so, so awful.

Well, what lesson did we learn from this story? I spent these last hours trying to look at this from grown-up Desiree perspective, and really, I don’t know what I would have said to little Desiree at that moment. But I know how sad and embarrassed she felt. As a mother myself now, I think I’d give her a hug and know exactly where she was coming from – anyone desperate enough to try to buy friends really needs a hug. I mean, I’d totally take back my awesome, fake-diamond buttons she stole and sew those bitches right back on my dress – but my heart would also break for her a little. I definitely think all these cringy experiences (believe me, friends, there are many more in my bag o’ history, don't you worry) helped me learn empathy later in life. But would I trade a little empathy for a few friends for little Desiree? Maybe.

Let's Get This Party Started

Welcome to my first blog post! Warning: it will be long. LONG. Ask any editor I’ve ever had.

My 16-year-old son, Alex, tells me blogs are passé. Which is fine by me. I’m just gonna carry on here, Doogie Howser-style, safe in the knowledge that he’ll never read it (or even know how to find it, most likely). Nor will anyone beyond my 11 or so closest Facebook friends (another electronic tool for the elderly, according to Alex), who will read this because that’s what one does in this age of Corona (virus, not beer): we pass the time by distracting ourselves from our fear that we will suffer and die of this, or our loved ones will, and that those of us who don’t die are completely screwed thanks to the looming Depression, the likes of which we haven’t seen for almost a hundred years. But don’t worry, this blog is not about that monster in the corner. Instead, I’ll be writing about cringey moments from my childhood. Other people’s awful moments are fun to watch, if they don’t result in death (this is why I used to watch “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” and that show about Honey Boo Boo back when I had cable years ago), and I’m glad to distract others with my own mortification. I’ve also kinda wondered if these moments did anything for me or to me as I grew into an adult – I’ve never actually sat down and given it a good old “deep look,” so I think now I will. Because Coronavirus.

Crap, that would have been a better blog title - Because Coronavirus. Eh, whatever.

Stupidly long disclaimer about memory: I have an awful memory. I’m not even kidding. Some people say that and don’t mean it, but I really do, and anyone who knows me well will attest to it. My friend and former co-worker, Amber, used to be concerned that I had some weird, ultra-early onset dementia and since then, I have not miraculously recovered. So, any memories of mine contained in these posts are most likely riddled with inaccuracies. In fact, all human memory is this way – my hubby has repeatedly over the last 18 years told me this story (he tells the same stories over and over all the time; luckily I can’t remember for crap so they are always at least somewhat new to me) about a demonstration one of his law school professors did that showed how flawed memory is in witnesses, even minutes after an event. I don’t recall the details (ha, ha, I know, right?), but the gist is that we all recall things differently, but yet we are adamant about the correctness of our individual recollection. All that matters here is that, if these stories I put down are how I remember them, then this is how they were. If you are someone who participated in one of the historical moments I’m describing, and you remember it differently – good for you! Write your own damn blog.

So, let’s start with one of my first cringey memories. This was second grade, so that would be, what? About 1986 or so (above is a photo of little me around that time). I don’t remember what time of year it was (I really don’t remember a lot of my childhood, honestly – it’s just a bunch of little balls of memory in my head all strung together on thin ropes of time of varying lengths, like a candy necklace that has most of its candy crunched off) so, let’s call it fall. It’s a sunny morning just before school starts, and we’re all playing out on the blacktop. All the usual 80s childhood stuff is going on: kids bouncing that ubiquitous red ball that hurt like hell when you played dodgeball with it and it hit you; kids hanging out on top of the hopscotch grid that no one ever actually used because hopscotch is stupid; kids huddled together looking at Garbage Pail Kids cards like they were something super naughty because they had pictures of boogers or gore on them; kids hanging upside-down on metal monkey bars; and the naughtier kids off whispering bad words together over on the giant tractor tire that’s half buried in the dirt (can you believe adults actually thought we’d think buried trash was a cool playground addition? That was the 80s for you) in the hopes the teacher wouldn’t come over and see what they were doing (spoiler: the teacher didn’t give a rat’s ass).

Speaking of the teacher didn’t care – I had to go to the bathroom. When you’re a kid and you have to go to the bathroom, you’re really in a conundrum. You have to weigh your need to relieve yourself with the often greater desire not to draw attention to yourself by walking alone to the teacher to ask, then walking alone to the door and down the hall, then walking back an interrupting whatever is happening to settle back into the group. The whole time you’re thinking everyone is looking at you and whispering about you – and sometimes you’re right. But even when you’re not, the fear is real. Especially in my case, because kids didn’t like me. I was weird. Even when I was eight, I knew this to be true. I didn’t dress like the other kids, because I had zero idea how to match colors and no clue what styles were popular because I didn’t read Seventeen or wherever it was an eight-year-old in a tiny town was supposed to look before the age of the internet in order to know what was cool. That was strike one. Strike two was that I was an outsider. Most kids were from families that had grown up in town; it was seriously like Mayberry there. I’m not kidding. It was a small town in Virginia, and people talked with a rural accent Just like Sherriff Andy Taylor. People there raised livestock and canned things and loved watching the tractor pull at the county fair. This is not a lifestyle I fit into, even though I tried. And my parents were from out of town – in fact, my mom was from out of the country and talked with a funny accent, so she might as well have been a space alien.

So, there I was, space alien spawn in my crappy, un-cool clothes, and I had to pee. I worked my way over to whatever teacher was close by and I asked her if I could go in and use the bathroom; she said no. I’m sure she had a really good reason – it was almost time to go inside was probably her logic, but I don’t remember. I tried the standard whine: “PleeeeeEEEEEEasssee?” But no dice. Teachers are immune to pleading. So are mothers. My reward was probably something along the lines of, “You should have gone before you came to school.” I don’t remember exactly. But, no means no in school.

I was a girl who sometimes had bathroom accidents, even when I was old enough to know better. Looking back as an adult, I wonder if these problems were brought on by stress (or whatever counted as stress for a second grader). I had just left private school and started public school that year, and I had trouble adjusting. I had been attending a Montessori school outside of Washington D.C. before I came to public school, which was probably strike three for me with my new peers. The school I had attended before didn’t really have a lot of rules, and all the kids there were standard NoVa kids (you either know what that means or you don’t, but it definitely means something) and they were NOT the same as Mayberry kids.

So, little me decided to sit down on a sideways cinderblock in a row of sideways cinderblocks that edged the blacktop so that I would be close to the lineup area when it was time to go inside. This would theoretically have been a good idea if not for two things: 1) a boy I liked was standing with some friends of his nearby and they noticed me sitting there alone (because being a kid alone near any group of other kids is really just asking for trouble), and 2) the hollow side of a cinderblock when you sit on it feels JUST like a potty. All these things I realized too late, and the pee started flowing – a LOT of it.

My desperate wish was to have the cinderblock hole just keep my dirty secret for me, but sadly, physics isn’t sympathetic to the feelings of little weird girls, and cinderblocks are heartless bastards. The pee started to trickle underneath the block and spill onto the blacktop.

“EEEEWW!” one of the kids in the group near me squealed. “What IS that?” The kid was, of course, pointing to the spreading liquid.

I will say, little me was really inventive – maybe it came from playing alone a lot – and I came up with a brilliant idea on the spot. I put my hands behind my back and yelled, “I spilled my water! I SPILLED my WATER!!”

Clearly, that logic was not going to fly with the little Sherlock Holmeses of the playground. “Oh yeah? Show us the cup!” That was the gist of the demands they were yelling at me. Of course, I couldn’t do that, as the invisible cup would absolutely have to stay behind my back forever. I hadn’t really had time to think through this plan beyond my initial flash of brilliance.

And let me just say, pee smells. And a lot of pee smells – a lot. So, I was sitting there with my hands behind my back, smelling my pee and watching it creep out towards other kids, and this moment even now seems like it lasted a hundred years. I’m 41 years old, and I still remember what it feels like to have a scratchy cinderblock rubbing against my tights and how uncomfortable it is to hold my hands behind my back for what felt like forever. Of course, the Sherlock Holmeses weren’t backing down with their jeers. Because why would they? They were eight and this was a hilariously horrible situation.

And then it was time to line up. After that, there was some combination of laughing and pointing, plus me crying and holding a teacher’s hand to go into the building, so I didn’t avoid my dreaded walk of shame anyway. That’s where my memory ends.

So, what did grownup me learn from rehashing this moment? I was hoping I’d write my way into some kind of great life lesson, like at the end of G.I. Joe cartoons. I don’t know if that happened here. I will say, though, that I have empathy for people who find themselves in that kind of embarrassing situation. If you pee yourself, not only will I totally back you up about your invisible cup, I will hold your hand and we can go to the bathroom together and clean you up. But I think most grownups would do that – even the now-grown Sherlock Holmeses – don’t you think so? I hope that’s true, because one of the issues that MS can cause (a disease I happen to have) is incontinence, and I’m already headed in that general direction. I know, maybe that’s way TMI, but let’s be real here. Being a human is gross and embarrassing sometimes, even for the best of us. Maybe a lesson I learned is that I don’t need an invisible cup.

In any case, I’m glad we had this time to avoid thinking about the you-know-what together.