Teen Angel Can You Hear Me?

I was visiting over at Bye Bye Pie and she was talking about being a teenager. I think the original idea came from My Topography. (Wow I wonder how many times she’s been linked today.) She asked what you were like as a teenager. That was so long ago it’s hard for me to remember, okay maybe not so hard. Pretty much who I was as a teenager is who I am today just more wrinkled.

If you read my blog then you pretty much know I grew up in a crazy family. I was found under a rock (Go here read this: Found Under A Rock) somewhere in the deserts of West Texas. I was pretty much younger than all of my friends and was a little late getting my drivers license because I couldn’t get anyone but my sister, Matilda, to take me practice driving. Thank God she rode with me otherwise I would still just have my learner’s permit.

I will tell you this I was probably a nerd. Now I’m not sure that we actually used the word nerd back then but it describes me. I have always been a veracious reader. You would find me with my legs draped over the arm of my father’s recliner reading anything and everything from Stephen King to Elmer Kelton. (I’m sure most of you have heard of Stephen King but only a few of you will have read the westerns of Elmer Kelton.) I had six close friends. We would all be at one another’s houses or in each other’s cars. I was the “card” of the group. Really I didn’t mean to be funny; I was just so goofy everyone laughed at me. I was the one who wanted everything to be fun and good. I was the one who wanted to fix everyone’s problems. I had big frizzy Janis Joplin hair; unfortunately I didn’t have her voice. I was all legs and hair, oh and let’s not forget the big silver braces with the gigantic head gear. Yes I was pure loveliness.

We were such a weird group of girls. We would often hold impromptu dinner parties in which we would get out the Betty Crocker cookbook or The Joy of Cooking and make a whole 7 course dinner from soup to nuts complete with red grape juice or white grape juice to substitute for the wine. Ok the truth of the matter is more than once, okay a bunch of times we would serve real wine. We would dress up in our best close and use the good china, real silverware and put candles in the candelabra. Yes we were right sophisticated in our Gunnie Sax dresses and our platform shoes.

We would serve our dinner, drink our wine and talk about the mean girls at school. Why are mean girls named Heather, Tiffany and Britney? Does that name just piss them off and they decide to be mean to the girls named Gladys, Francis and Dahlia? Now don’t get all upset if you’re Heather or a Tiff but honestly back then those names were not common and the girls with those names in our school were just plain mean. We would sometimes invite our dates to these dinner parties or Fondue Fiascos but mostly it was just us girls. Then one day in our senior year of high school we all just drifted apart. We were no longer the six amigos we were separate and it was very lonely. I reached out to others but it was never the same. Never again did I have a group of friends who sat under a Mulberry tree passing a book from one to another reading passages and discussing the attributes of Jane Austin or Walt Whitman. No longer did I have someone to share a new recipe or with whom to share a concoction.
What were you like as a teenager? Were you morose and dark? Were you bright and bubbly? Were you on the most popular list or did you hide in your room and plot death and destruction to those around you? Come on you can share with me, I won’t tell anyone.

PS...I tried to find pictures of me when I was a gangly teenager and I don't think I have any. I must have not been very photogenic