Free Write 2/19/17

When I attended an all-girl Catholic high school, there were a ton of different cliques, as there are at any school.  To me, though, there were two cliques, by which they are difficult to characterize.  I like to think of these two groups, through my own perception, as those that would have been friends with my grammar school friends (they would have been good/best friends with them), and those that wouldn’t have been (most of them, for the most part).  The girl that sticks out in my mind, in the group that wouldn’t have been as close to my grammar school friends, was a girl named Casey, who had red hair like me.  She was, however, acquainted/friends with one of the girls that I went to grammar school with.  When I first transferred to the all-girl school, from a co-ed school, I was doped up on medicine from having recently been hospitalized in a mental hospital for a mental breakdown and/or depression (it depends on the viewpoint you had during the time right before it).  Because of this I used to sleep through class a lot at the new school, including during first period study hall.  I remember one time during study hall I was sleeping and I farted in my sleep.  Shortly after I had a phone conversation with a girl I went to grammar school with (the one who was friends with the red-headed girl named Casey) and she said people were talking about how I farted during study hall.  It was this phone conversation, if I remember correctly, when I learned that the girl I went to grammar school with was friends with Casey.  It was kind of surprising, because Casey had a type of personality in which I wouldn’t imagine her being friends with the girl I went to grammar school that I am referencing, her name being Nora.  But once we all got into high school, things changed.

Casey was the type of girl who had a bubbly personality and was a ton of fun to be around, but after a while, after being exposed to that type of people, I started to wonder where this energy, this way of socializing came from.  I remember going to summer school the summer after my sophomore year, and I saw Casey outside of the school, wearing a collared shirt with the bottom tied into a knot, like something out of the scene in the movie Grease where the seniors have a carnival to celebrate their graduating.  I remember being amazed that she had the guts to try and pull something like that off.  When I saw her she was with some people, not including, if I remember correctly, the two girls that I was with, that I had just finished sophomore year with, who I was friends with.  Casey was the type of girl who was kind of a good girl, compared to a lot of the girls that she went to school with, but at the same time I always thought of her having a bit of a bad-girl side to her.  One day after walking home from school I stopped at Wendy’s and a bunch of the popular girls were there eating, and I saw Casey and a bunch of the girls I think she was friends with, one of them being a girl that I used to go to school with, the very first high school I went to, a co-ed Jesuit school.  The girl’s name was Penelope, and I used to think that I was friends with her, but now I am not so sure, because I haven’t seen her in a long time, and also because some of the people I think she still hangs around with I am pretty sure I will never be associated with again in my life, if I ever was.  When I saw Casey and Penelope at Wendy’s, I think I remember seeing them both there sitting with a bunch of other people at the same time, even though they have completely different personalities, and for this reason it still remains a question in the back of my mind as to why they hung out at that time.  If they did one they probably did more than once, but I think it’s just because they were friends with some of the same people.  But still, they were so different- I think of Casey as preppy and Penelope as kind of ghetto, Casey as ying and Penelope as yang.  When I saw them at Wendy’s, I think I remember Penelope saying hi to me.  I was one of the biggest losers at the school, because I was so doped up and out of it and trying to overcome depression, but for some reason the popular girls, if I remember correctly Penelope, and her friends, used to walk home with me.  They thought I was the shit, in some way.  I am still unsure as to whether they took me seriously or not.  I remember one time me, Penelope and her friends went to Wendy’s after school and we hung out.  Penelope took out a thing of Carmex and smooshed out the stuff on the table and said it was disgusting (she actually used the word disgusting).  One of Penelope’s friends started to make small talk with me.  It was cool because I almost felt like they took me in as one of their own.  One of Penelope’s friends, Margret, asked me if I smoked, one day when we were walking home.  I said I didn’t.  I have at least one strong memory of them having to leave me once we got to the Harlem blue line station (I remember at least one of the girls being there with me) - I remember Sandra waving goodbye to me and saying goodbye as she descended down the escalator to where the train met the station.  Yup, those popular girls were nice to me, as were some others at that school.  And some were mean to me, but I am still able to live with myself today, despite knowing that those girls treated me like shit even though I was going through stuff.