Courting Destiny

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3WW: judge, nightfall, safety: space chick with the electric hair

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(I have been doing a word exercise–750 words.  As always thanks Thom for the words.  All the 3WW’s below this are fragments or outline type chapters from Space Chick) This is my article on Non Verbal Learning Disorder (NLD) that sort of inspired my memoir.

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It was summer orientation before my freshman year at that bucolic campus on the North Shore of Long Island.  Post wasn’t known for its academics.  if it had been I wouldn’t have gotten in.
Five curvy miles from my parents house, almost in the same public school district, they let me have a dorm room so I could have the “full college experience.”  My cousin had graduated the year before and he had talked my parents into letting me live in the dorms.
I had been corresponding with the girl who was to be my roommate.  She was a cheerleader.  I was a hippie freak.  She had long dark brown hair she ironed every night.  I had longish chestnut hair that frizzed everywhere it seemed.  Still people, to my constant amazement, loved my hair.
I knew because hordes of men in the city, construction workers and average guys would scream things out about my hair, face, clothes, body.  In 1968, you didn’t have to wonder if you were pretty or not.  Guys would just tell you.  I hated it yet couldn’t imagine being one of the girls nobody said anything to.
I’m sure Melanie was shouted out to.  If she ever went to the city without the protective arms of her quarterback boyfriend.
I’m sure I was the last person Melanie wanted for a roommate.  We had bought matching blue bedspreads, curtains and other things for the room.  The bathrooms were large and communal.
Freshman girls had a 10:30 curfew on weekdays and a 1:00AM curfew on weekends.  It was supposed to be for our safety.  At orientation they explained the rules.  There was a Resident Assistant (RA) on each floor.  She and she alone would determine if we were doing everything right.
There was a demerit system.  You could get demerits for not making your bed by 9AM, for not wearing shoes in your room, for not wearing a skirt to dinner, for being sloppy, and it would turn out just for being me.
She was judge, jury and it turned out, wannabe executioner.  Lois the RA was German.
She took an immediate like to Melanie.  Everything about Melanie screamed “affluent, good girl, fun, easy.”  Everything about me screamed “rule breaker, bad, maybe stupid, possibly poor but those clothes she wears….”  I wanted to be like Melanie, god did I want to be.
Orientation was more fun than I expected it to be.  When I was buying my books an older boy, much older stared then smiled at me.  I was scared to smile back but I did.
Melanie and I made some sort of truce during orientation.  I wanted her to like me and did everything in my power to make myself likable.
But the truth was most girls didn’t like me.  I had a few girlfriends but most people who talked to me were boys.
We went home for the rest of the summer.  It was the summer of the Chicago Convention.  Vile.  Horrible.  My parents had practically locked me in the house so I wouldn’t go with friends I had made earlier that summer.  It was for my own safety my parents assured me.  I was angry at them but secretly glad I wasn’t there.  Yet I should have been.  It was so conflicting.  For the rest of her life, my mother a non-crier, would cry whenever she saw anything about the Chicago Convention.  “You could have been killed.  Or worse.”  Worse meaning brain damage.  If they had only known how damaged my seemingly good brain really was.
I don’t know how to talk about non verbal learning disorder in this memoir. I can only show what I was like and maybe at the end of the book put in a chapter that explains how my behavior, in each chapter,  was infuenced by NLD.  I don’t know.
The rest of the summer was spent getting ready for school.  My mother and I went to Floyd’s a discount store near our house and spent $40 on health and beauty aids as they were just beginning to be called.  It seemed like a fortune to me then.  We filled up two giant shopping bags.
We went to Loehmanns and bought clothes my mother liked.  Fortunately my mother had good taste, and was proud of my figure.  I knew most girls I would like would basically wear bell bottoms with cotton peasant blouses.  I could get the bell bottoms from my parents store along with an endless variety of tee shirts.  But I was into dressing up.  I wasn’t the bell bottom kind of hippie but the Indian print dress type.  I managed to make all the clothes my mother bought at Loehmann’s into some sort of hippie atire by pairing dresses with pants and/or putting a Mexican rope belt on.
I managed to make myself stand out.
Finally school began.  My parents drove me and I couldn’t wait until they left. They stayed and stayed.  Finally just before nightfall they left.  I kissed them good bye.  Walked out of the room and began to make myself a life.

Comments

  1. Jae Rose says

    My Melanie was called Alice – there’s one everywhere isn’t there..I love the comment about not wanting men (or anyone) to notice you but feeling lost when nobody sees you at all – so true if your 18 or 38! I hope that life you stepped into was great..Jae

  3. Janet Aldrich (tec4) says

    I really like your writing; I remember those times, even though I was younger. It was a confusing time to be alive, let alone to have to deal with what was going on for you personally. Good work.

  7. Bone says

    There was a demerit system. You could get demerits for not making your bed by 9AM…. for being sloppy

    I think I dated her 🙂 Oh wait.

    Very much enjoyed this. And a perfect ending, to this chapter.

  8. Terry says

    Pia – I had no idea that Courting Destiny was up and running again! Great to see you writing. I love the way your words flow out, just as they would if you were sitting here across the table from me, over a cup of coffee. Whoo hoo hippie girl 🙂

  9. Doug says

    Schools like that are really real?

    Small editorial request: Can we get an empty space between the introduction and the story. For some reasons it catches me up this way.

  12. pia says

    @Janet Aldrich (tec4)
    Janet–yes it was confusing but fun. I didn’t know I had problems thought I was very clumsy, kind of stupid in some areas and brilliant in others and blamed everything else on the times. Still do

  13. pia says

    @Nara Malone
    Nara I never thought of them as “social politics” but as times that needed changing and was always proud to be part of the solution–just a little. I mean I helped just a little. Didn’t end the war myself as has been rumored

  15. pia says

    @TC
    TC thanks for asking. I really hope hope hope to have it altogether in a month or so. My lack of organizational skills have been playing havoc with it.
    It’s so not laziness or unwilling to do the final work or anything like that. I think I have worked harder and longer than many people who have been published recently. end of rant 🙂

  18. pia says

    @Doug
    Doug–oh this is just the beginning of the RA and the roommate story and what they tried to do to me. Just the beginning
    And thanks. your wish is my command

  19. cooper says

    I’m loving this, but I feel that Doug wields way too much power around here for someone who does not blog.

  20. pia says

    @cooper
    As usual you’re right but I spent the day staring at it and thinking “I really should make this more readable.”
    So the power is in his head and my allowing him to think it

  23. Karen says

    Pia!

    I read your comment at Terry’s Timeout and I agree! Why save love and peace for December? Whoo hoo hippie girl – Happy holidays!