My first day of high school ever!

Intrigued? Well, here’s what happened. I hadn’t had much breakfast, being nervous, so during first period I started chewing on my nails, as is my habit when I’m hungry. I chewed and nibbled and tugged and yanked as hard as my teeth were able, but my nails would not come off! What was more, they tasted strange. That was when I realized I had probably accidentally put on Mom’s nail-strengthening polish instead of my special meat tenderizer solution. I always get those two bottles mixed up.

I wasn’t about to give up on my nails, though. I gripped the bottom of my desk tightly with my right hand while tensing up every muscle in my body, hoping to tear the nails off by group bodily effort. It might have worked if I had thought to work on one nail at a time, but I was really hungry. So there I was, shaking my desk noisily as I tugged, when all of a sudden my stomach blurted out, “I hate nails!” That shook me up. I looked around, hoping no one had noticed, but the guy on my right was looking at me with one squinted eyeball, while his other eyeball was expanding like an embryo. I shuddered to think that he had heard my stomach talk, but when he mouthed to the guy on my left, all he mouthed was, “She’s ugly.” I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

However, that was not my only dilemma for the day. I forgot my lunch, which was okay since it seemed to be a tradition for the students to forego lunch on the first day of school for the sake of dancing, clapping, and swatting stray fireflies to the rhythm of a rented cola jukebox. Eager to establish my popularity, I took my abnormally heavy purse to the jukebox to request a song, but when I opened my purse all I found inside were smooth round gray and white stones. I remembered that I had put them in my purse to give it body after it had been crushed beneath my laptop, but no sooner had I remembered this and turned my purse over to make sure the bottom seams were still intact when all the stones came pouring out at once, on my feet.
I managed to leave the cafeteria before anyone came by to make me clean it up.

Potential band members met up with the director right after lunch. I played my flute off key like crazy, but I had two good excuses--I was starving AND I was sitting next to this blond guy who would have been cute if he hadn’t had such a glary, stary face and such an obsession for playing his trumpet with the mouthpiece tucked under his armpit. An oboist on my other side kept laughing and covering her mouth with her hand, and I first thought she was laughing at him, but then I wondered why she bothered covering her mouth when she just kept laughing more blatantly. Finally I realized that she was using her laughter and hand-covering to obscure her true purpose: middle-finger nose-picking. I told her I could see right through her act, but she just laughed it off. The band director seemed to like me for the mere fact that I'm a redhead like him and my dad (who teaches at the school) told me to compliment him on his goatee.

Oh, and I dare not forget to mention that I developed a crush as quickly as I could manage before the school day began, and after band I contrived to have a head-on collision with the object of my affections. I believe we also knocked knees and his flailing arms at one point wrapped all the way around me. I conveniently dropped all my stuff, which included pages of classroom doodles with such sentiments as, “I love MP,” “I love MP2,” and “I love MP3.” His name was Matthew Pierce, his glossy gray hair hung down in waves so far down his face that I couldn’t see his nose, and he had the most pristine sneakers, khakis and shirt I’d ever seen. He looked like somebody I could get.

Upon recovery, he picked up the book I'm currently reading, Life Pus, and said, “You like this book? It’s my favorite. You must be the girl of my dreams. Let’s get married tomorrow at exactly 12:61 FM.”

Despite my desire to say "EEEEEEEEEEE!" I instead recited my rehearsed response: "I'd love to Matthew darling."

At the end of the day I waved good-bye to Matthew, who paused several times as he walked away to pose with his head tilted and his hair hanging over his pristine grin. Then I waited around the front door of the school for my dad to come along. When he did, he put his arm around me to give me half a hug and half a pat on the shoulder, saying, “Jolly, Matthew Pierce is the new principal. She's also a woman. She thought you were the band director. She told me so.”

I am totally tweezing out all my chin hairs as soon as I finish this entry.

By the time we got home, I was so hungry I started eating my flute, but I had to open my big fat mouth and say it was delicious, and course Dad told me to stop eating it cuz it was expensive, bla bla bla. He was crabby that day, complaining that Whitey’s tail tag infection was causing her to morph into a squirrel. I’ll never figure out how she licked that tail tag off.