Today I received a Instagram message from Grace – sent to me and three other girls who had been in our fiercely fabulous adolescent girl-posey. We used to refer to ourselves as the “Fab 5.” We all belonged to the same church, and our “MO” had been playing anonymous pranks on other church members (as well wreaking havoc on church property at 2am. But that’s a whole other story). Unsurprisingly, only two of the five members of our gang have remained church-goers today.
Grace insta-messaged a few screen-shots of some old notes that we had written to each other during summer church convention services when we were 14. We used to distract ourselves from preachers’ monotone sermons – about how Moses led the Israelites to the promise land and Jesus turned water to wine and whatnot – by writing little scribbles on each other’s notepads.
Generally these notes consisted of who was crushing on who. Sometimes, they were commentary on some poor old man sitting in the row in front of us who had fallen asleep and was snoring. This obviously merited little tickles of grass on the back of his neck so that he would wake up with a start assuming he was being attacked by bees. Other times, we would co-write poems about each other for the purpose of inducing fits of unsuccessfully stifled giggles.
When I read the poem that had been co-written about me, I found it equally as funny as it was mortifying. I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. The funny/sad thing is that my current text messages are still along this same vein:
“Umm, this dude just torpedoed.”
“Yep, shit-can him. Onward and upward girl.”
Here is the poem about 14-year-old me, co-written by Grace and I:
Grace wrote:
Beatrix oh Beatrix how crazy can she be
She’s going out with Chris even though he’s quite ugly
At first we thought great
He’ll make an awesome date
But we quickly changed our mind
He just wasn’t her kind
He jumped girl to girl
It made us all hurl
He was not only nasty, but also quite mean
He was a peasant and she was a queen
I wrote:
One day she awoke bolt upright in bed
The truth had descended upon her dense head
That this slobbery, good for nothing, biting dog
This lunatic, psychotic, flea-infested hog
Was a jerk-and-a-half
So with an evil laugh
She wrote a letter about how she did feel
That she couldn’t handle the “long distance ordeal”
Grace wrote:
In truth she didn’t want Chris for her man
She rather preferred a cutie named Ben
Who lived a hundred hours in the other direction
And Chris was left to rot in all his perplexion
I just want to say, Chris and I are, to this day, Facebook friends and he has a gazillion kids with his French wife (so I think he swiftly got over me).
Also, I really think that Grace and I should reunite and co-write a poetry book.
Finally, the fact that I was referring to guys as “lunatic, psychotic, flee-infested hogs” when I was 14 is somewhat worrisome, and pretty much explains why I am still single.
I should have just married “the cutie named Ben” from the poem. He was nice. He now has two kids and is still a devout Christian.
I guess I have forever been, and will forever be, a renegade. It’s not always an easy identity to live up to, but I have had a lot of fun along the way. Also, I’m still looking for my partner in crime, so bring him on universe. I promise I’ll write nice love poems from now on!
I love it.