School Days

Sitting down to breakfast this morning, I recognized the handwriting on the card even though the return address was covered up.  The same handwriting that was on so many of those notes we passed back and forth during school days.  I would recognize it anywhere.  It was Diane's, one of my oldest and dearest friends, having met when we were just starting junior high when we shared the same bus from the elementary school to the high school.  We have remained close friends ever since.  She was there when Shannon was born.  We shared our first apartment together.  She received her cosmetology license before graduating from high school and was the first to cut my long hair into a short pageboy like Tennille's of Captain and Tennille.  I went to my first concert, America, with her.  I was there when Charlie rode up on his motorcycle trying to steal her away.  I was maid of honor in her wedding and have the pictures of tripping and putting my hat back into place with my necklace still askew, to prove it, and she was maid of honor at mine.  We have a long history together and I think anyone that is interested in our high school antics would like to know one particular story about us.

We decided to skip class one day and thought we'd spend our great adventure in the "ladies room" instead of class.  Why?  I couldn't tell you.  Who knows why kids do the things they do?  Anyway, here we were in the ladies room, the first place the office personnel would check every hour and we knew it.  We had to make a plan of excuse or the next day we would be in trouble for not having a pink slip to get back into class.  The plan was one of us would pretend to be crying, as the other one was consoling, over the loss of a boyfriend.

I said something to this effect, "Diane, I will have to be the one crying or you know I will laugh.  You will have to be the serious one because you can control yourself better..."  Then, I went into play-rolling with my head in my hands pretending to cry just as the office secretary entered the room.  Diane was so cool.  She instantly went into action, patting my back and saying, "it will be alright, Linda...," as she explained to the secretary about the sorry sap that had dared to break my heart. With my head still in my hands, I started laughing so hard my body was jerking as the tears flew, much as I am doing right now just recalling the incident.  The guttural sounds spewing forth from me and the gasps for air, could very easily have been a young person in the agony of gut wrenching pain rather than the uncontrolled laughter of a teenager.  It was so compelling. The similarity between  responses evoked from different ends of the spectrum could clearly be seen here.

The poor secretary, having witnessed such devastating emotions, readily gave us a pink slip the next morning to return to class without penalty, leaving us in wild exhilaration over the most dramatic day.