Senior Hotness (or should I say, Senorita Hotness?)

When Liz at A Belle, A Bean, and a Chicago Dog shared her high school senior photo for all of blogdom, she also proposed we all share our senior hotness and do a linkup.

how fabulous is this?

To which I said, GENIUS! Because she is. She really, really is.

My official senior portraits have a bit of a backstory. I'd had braces since like 1927 so I really, really didn't want to have braces in my photos. So my orthodontist, who was THE coolest ortho ever (he was. don't even try to front.), took my braces off just for the photos and put them back on after. Like I said, coolest ever.

So the big day came and I was all brace free, but my skin broke out pretty badly and no amount of Cover Girl was helping this girl. Nonetheless, I slathered on the makeup and off I went. When the photos came back, I HATED THEM. I cried. I thought I just looked so awful. I bawled. The world was over. I might die of THE HORROR! THE HORROR!

Of course, looking back, I may have just been that special brand of insane reserved exclusively for teenagers. Plus I was probably on my period. Just sayin'.

Well my mom ordered her favorites anyway and then we waited like 6 months for the actual photos. Little did I know, the photographers touch those babies up. So my acne-riddled photos turned out like this:

(sorry, all I had were wallet sizes to scan)

I was seriously not that cute in high school, I swears. But I will take the credit for the shiny hair. I've always had good hair.

But the second photo? My mother ordered a HUGE canvas print of the kind billionaires hang above mantles in their castles. Which they delivered to the school. And I had to carry around all day. Oh yes. I think I maybe even had to take the bus home that day. And before you think that's cute, remember that my mom is INSANE and she was so stoked that I was humiliated. Thought it was hilarious. Told everyone she knew.

For the record, so you know how I really looked in high school, I'll show you my senior ID:

Yup. That's a little more accurate. Though I didn't wear flowers on my head every day. Just for special occasions. Like ID picture day.

  

And here's my favorite photo from senior year of high school:

 

That's from prom. My date there was one of my very best friends who happened to be on-fire-gay. However, he got the brilliant idea to bleach his eyebrows the night before prom so they would match his hair. No. Just no. Bad gay. Bad. 

Wasn't my dress gorgeous? My aunt in a stunning act of generosity beyond her means bought it for me. It was crocheted with a cream lining and so everyone all night asked if I was naked under the crocheted layer. "Yes," I said, "I came naked to prom. Right." The only thing I remember being wrong about the dress was it was too big in the boobs (as was all my clothing) and I had to get it taken in. 

Now you show me yours. Don't forget to link up!

Flashback: Montessori School

My memory is funky. So many childhood memories I've buried or are fuzzy. But others? Clear as if they were yesterday.

I went to a Montessori school from preschool through 1st grade (you're understanding why I'm so brilliant now aren't you?). And we had this huge play area/ farm area with animals at the back of the school, which was really an old house.

So I remember it was snowing (a once or twice a winter occurrence in the desert) and our teacher let us go outside to play in the snow. I headed for the swings with my friends Tawnya and Heidi. For some reason, Heidi fell out of the swing, or maybe she jumped, and got a bloody nose.

I can still remember the blood on the snow, how I felt terrified and disgusted and fascinated by it. How stark it was against the new, white powder.

I also had a torrid affair at Montessori School. Raul was in first grade and I was in kindergarten. And we were very much in love. He'd save a space for me at combined classes or lunch. We'd meet on the playground. There was this wooden tree-house type thing. You could climb the many steps and go up high to this veranda-type area. We'd go up there and lean on the railing and hold hands, overlooking the beautiful view of the playground and planning our future.

But our school only went to first grade and when Raul graduated, we broke up. Long distance relationships just never work.

Years later, in high school, I ran into Raul again. Needless to say my taste in men had changed quite a bit since kindergarten. I also went back to the school and that tree house was actually pretty low to the ground, not actually the high veranda I'd remembered.
 
Funny how that happens.

Actually, I was quite the slut at Montessori School. The first time I learned not to choose boys over friends was in first grade. This new boy, Neil, came to school and I just thought he was the cutest. He was the son of one of our teachers and he was just visiting for a week. He was in second grade too! I loved the older men back then. Plus he liked me!

I always ate lunch with my best friend Tawnya, but Neil asked me to eat lunch with him. So I ditched Tawnya for Neil.

So wrong.

Well of course I hurt Tawnya's feelings and that made me feel badly. I didn't want to hurt my friend or make her cry. So I said I was sorry and vowed never to ditch a friend for a boy again. And I haven't. Things didn't last long with Neil anyway, because he inevitably had to go back to his own school. See, ladies? Boys come and go but friendships are forever.

That is until KC came to our school. KC was also a first grader and every girl liked him. Every. One. Of. Us. We all fought over the poor guy. My mom loves to tell the story of when she came to pick me up from school one day and found three of us literally tearing the boy apart, each of us pulling on one of his limbs.

What can I say? We were a little boy crazy at the Montessori School.

We also got into a little trouble.

There was this spot behind the school that always, inexplicably, always had a puddle. Well this spot would ice over in winter and we'd all try to "ice skate" on it with our tennis shoes. Of course we always got in trouble for it, but we always kept trying. The lure was always too tempting.

Without getting into how awesome the school was (I would so put my future kids in Montessori school), we did some pretty cool things. Such as pet day. Every kid brought their own pets for the day (parents supervised) and I was so stoked to bring my dog Sammy.

My firefighter dad brought the fire engine once and the kids climbed all over it (I was very popular that week).

The school had farm animals too. Goats and chickens are what I remember most.

I got to school one day and the goat wasn't there. So I asked the teacher's aid what happened. She solemnly replied, "He passed." I was like, huh? So I asked my teacher. She told me he died. I was like oooooooooh, well I know what THAT means. Yeash.

Then there was this rooster. This mean ass rooster. So someone (I don't know who) gets the idea that if they can get this rooster out of its cage and play with it, it'll get nicer. Clearly this person knew shit about roosters.

Because everyone was scared of this mean ass rooster, my dad volunteers to tame the rooster (meaning my mom probably volunteered him). He keeps trying to get the rooster out and hold him but he keeps attacking my dad. I have a clear memory of my dad chasing this damn rooster around trying to catch him. I guess it was best when the rooster attacked, because then my dad would just grab its feet and shove him back in his cage.

I also had to call my dad to confirm this story and he remembers it the same. Neither of us remembers what happened to the rooster. We assume they just sold him. But I think one of the teachers took him home for dinner.

Funny the things you remember.

I think this was a Valentine's Day picnic. I'm the one with the turquoise, red, and white sweater with white skirt.

burning bras

When I was a teenager, I fell in love with the sixties. Really, I did.

I didn't stand much of a chance. I was raised listening to my mom's British Invasion records and my dad loved Joplin and Hendrix and Iron Butterfly. *sigh* These were the sounds of my youth.

I was a teenager smack dab in the middle of grunge. It was the mid-nineties. Everyone wore plaid and No Fear and Doc Martens. Kate Moss sat listless on Calvin Klein posters looking like she'd just shot up. Garage bands were the regular thing (interestingly, I love nineties rock now). Nobody got excited or worked up about anything. Desert Storm had ended and the Twin Towers were still intact. There was nothing, from my peers' perspectives, to get worked up about.

I was bored. I wanted to do something important. Make a statement.

Somehow in these years, I discovered the sixties. Partly because of my fascination with my dad's photos from Vietnam (he was drafted in 1969) and partly the music (my first CD was Sgt. Peppers) and I decided I was born in the wrong decade.

I sought out anything having to do with the sixties and then the seventies (pre-disco years). I watched Full Metal Jacket and 1969 over and over. I watched footage of protests at Berkeley and DC and the Watts Riots. I discovered feminism and Civil Rights and politics. I read Gloria Steinem, 1984, and the Communist Manifesto religiously. I wore Grateful Dead shirts, an MIA bracelet my mom wore during Vietnam, and an old fireman's jacket of my dad's that I tie dyed and covered in patches. I devoured the ideas and ideologies of the time.

But the biggest affectations were the ones that pissed my mom off. I stopped wearing makeup (because it was suppression by The Man, don't you know) and stopped wearing bras (not that I had much to hold up anyway). I owned one bra in those years-the one my mom made me wear to church. All my friends knew if it was a truly cold day because I'd be clutching my braless chest, trying to keep my girls warm. I stopped doing anything with my hair (other than braiding in beads) because long and tangly was apparently a protest of some kind against traditional feminine aesthetic beauty.

So it should come as no surprise that I went to fashion school in 2001 and worked in lingerie for 3 years. The sixties will always have a special place in my heart. But, now bras and brushes are regular staples in my life. Aren't you glad?

Update: by request, a photo of me in high school:

This is the only one I could find that was scanned already.

I'm the one on the right. The other is best friend and new roommate Lynnette.

 As you can see, this is the beginning of my hippie-ish faze 

(I was still working on growing out my hair). 

I'm wearing bellbottoms and my aunt's leather vest that she bought in 

San Francisco in the sixties.