Letters to My Girl

High School

What a roller-coaster. Simultaneously the bane of my existence and my home away from home. I participated in as many extracurricular activities as wouldn't overlap with one another. I was on the junior varsity tennis team, in marching, jazz, pep, and concert bands, Madrigal choir, regular choir, dance team and 4-H, to name a few.

I am a member of the National Honor Society, wrote a Noh theater musical score for my Honors English teacher's adaptation of Ernest Ferlita's "The Mask of Hiroshima," played Antigone in the school production of Oedipus Rex, was slated to recite Ophelia's suicidal soliloquy during Shakespeare week (but my mind went blank during the performance and I apologized and left the stage,) had a xylophone solo during a jazz concert, and was interviewed later by a Good Morning America correspondant during a Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival in Cœur d'Alene because I was one of only three students in the whole festival who played them. Lionel Hampton played the xylophone, and incidentally, he died 6 days before your second birthday.

I had the biggest crush on David Bowie in his role as the Goblin King in the movie "Labyrinth." I happened to be home alone when it aired on tv, and I fell head over heels, for both him and the movie. I was in the drama club and the after school Latin American art class. A lot of my teachers allowed me to use work I'd done in one class to count for work in another, like how the stoneware Romeo and Juliet surrounded by ocean waves I sculpted in art class got me an A+ in my English class during Shakespeare week. My teachers loved me, and there wasn't one I didn't like.

My sisters hated attending the same school, because any teacher of a class I took before they did called them "Cori" by mistake. My second sister had the same problem as she did at home: she was called my name, then my first sister's name, before finally remembering hers. Probably the only benefit of being the eldest.

School was only the bane of my existence because of the bullies, and the fact that each boyfriend I had (a different one each year) dumped me the day before Valentine's Day. Thrilling. Because of my mother, and being grounded most of the year, I wasn't easy to date, but the day before Valentine's? Really? Then there were the boys who said they wanted to date me, but weren't allowed to "date outside their religion." Yay. Speaking of religion, because Weiser is a Mormon town, during slow dances, we were required to dance "the width of 3 books of Mormon" between us. Chaperones would stop couples, and physically pull them away from one another if they danced closer. Creepy.

My first high school dance, I mostly danced by myself or with friends, but a couple of times, I asked a guy to dance. No one I didn't date ever asked me to dance, so I did the asking. As we danced, somehow we escaped the chaperones' notice, because he held me close, my cheek pressed firmly to his chest. After the dance, I went to put on my denim jacket, and my first sister's future first husband came up and asked me if I liked the guy I danced with. In those days, it was how someone asked if you would date someone. I played it cool, popping my collar up and down before replying "He's okay." On the drive home, my mother excitedly chattered and asked how the dance was. I mumbled about how it was fun, but I was busy marveling at how my cheek was still warm from being pressed against his chest during the last slow dance.

We dated briefly, and then he dated my sisters, which was awkward as hell. I found out later from the one sister who didn't date him that he and his stepbrother tried to date all the sisters and cousins from a single family, as often as they could. Lovely, wasn't it?

During the week of my 16th birthday, I was holding his hand, walking through the halls when my best friend ran up, gave him a card, mumbled that it was a Christmas card and she'd bring me mine later, then ran off. I trusted her, so I barely gave it another thought. That turned out to be an invitation to the surprise Sweet 16 party my mother threw for me. I had no idea.