I remember the first time I met Laurel.  It was in the locker room when Suzy asked her about the homecoming dance--Laurel laughed in what I would later easily recognize as her "I'm really awkward around you because this is a weird situation and I'm not good at pretending it's not!" laugh, but which I easily mistook for upperclassmen sophistication.  Suzy later whispered to me that Laurel had a crush on ---------; I would forget who she was until the next year when Suzy made a comment about her being the Girl's Bible Study club leader at school.  Which leads to the meaty bits of this entry for 2005--it's not so much about Laurel's year, but her reverberating effects that played a role in my year.

Laurel had been the first leader of GBS that I had met; she was the president of the only club I ever joined in high school.  She reliably showed up and took center stage of Mrs. Hertzig's classroom on whatever day it was that we met for the Good Girls' Club, talking about some topic or other about Jesus or a disciple or something.  I wasn't ever really sure what the topics were at GBS; I'm pretty sure this was the case even during my year when I lead.  Still, when it was time for her to leave, in typical Laurel fashion she let out the "Awkward/Weird Situation/Go Away!" laugh over the decision of who would replace her, and so four girls took her place because as we all know, young Christian girls are all greedy for power.  And in turn, when it came time for these 4 girls to be replaced, they made a sweeping motion of their arms over the all the girls in the first row and declared them president.  One girl had been to maybe 3 meetings total, and she rubbed her hands together gleefully over this good fortune that would look excellent on her college applications. 

Now, apparently, half the club had become president.  And as you might expect, I terribly despised one of the girls.  I wanted to kick her out of my life junior year because I felt her presence had somehow caused a force of sheer bitchery to arise from some hidden depths of teenage girldom that we had somehow pushed aside in our niceties before she had shown up.  Maybe it wasn't her, maybe it was that we girls just had gotten to the point where we were realizing we were only really friends of convenience, and that acknowledgment was a terribly lonely thing.  Still, even though seeing this girl's face made me want to punch random things in the stomach, I was still at the point where I was too self-righteous to see my own hypocrisy.  

Still, we were all forced to be leaders together, and as I had the most authority (read: pounds per inch), I was the one to take control of the first meeting.  In my mind, I called on Pretend Laurel for some advice to ease my nerves, since she was the ever ready image of a self-confident senior.

"Just be yourself!" Pretend Laurel said with a wink and a smile.

"Ohhh, no, that's a really bad idea," I responded.

"Do you like picnics?"  P.L. asked with a tilt of the head.

"What?  What's that got to do with anything?"

"Sometimes, the best remedy for everything is 'My Sassy Girl'."  She said sagely.

"No, dammit, that doesn't make any sense!"  I never swear in person, but I'm a sailor in my own mind. Also, I decided this was a good time to let Pretend Laurel go back to somewhere or other in non-existence land.

"Nothing personal," I muttered.

"None taken!"  Yeah, okay.

Surprisingly, the meeting went extraordinarily well, and we had more members than I had ever seen in the club.  However, every consequent meeting got worse and worse (probably because none of the presidents really wanted to be around each other, and that usually doesn't bode well for groups that are supposed to be filled with love and kindness) until finally the teacher's strike led to the disbanding of clubs.  We fluttered around in vain for awhile before finally letting it die.  The relaxation probably helped our friendship a bit; we would all chuckle occasionally about "those dang teachers" and their weak strike tactics.  

Graduation eventually led this over-achiever to the local community college, where the 2005 of spring felt like a different entity than the 2005 of fall.  Then, suddenly, one day on campus I ran into a familiar redhead.  Well, it wasn't so suddenly, as the clear walkways announced her embarrassed furrowed brow a good 40 feet away.

"You?"  I asked in confusion.  I wasn't certain, but I was pretty sure she had been valedictorian and the school mascot and the GBS president and the leader of one of the dance teams.  

"Oh...hey," she said with that laugh, but by this time I better understood what it meant.  

I've learned since that sometimes she's here and sometimes she's not.  It doesn't necessarily mean anything one way or another, it's just a fact of life.  You take advantage of it while you can, and I have since then tricked her into being my friend when she's around.  Just last week, actually, Laurel and I pretended to be girlfriends (like, you know, real girlfriends--the kind who flush contraceptives down the toilet), mainly because of my own insecurities about being around a boy that I just don't know what to think about (Or as Laurel put it, "Whatever, you can both be wishy-washy if you want").   I think that's one of the reasons she was so many things in high school (not because she was a closeted lesbian; I'm getting to the real point riiiiight....now-->)--not because she was necessarily an over-achiever, but because she constantly seeks change in her life; she needs a constantly updated and unique adventure, she's pretty much talented at everything, and she's not particularly good at saying no.  Of course, I could be completely wrong, but I don't really give a shit (see, it's a terrible shame, really) because people are always coming up with new explanations of why they do what they do, and no one really wants to be confined to one definition of who they are, so if I'm wrong, I'm wrong.  I think Laurel would agree with me, even if it's not really because she wants to.

about the author:

     Jill Equality Nelson owns five boxes of cap’n crunch right now...well, four.  After winning Fullerton College, Jillian went to UCLA where she got a degree in being pretty, or japanese, but probably communications.

by

jill

nelson