As I sat in my last class of the day, Algebra II, which was not only my most despised subject but also the one that I was remarkably inept in, my eyes drifted from the nonsensical letters and numbers on the board to the windows that lined the left wall. The thick, beige vinyl shades were wound tightly just below the ceiling, giving me an unencumbered view of the field where the Mighty Marching Beaver Band were marching silently, so as not to disturb the classes on that side of the building. I always found their soundless practices disconcerting.
As I watched the band major, with her frizzy hair popping out of her tall, maroon hat, conduct them to high step into a questionable B, I noticed that the sun had finally planted its heels and pushed its way through the indelible dirty mop water colored sky. By the time the last bell rang out, the day would have qualified as mostly sunny.
I pushed through the rowdy, hormonally-charged crowd and gathered my books from my locker before heading out the front door to survey the carpool line. As my mom cracked open her first of many cans of Coke that morning, she said that she would try to pick me up, but she couldn’t make any promises because “she had a lot of sh*t going on”.
She wasn’t there and that meant I had to walk. I actually liked walking on days like that one, but the walkers were personae non gratae and subjected to an assortment of teenage harassment.
I hid out by one of the trashcans and let the parking lot clear out. I watched upperclassman pile into their Jeeps and Honda Civics, blasting Bob Marley and The Steve Miller Band. The rednecks, at least those those lucky enough to have daddies who still had a job in the mines, did burnouts in their pick-up trucks decorated with gun racks and Confederate flags in the rear window.
Even with the sun shining, there was still a chill bouncing between the Appalachian Mountains that had been left weary after they were raped for their coal. Now, they hovered like a gaggle of overbearing mothers on a playground. But, they also breathed out an air of freedom and hope.
For me, the approaching creep of spring brought the hope that I would finally be invited on the mountain.
The mountain was, well, still is, East River Mountain, the looming, tunneled-through centerpiece of my arthritic hometown. Before the scenic overlook was installed in an attempt to attract tourists, the top of East River was home to a lone graffiti-covered abandoned building with the hackneyed nickname, Hotel California. That is where on warm Friday and Saturday nights the popular kids, in their United Colors of Benetton and polo horse emblazoned shirts, went to funnel crappy beer, smoke shake and cop feels before barreling down from some 3,500 feet above sea level to hit up the newly built Micky D’s.
Throughout the bleak winter, I had worked diligently at ditching my nerdy friends that had no aspirations of joining the upper echelon of Bluefield High School power players. I missed going to their clean house that smelled like potpourri for sleepovers. Their moms would bake us Bagel Bits and pizza rolls and we would chug Jolt cola so that we could stay up late watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Saturday Night Live. However, I already had my white trash origins to overcome I couldn’t let nerdy friends be another obstacle in my long term goal – to drink lukewarm Natty Light with a bunch of kids who wore boat shoes in the middle of coal country.
As I walked, I grimaced and nodded my head to the booming bass of Straight Outta Compton pumping out of my coveted yellow DiscMan.
I fancied myself edgy and urbane – back then.
Back then, I would have also told you that that day’s sunshine turned out to be incongruous because I had just learned that word and my English teacher had said that you had to use a word three time to make it you own. I desperately wanted to make it my own because I was insufferable when it came to fifty-cent words. More than 20 years have passed since that day and I’ve learned a few things during that time.
For instance, despite ownership, using words like incongruous in everyday conversation makes you an a**hole. And, no matter how expertly I lip-synched grimy words like, When I’m called off, I got a sawed off/Squeeze the trigger and bodies are hauled off, I was just a dorky white girl who still talked to Blueberry, my childhood imaginary friend, and got spankings on a regular basis.
However, call me an insufferable **shole all you want, ‘cause the sunshine that day was most certainly incongruous. It shouldn’t be bright and sunny with spring’s hopeful arrival teasing your senses on the shittiest day of a short life already overflowing with shitty days. Hell no. On the day that you watch your mom get carted off to jail for buying a couple grand worth of drugstore heroin from an undercover informant, you need to be standing in a torrential downpour with the Nina Simone version of I Think It’s Going to Rain Today swelling in the background. You need the end of Blade Runner. You need somewhere for your tears to get lost.
Soshally Awkward
Sosha Lewis is a writer whose work has been featured in The Washington Post, Huffington Post, MUTHA Magazine and The Charlotte Observer. She writes about her sometimes wild, sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking past filled with free-lunches, a grimy sports bar, a six foot tall Albino woman who tried to save her teenage soul, felonious, drug addicted parents, an imaginary friend named Blueberry and growing up nestled in the coal-dusted mountains of West Virginia.
