Friday, I left work early and picked up Lila from kindergarten. Then we walked the two blocks to the high school to attend a parents' dinner with my 16-year-old son Marshall and the rest of the high school football team.
I was actually looking forward to a chance to hang out with my kids and eat a catered meal. Lila and I walked in, found Marshall and put our stuff down. Marshall and two of his friends were already eating. They laughed when they saw us. I thought it was maybe because Lila was wearing her giant backpack with 10 clip-on hand sanitizers dangling from it. She is pretty funny with her backpack on.
As we got our food and sat down, the boys were still giggling but trying not to. They glanced at me and giggled again. What the hell was so funny? I did a quick check of my clothing. Buttons were buttoned. My skirt wasn't tucked into my pantyhose. Sitting at that cafeteria table, I instantly remembered how much I'd hated high school (so much so that I'd skipped my senior year and began college a year early). In the time it took to pick up my fork, I became an awkward 14-year-old around a group of football players, the popular guys. Not that they ever would've let me sit at their table back in the day.
And you know what's silly? In that cafeteria, I looked for a familiar face. Not a familiar face from my current group of friends, but a familiar face from high school--my high school hundreds of miles away from 25 years ago. I looked for my friend Rodney from the academic team. I looked for Patti, Mert and Tanya. None of us were cheerleaders and we didn't make the homecoming court, but there was no one else I wanted in my corner more at that moment. I took a deep breath, focused my attention on opening a bottle of water as slowly as possible and willed myself not to cry. Maybe I'd had a crappy day at the office, maybe it was hormones, maybe I was sick of taking Claritin for my allergies.
As I sat there in front of my untouched food, I knew, logically, that my almost-40 self could cut these 16-year-olds down to size. The big sister part of me wanted to say, "Got your learner's permit yet? Yeah, well, I can vote, buy beer and rent a car. Boom." Emotionally, however, I was reduced to a girl without a date to the prom. If Lila hadn't been with me, I would've left, just slipped through the side door while Marshall had his back to me.
Feeling like a teenager while sitting there with my own teenager provided lots of conflicting "Freaky Friday" emotions. Finally, the adult part of me prevailed and asked, "So, uh, Marshall, are you going to introduce me to your friends?" What I really wanted to say was, "Can I talk to you outside for a minute?"
And just when I thought I'd had enough, the coach announced, "I'd like each parent to stand up and say how proud you are of your son." Seriously, coach, now you want this 14-year-old girl to do some extemporaneous speaking? Although I'm very proud of my son 95% of the time, I wasn't proud of him in that moment. I don't remember what I said, but the popular boys giggled throughout. And, because I didn't want to embarrass him in front of his friends and because I didn't want to ruin his last game of the season, I saved that "Can I talk to you outside for a minute?" conversation for the next day. And I did allow myself to cry then. And I did accept his apology.
A couple years ago, I heard a comedienne say, "All of us are trying to get over something that happened to us in eighth grade." Sitting in the audience, I laughed in agreement. Then I stopped to listen. Everyone else was laughing, too. How did they know how awful eighth grade was? Maybe some of the parents in that cafeteria felt just as uncomfortable as I did. Several moms sat together while their boys ate several tables away. Maybe a couple of those dads who got choked up talking about their sons did so out of sadness instead of pride. Maybe we were all just acting like a bunch of eighth-graders.
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