"The memories of childhood have no order, and no end"

I was friended this week on Facebook by a girl I went to high school with. I haven't seen her in 35 years, and certainly she's a woman by now, but in my mind she will always be a girl--tall and strong, with long, thick, butter-colored hair that I deeply envied.

And with that quick memory comes a memory of myself in those days--short, fuzzy-headed, with a serious expression, squinting through glasses that were far too big for my small face. 

I almost never think about school, but when I do it takes very little to provoke intense, sharp fragments of memories. There's no order, no narrative line, just shards. Vivid shards.

I remember the long, crowded hallways, the smell of sweat and too much deodorant, the banging of the locker doors, the teachers standing outside their classrooms in their chalky-elbow suits, hollering at us all to slow down as we jostled past, a surging sea of hormones and laughter and cruelty.

I remember going to a dance in the fall of tenth grade, spending hours beforehand getting my hair just so, smooth from the middle part on down, flipped up at the ends, only to have it all explode into frizz the minute I stepped out into the humid, breezy night. I remember the sharp feeling of dismay and fear. How will this work when I'm a grownup? I wondered. How will I ever look normal, with this terrible, impossible hair?

At the dance, nobody danced. The girls milled around in a heightened state of thrill, wondering when the boys would descend upon us like the wolves we had all heard they were. The boys stood off to the side, guffawing, elbowing each other, never once looking in our direction. Was there music? There must have been music. But all I remember is going home again, confused by the ritual of separation and sideways glances.

My older siblings had preceded me at school, and their reputations paved the way for mine. I could tell which of my siblings a teacher had had in class by his attitude toward me. The brother who dropped out? I was treated coldly and dismissively. The brother who was a poet, and then died? I was gushed over, and his name was mentioned early, and reverentially.

I remember one Halloween, working late into the evening meeting a deadline for the yearbook. A couple of senior girls persuaded me to go trick-or-treating with them up Hawthorne Road, where doctors lived in mansions with mullioned windows and curved driveways. We pulled our hair into bouncy ponytails, drew round red cheeks with lipstick, and set off, secure that in our cuteness we would get candy.

I remember the year the school superintendent--who had come to Minnesota from warmer places--canceled school day after day because of the frigid temperatures. The basketball team played anyway, and the gymnasium was full every night with spectators who had been happy, if somewhat bewildered, to have the day off from class.

What a strange time. I did not think so then, but I can see so clearly now how I tried on different personalities, different handwritings, different attitudes. In ninth grade I scoffed at studying and openly copied tests in history class. In twelfth grade I aspired to be an intellectual. In between I sneered at those I secretly admired, and floundered along with everyone else, and spent more time worrying about my hair and my hem length than anything else.

How did I turn into the person I am now? When did I turn into that person? How easy would it have been to veer off in a different direction? Or would that not have been possible? Was I doomed to be short, serious, frizzy and squinting, or did I somehow choose it?

And how funny that none of these things were in the front of my mind until I saw that Facebook message, and was suddenly standing on the corner of East Fourth Street again, holding my notebook against my flat chest, talking with my tall blond friend, solving the problems of the world.

Note: The title of this posting is, of course, from Dylan Thomas.