Survivor Literacy

High School- By Any Other Name

My brother graduated my last year of junior high, so I had the whole high school to myself. He joined the Navy, so it was “just us girls,” at home.

Mom was irate. They were changing the high school mascot from a racist mascot to ANYTHING ELSE and my mom was pissed. She had graduated from that high school under the racist mascot and would not be erased.

She even got special lettering stickers to put on the back of the jeep to show her support of keeping the racist mascot. She did not win, and me not going to the high school under the same racist mascot was a very big deal.

I was still compared to my brother a lot.

He was a delight to have as a student, quick witted and charming. My German teacher, at the very least, felt that I measured up quite nicely.

I loved German. I loved all languages actually, but my mom approved of German and she did NOT approve of me taking Spanish. I had taken French in junior high, and she let it be known that she was not impressed.

Mom liked German, and Russian, because she had taken German and Russian and had done quite well in them. My school didn’t offer Russian.

Frau and I got along quite well, and became incredibly close. I took two years of German with a gap year in between and still was second place on a state exam for an exchange program I was offered at the beginning of my return year.

It would have paid all of my expenses to study in Germany for a year. My mom told me how unfair it was of me to ask her for something so selfish. Nevertheless, I was President of German Club and I took first place in the musical competition at UNC Foreign Language Days for singing Eidelweiss and 99 Luftballons.

There were a lot of opportunities offered to me for my language skills, and it really hurt to have to tell myself no. I couldn’t bear to keep asking my mom. I only took the two years of German.

I was a smoker, so I hung out with the other smokers. We all got along well, and I finally had a core group of friends.

It was not necessarily the most positive group of friends. A lot of us had discipline problems, and trouble at home. A lot of us ditched class. A lot of us did a lot of naughty things.

But they accepted me, and even seemed to like me. They would laugh at my jokes, and appreciated my contributions. I liked them as well. It was easy to be accepting. It felt so much better than the constant judgement I lived in.

I got a loitering ticket for smoking before class because they were “cracking down.” On the ticket they lied about when it happened. They lied about where it happened. They turned my entire world upside down because I stood on the sidewalk.

Mom was absolutely enraged. She told me to quit, as though that was all I needed to do so. She told me how thoughtless I was to pile more on her.

She couldn’t give me more chores, because all of the indoor chores were already my responsibility which I was already failing at. I was already watching my sisters whenever I wasn’t at school.

She let me know that I would not be having a life outside of school and home. I started ditching a lot more classes, and got very skilled at intercepting the attendance call from the school. Mom wouldn’t find out how much I skipped until report cards, and no matter what my grades were she would find a way to be disappointed.

What was she going to do? Ground me?

I spent most of my high school years without phone privileges, so I’d sneak calls. I didn’t get good at obeying; I got good at sneaking.

Public Shaming is a leading contributor to raising Active Shooters.
It has NO PLACE in our schools.

My friends would ask me occasionally to join them. I always had to say no. They stopped asking me.

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