Rules for the Unruly Living an Unconventional Life

Introduction In all the time since that excellent June afternoon when I screeched out of my high school's parking lot after graduation, I never expected or hoped to see the place again.As you probably know, few bullets have more momentum than a departing senior. Yet here I was, ricocheting back twenty-five years later, and did it feel weird. First of all, the place looked exactly the same: the low, sprawling redbrick building with its neat shrubs and swept sidewalks, the silver lettering on the wall beside the entrance. As I stepped uncertainly through the steel-and-glass doors, a smiling woman nabbed me."Marion," she said. "I'm Sue Henderson." Sue had graduated from Ocean Township two classes ahead of me and was now the school guidance counselor; she was responsible for my reappearance at our alma mater. She thought that as a former recipient of the Spartan Scholar award who had gone on to become an author and minor celebrity (I can hardly express how minor), I might have some advice for the honorees -- things I wished I had known back when I was in their place.Me, a role model? I seemed to recall that even back while earning academic honors, I'd come pretty close to getting kicked out of there. Then I'd gone on to blaze a trail of even more erratic behavior by a supposedly smart person, all of which I had described in print and on the air to as much of the civilized world as I could get to pay attention. Did she perhaps have me confused with some more presentable graduate?If so, too bad. Tickled by the idea, I accepted before she could change her mind.I hadn't realized, though, what an eerie experience coming back would be. As I entered those linoleum-and-locker-lined halls, I was swept into a crowd of kids whose faces seemed oddly familiar, though their clothes and hairstyles were a lot better than anything we used to wear. The girls in particular seemed to be ready to star in their own sitcom. With shocking instantaneousness, I was sucked back into the unbearable and constant jealousy of other people's figures that had been such a feature of teenage life for me. Apparently I had been the victim of some horrible injustice when the tiny perfect butts were handed out, and nothing had happened in the intervening decades to improve the situation.So when Sue asked if I'd like to take a look around, I shuddered. "Oh no," I told her, "I'll just wait here." If the person I used to be and the emotions I used to feel were lurking in those halls, I wasn't eager to encounter them. Just looking at the bulletin boards, the bathrooms, the school store, and the gymnasium door from a distance was enough. I didn't want to see the ghosts: myself in the hideous blue-bloomered gym suit; myself failing the impossible quiz in chem-physics; myself with Billy Donnelly and the Garelick brothers smoking Salems in a car in the parking lot; myself finding a note from my sister in my locker saying she had run away from home with Kyle Henderson but don't tell Mommy.High school was the only world we knew back then, the only world there was, but at least it was a captivating one, full of every kind of soap opera, rumor, and gossip, every dark secret and bright, paradoxical surface. At lunch you could find a gang of us having chocolate malts and cheeseburgers at the Towne Bite Shoppe, like nice wholesome teens. At night the scene shifted. we were out behind the Dumpster at the Y or downstairs in somebody's basement, and there wasn't a wholesome thing about it. Our class really did win the homecoming float competition four years in a row -- and my pal Lou really did get sent away to a place called the Institute for Living for running a drug laboratory in his bedroom. (My mother has never forgiven me for lending him her pressure cooker.) Like little Amish girls, my sister and I spent hours and hours sewing patches on our jeans and baking giant hand-iced cookies in the shape of bunny rabbits and baskets of fWinik, Marion is the author of 'Rules for the Unruly Living an Unconventional Life' with ISBN 9780743216036 and ISBN 0743216032.