Weirdos are Living in My House

Chapter 3: The New Normal

 

I didn't like the new normal, but after a while I got used to it. Walk to school, go to school, find out the answer to the question: "What ten year old girl with knobby knees doesn't like a warm snake on a sunny day?" is, in fact, all of them except me. I was the only girl in my whole class who didn't think snakes were scary, and who was disappointed when Graham, who was the bad boy, brought a rubber snake to school. I was almost late for class, and was running to get there before the bell. I heard a girl scream, so I was wondering what was going on, but when I got to the door, all I caught was a glimpse of him putting something on my desk. When I saw it, I thought that maybe it was going to be a good day. All the snakes in the backyard had disappeared to wherever they go when it starts to get cold, so when I saw the snake on my desk, I was happy.

I saw that everyone was looking at me, and that he was smirking, but quite often everyone looked at me for no good reason. There was something wrong with my clothes, but I didn't know what. My old clothes had been perfectly ordinary clothes in my real school, so I don't know how they became hick clothes in Vancouver. My new clothes weren't right either. When my dad came for Thanksgiving and my birthday, we all went to a mall, which I found out was like a downtown but inside, probably because Vancouver rains all the time. There was an escalator, which was a moving staircase, and we hadn't seen anything like that before! When I told one of the girls in my class about it, a girl I thought was nice, she said: "What! That's Hilarious. Sarah's Never seen an ESCALator!" Like that - in capital letters all over the place but at least that time I knew what they were laughing at me about. At first I was scared of it, but if you close your eyes and just walk on,, it isn't so bad, and then you go up or down. After a few tries, Dan and I ran down the up escalator and up the down one a few more times until my dad said we'd annoyed enough people for the day, and maybe we could find some different trouble to get into? I loved having my dad there. We all went into Eaton's and I tried on dresses for my birthday, and found one that I really liked.. My mom looked at the price tag and sighed, and then my dad looked at the price tag and said: "For God's sake, Yvonne, it costs less than we've spent on either Dan or Hatty today, and it's Sarah's birthday!" So I got the dress, and I was all happy. It made me happy even after we'd taken my dad to the airport to go back home. I wore it to school after the weekend and Lisa, the not nice girl, said: "Nice dress!" in a tone that meant she didn't mean it, and her friends all laughed. I tried to not wear it again, but my mom said "why wasn't I wearing that dress that I'd insisted on, even though I could have had two dresses for the same price?" I didn't know what Graham was smirking about, though. It was mostly the girls who were mean about my clothes (and my hair, and the way I talked, and what I brought for lunch. The only thing they weren't mean about was my brother. They were all gooshy about him, and thought he was cute. Barf.)

I picked up the snake, but even before I did, I knew it wasn't real. I don't know what the point of a not real snake is, but boys are strange, so I politely asked if he had dropped it, and he blushed and everyone laughed at him.

I didn't get the joke, but I didn't get almost anything.

Mr. McDaniel came in then, and everyone sat properly in their desks. Some of the others thought Mr. McDaniel was too strict, but I liked him. I liked having an adult there that you called Mr and who did what you expected, and made you do what he expected, in a nice way. I was very careful not to accidentally call him "dad."

Some of the girls came to school in Girl Guide uniforms. I wanted to ask them where they had Guides, and could I come, but I expected they'd say "no." I was still waiting to fly up from Brownies, but so far that wasn't happening. I overheard my mother complaining to one of the ladies/women about indoctrination and conspiracies and Brownies, but I didn't know what the big deal was. "They're turning girls to be obedient little wives and mothers," she said. And then the ugly glasses woman said "Homemakers of tomorrow!" in the exact same tone that Lisa used about my dress, and then they all laughed. It was true that there were badges for cooking and cleaning and mending, but there were also badges for learning flowers and birds and which way was north. Besides, if homemaking is bad, why did I have to do the dishes? I asked my mom that, but she just told me not to talk back. What's wrong with learning things and getting badges for it? All I wanted was to go to Brownies, fly up to Guides and have something fun to do one day a week after school. Was that too much to ask? In my real life, I had Brownies on Thursday and ballet on Saturday, and sometimes Sunday School and choir on Sunday. In my Vancouver life, all the things I liked to do seemed to be wrong, and there was nothing I wanted to do that seemed to be right. It was very vexing. When my mother finally gave up and found me a Brownie troop I was too big and too old and had too many badges and Brown Owl didn't seem to know what to do with me because the Brownies who were ready to fly up to Guides already had. I went twice but then even the boys made fun of me for wearing my Brownie uniform to class, so I quit. I never got to go to ballet, either. Maybe Vancouver didn't have ballet classes, or maybe ballet was about indoctrination and conspiracy as well.

At lunch time, the boys had to be in one part of the schoolyard and the girls in the other part of the schoolyard. Sometimes I would stand as near to the boys side as I could get and listen for my brother. The boys were all loud, so it was hard to tell them apart, but sometimes I thought I heard him laugh, and that made me feel better. It's nice to hear laughing when it's not aimed at you.

After school, all the kids in the neighbourhood would walk home together again. It wasn't on purpose. We just all got out at the same time and were going in the same direction. After a while I started walking with a girl who was in grade four, and after another while, we became friends. I still didn't have friends in my grade, and I didn't hang out with her at recess and lunch, because grade fives weren't supposed to play with grade fours, but at least I had someone to play with after school and on weekends. We played Barbies or took apart her anatomy doll that showed all a person's innards and where a baby fit, but I still didn't really get it.