In my bumbling adolescence, I often felt like I was barely holding things together, my sense of self pieced together with Bondo, duct tape, chewing gum, and string - all metaphorical references to the makeshift coping fixes I used just to get through each day. Adolescence, akin to a purgatory phase in life, is filled with vulnerability and hardship and seems to mirror the principles of my Catholic upbringing.
Every day was an act of balancing these makeshift means; it was as though my inner struggles materialized into stark, life-or-death moments. A classic cliché replayed in my head: a perilous situation where I found myself hanging precariously from the edge of a skyscraper. My world literally became black and white. My fingers gripped the cold, slick edge, and with each passing second, my strength waned, and my grip loosened. The camera zoomed in on my desperate eyes, chockful of fear and determination, and then panned down to the dizzying drop below - a jammed highway with buses and vintage cars, headlights ablaze, blowing their horns for no apparent reason.
Suddenly, the wind howled - my hand slipped, and I started to fall, in slow motion of course, reaching out for anything to hold onto. Instantly, from above, another hand shot down, grabbing my wrist just in the nick of time. The camera focused on the two hands locked together, the savior's grip firm and secure. From the sky, a swelling score signified the emotional climax of the rescue.
And then, as the world seemed to slip away beneath me, a familiar, distant sound tugged at the edge of my consciousness.
"Carl, wake up, you'll be late for school," Mom announced while knocking on my bedroom door.
"Ok. Be ready in a few," I whispered, still half of me hanging for dear life and the other half with pillow head. Even as the dream's grip loosened, a residue of fear clung to me, the coldness of the skyscraper's edge still lingering on my fingertips. I lay there a moment longer, heart pounding, as the echoes of the dream blended with the dull, familiar sounds of the waking world.
"Ugh," I thought to myself, "I hate my life." It had been two months since we moved from the Midwest to Southern Florida. Starting 10th grade at a new school was bad enough, but did we have to move into a retirement condo, a geriatric prison for anyone over the age of 200? It didn't help that Jaws hit the theaters just as we plunged into town - because being the new kid wasn't scary enough, now I had man-eating sharks swimming through my head. "Somebody just shoot me," the spontaneous yet familiar catchphrase from my inner voice, the vocal machine with no filter, which somehow I command.
My resistance was fierce from the start. The entire car ride to our new 'home' was a storm of protest. Since arriving, I had been a shadow in the corner of my bedroom, my only solace in the letters I wrote to friends left behind. My letters to old friends filled whole notebooks - those pages were my new confidantes. This transition, a seismic shift in my young life, echoed painfully. I was part of a tight group of friends who were my chosen family. I missed my friends and the times spent together, laughing, dancing, and getting into mischief. "It's such a bummer being here without them," I thought as I flipped through the pages of my notebook. My hometown had my heart.
In school, I was a ghost drifting through the halls, eyes cast down, guarding my solitude against this unfamiliar reality. The perennial new kid at school, a title as needless as the pet rocks everyone was carrying around. Academics, though, offered a welcome refuge. There, in the quiet company of textbooks and essays, I found a strange sort of peace, a productive denial of the world outside.
"Carl, let's go!" Mom's voice cut through my reverie, pulling me back to the present. We headed out, making our way to Florence High School in Mom's AMC Pacer, which still held a new car smell, where my first encounter of the day awaited: English with Ms. Purdue. Her reputation preceded her – demanding, austere, a staunch believer in the power of education, though her intensity often fell on indifferent ears.
Mom dropped me off at Florence High, and I made a beeline for my English class. As I settled into my seat, the bell pierced the morning buzz of chatter and laughter – an ambiance from which I'd always felt detached. Ms. Purdue's command sliced through the noise, "Please pass your assignments to the front." Silence descended, the air thick with the collective guilt of unprepared classmates. I bent down, reaching into the shelf under my seat for my meticulously completed work. At precisely that moment, amid the quiet where you could hear the proverbial pin drop, an unexpected piercing gust was airborne – a mortifying betrayal by my own body. I'm sure the nearly deaf janitor in the hallway heard this one. The room froze, and time suspended.
"Excuse me," I mumbled instinctively, sealing my fate. If only silence had been my shield. But no, my confession hung in the air.
Ms. Purdue, usually the model of composure, tried to maintain order. A slight twitch of her shoulders began, an involuntary shrug she tried to stifle. Her eyes, usually stern, betrayed her struggle as the corners twitched with a suppressed smile. The room watched in horror and fascination as her composure crumbled. The shoulder twitches grew into a gentle quake, her efforts to contain the laughter visibly failing. Then, without warning, it burst forth – a resounding, infectious belly laugh that filled the room. The rigid atmosphere shattered as her warm and unrestrained laughter cascaded through the classroom, inviting a ripple of relief and hesitant chuckles from the rest of the room. For a moment, the usual barriers dissolved, and the room united in an unexpected camaraderie, all thanks to an uncontrollable laugh. As the laughter crescendoed in that tiny classroom, I silently applauded myself for having the foresight to avoid anything spicy or fragrance-producing in my diet last night.
And there, in that endless moment, the Bondo cracked and my composure came unstrung. I felt my cheeks burn and I began to shrink, a diminished version of myself, wishing to disappear into the seams of my seat. As laughter ricocheted off the walls, I found myself back on the edge of that skyscraper, the ground below just as unforgiving as the eyes of my classmates. The fall in my dream, that terrifying plunge into the abyss, suddenly didn't feel so different from this moment. Both were falls, one from a building, the other from grace in the eyes of my classmates.
And just as in my dream, where a hand reached out to save me at the last second, I now found myself longing for a similar salvation. A friendly glance, a kind word, any sign that this fall might not be the end. But in my mind, the laughter continued, echoing off the classroom walls, a stark reminder that sometimes, in life as in dreams, the rescue we hope for doesn't always come.
This tragicomedy felt endless, though, in time, the acute stings would fade to a duller memory. I guess in the grand scheme of things, these awkward moments just make for amusing stories down the road.