The most important thing that I, the 32-year-old You, want to say is this: Ms. De will be the worst teacher you will ever have. It only goes up from here. I promise. She is not nice to you (and is super nice to all the other girls, WTF?) but you will have a long list of teachers you love from here on out. And they’ll love you. Some of them will touch you in ways you’ll never forget. Wait. That sounded bad. They don’t actually touch you. I’m freaking you out now, aren’t I?

Anyway – I know she makes you cry at night, but don’t let her. Don’t give her that power. She doesn’t deserve it. Screw her.

Another thing: All of those research papers you’re assigned to write this year that are giving you your first taste of anxiety attacks? They aren’t that important. Trust me. Let your Dad help you, don’t resist him so much. He’s smart, you know. If you would just drop the attitude you might learn from him. And quit with the procrastinating already. They are stressing you out because you’re waiting until the last minute, dumbass. Stop that shit.

Don’t wear the purple eye shadow. That stupid teacher will call you out about it in front of the whole class and you’ll be embarrassed and stand in the bathroom washing your face crying. I would love to tell you, “Tell her to suck it!” but I know you won’t. So instead – just don’t wear it. Avoid the embarrassment. That way the adult you can quit having damn nightmares about it already.

You know that weird attraction you have to skater boys? Especially Ryan – who will eventually be your first real boyfriend? Keep with that theme in your life. It’s a good theme. Skater boys are cute. You end up marrying a really hot skater boy.

Embrace the curls. You can’t fight them. Learn to love them.

Stop crying. You cry a lot at night. You feel lonely. But, the things is, you’re really not lonely. You’re just hormonal and feeling a little out of place right now. Talk to your Dad more about it – he ends up giving you some really good advice later in life, once you finally start asking him advice.

Most importantly – it only goes up from here. You will make a lot of mistakes, but even at your darkest moments, you will never feel as sad as you do right now. Let that give you peace. Once you embrace your differences, you’ll feel much better. Quit trying to fit in, and just be you. You aren’t going to be as pretty as Caroline, as loved as Mollie, or as funny as Dana or as smart as Teal. But that’s okay. You don’t need to look at them all and feel sad. Instead, be happy that you aren’t exactly like them. Be happy about who you are.

Maybe, if you start learning these things now, the 32-year-old-You will be able to finally stop being so insecure too.

Love,
32-year-old-Zoot

(Thanks to Amy and Amy for the idea.)

7th grade was my worst year in school. I had a teacher who I felt like hated me, I had a principal/science teacher who assigned us research papers that required trips to the University Library. Example: “Comparative Anatomy of Invertebrates: The Nervous System.” Yes, I had to write that paper in the 7th grade, if you can believe it. Talking about being baptized by fire into the world of research. I still have nightmares over that paper. Not to mention the one about Wild Boars or the Scopes Monkey Trials. It was like I was in hell and Satan really enjoyed complex bibliographies.

I also had a tough time with my physical self. My hair was getting curlier and curlier and I had no clue what to do with it. So I pulled it back all the time. My acne was developing (Kids in my after-school-care program actually called me Pizza Face. So Original.), I was wearing braces with the headgear, and I had those awesome black glasses that Judith Light wore in “Who’s The Boss.” I didn’t know anything about fashion, partly because I wore a uniform everyday and didn’t have to think about it. But I was getting old enough to WANT to understand fashion, so my lack of any style was depressing.

So – this is the year I’ve been fearing for LilZ. Luckily, he’s totally good-looking and confident so he shouldn’t have anywhere near the meltdown I did. He gets 7 teachers instead of just one so if one hates him it won’t matter. He is funny and smart and has loads of friends. He is even doing this awesome elective that was offered to him after he auditioned for it, and it will put him in the spotlight a little this year. He will probably look back on this year as his favorite – which just shows how different he and I were at the same age. And this gives me hope for his future.

If there is anything I am thankful for the most – is that even though LilZ and I are a lot alike in temperament and personality – he is very different from the 12-year-old version of me. He is simply cool and that is the exact opposite of what I was in 7th grade. Hopefully he is very grateful for this difference, it will hopefully allow him to complete Junior High will far less offensive nicknames than I did.

Huh? What the hell is that kid talking about?

Then I remembered – “OH! You mean my ‘Jesus Makes Me Hoppy’ shirt!”

See – when I was a youngin’ – I went to this huge daycare in the summer. We would go on field trips every day and when we went to places with a lot of people, they’d make us wear daycare shirts so they could spot us in the crowd. Most of the time they were simple shirts with the name of the church on them. When I was in 7th grad, however, they decided they’d give the shirts more personality. Or some such nonsense. So – they made us wear shirts that were aqua and sleeveless with huge neon-green frogs on them that said, “JESUS MAKES ME HOPPY.”

Yes – I was in the crux of my puberty angst and being forced to wear amphibious religious paraphernalia. It was my worst nightmare as a 7th grader and I bring it up often when LilZ is complaining about his life. I’ll say, “WHATEVER. Nothing is worse than trying to meet cute boys at the arcade in a ‘Jesus Makes Me Hoppy’ t-shirt!” Or, “You think that’s bad? You should try making a neon Jesus frog look COOL.”

I went to Catholic school for all 12 years of my childhood/teen education. In the K-8 school I went to, our grades went to mass at least three times a week. I loved going to mass (Me? I know!) because I luv luv loved to sing the hymns. There were several that were my favorites: “Lord of the Dance,” “Eagle’s Wings,” and “Here I am, Lord.” (If you were born and raised Catholic, you probably know the last two by heart.) I would belt out those lyrics in church like I was some sort of choir leader. Hell, I would sing those songs in the shower, I loved them so much.

One day, when I was nine (I remember this so vividly it is sad), my friend Michelle turned to me in the middle of mass and said, “You know you can’t sing, right? That you have an awful voice? Right? You know that and you’re just being funny. Right?”

I remember the immediate heart-ache I felt. What? ME? Can’t sing? ME? I immediately blew it off like, Of course I knew that, I’m just being funny! but on the inside I was replaying the last few years in my head. Were my classmates talking bad about me like I had heard them talk about other girls who couldn’t sing? When I joined in and mocked the bad singers were they all secretly mocking me? I was devastated.

As the years went on, I got plenty of opportunities to hear myself sing. And let me tell you: Michelle had been TOO KIND. I have an atrociously awful voice. Terrible. Painful. Dreadful. I can not carry a tune in a bucket. I have coped with this over the years and will still sing along with music that I love. (Especially Indigo Girls…I just can’t resist.) I usually will tell everyone around me, “I know I can’t sing. Don’t worry. But I’m going to anyway.” And then they all run away screaming with their fingers in their ears.

Seriously. I can NOT sing.

My point? This is why this phase of the American Idol auditions are so dreadful. I know what it’s like to honestly think you have an amazing voice, only to find out you are wrong. Dead wrong. Now, I would hope someone would have stepped in and told me the truth if I had mentioned American Idol, but if they didn’t? I know the pain of hearing the insult from one girl, whispered in my ear. I can not imagine hearing it from a panel of judges in front of the entire country. It makes me want to puke just thinking about it.

So, yeah. Sometimes people don’t realize how bad they suck.

Now – aren’t you totally dying to hear me sing now? Especially a church song? I know you are.

When I moved to Huntsville in August of 2001, I was only 3 months out of my graduation. MrZ and I were dating, but living in different cities. I was still on the outs from my long-time best friends Betsy and Stacey due to some outrageously bad decisions I made a few years prior that had come back to haunt me. I wasn’t even considering life married or with more kids. LilZ was little. I never thought about writing a diary online.

I look back on that and realize how many things are in my life today that make me soooo happy. It’s funny, because I was happy back then too, but if I imagine taking away any of the current joys I think I’d be miserable. I just didn’t know how happy I could be back then. I didn’t realize what a difference a good marriage was going to make in my life, how happy I’d be to have my friends back, how much joy a simple blog could bring.

I’m a lucky girl. That’s really all I wanted to say. I’m a very happy, lucky girl. I’m proof you can make giant mistakes and do really stupid things and still recover to live a reasonably normal and boring life.

Here is a list of some of the offending music I could recall:

We used to turn that one up really loudly and dance. Possibly the Running Man. Or the Roger Rabbit.

Yep. That one too. I think we even played that one at school dances? Possibly? Surely not at a Catholic School…but I really think we did. Or how about Baby Got Back, or any and ever Two Live Crew song imaginable. I think we actually would kinda lose interest in a song if it wasn’t scandalous enough. I remember in High School, my girlfriends and I had this Mix Tape (I’m so old) that had all of the scandalous songs we liked to sing and dance to. We’d get my friend’s sister to drive us around the strip at the University of Tennessee and we’d be singing and car-dancing to that shit, looking for cute boys. Or probably any boys, really. We weren’t picky.

OH MY GOD. Thinking about my kids doing things like I did is causing me to feel a little sick to my stomach. I think I may puke. And is that a chest pain? My left arm (or is it my right?) is feeling numb. I’m also getting dizzy and everything is kinda fading to black…

I often look back on my childhood and teen years and recall the many times that I was simply okay at things. I was always struggling to be great and truly wanted to be called the best, but I mostly hovered around eh, so-so. For any child under the age of 14 – that sucks. Being bad would have probably given me more attention, but I was too scared to try that one out. I had a good suspicion that in my house, being bad might go hand-in-hand with being grounded, and I didn’t want that kind of attention.

In elementary school, we took these standardized tests twice a year. When the grades came back, the top scorers were given prizes and most were invited to join the honors program. The prizes were things like groovy sticker books and fun shoestrings. (Groovy stickers and fun shoestrings are still a great motivator for me, if you must know. Even at 31.) I remember never quite getting high enough grades for the prizes or the program, but not low enough grades to be considered for any sort of special tutoring. I was merely average with a periodic visit to the world of above average.

I spent years watching the smart kids do fun things like perform plays and go on exciting field trips. I watched them take home their Smart Kid Loot and often wondered if I’d ever join their ranks as owners of sheets of stickers declaring “AWESOME!” for all to see. They went to the zoo! They rode the train! I wanted to be one of them more than I wanted to make-out with Kirk Cameron – and that was a lot. Of course, there was only like four kids in the program – since my school only had about 15 kids per grade. So – I would have only been part of a small elite group – but an elite group nonetheless.

I believe it was the 5th grade when I finally scored high enough on the tests to be asked to join the honors program. Of course, that year the most exciting field trip was to a cattle auction. I remember being bitter that being smart somehow meant that I needed to smell like cow shit. As luck would have it, joining the honors program for that one year still barely put me above average. That year, half of my class made it into the same program, but with higher scores.

My subject grades were never the best either – just pretty good. I’m sure I could have worked harder to get top marks, but I preferred writing notes signed “LYLAS” to my BFFs. And sports? Let’s see – I played soccer, basketball, I cheered (shut up – it was practically mandatory) and took gymnastics – all before high school. During those endeavors I was “The girl who scored a basket for the wrong team,” “The one student who still can’t do a back handspring after two years,” and “The girl on the bench.” I think in the world of athletics, I was more often below average or possibly the outlier ruining the average for the rest of the team.

Mediocrity tortured me.

In high school, I came a little closer to becoming The Smartest or The One with The Highest Scores, but I never actually achieved that goal. I was proud to be close, but I was never close enough to garner any attention for my academics. I graduated with honors and a 4.0 (on a 4.0 scale) – but that still had me ranked out of the top 20 in a 56 person class. Damn my class and its high concentration of smart kids.

And sports? I played volleyball and ran track. I actually became pretty good at Volleyball, but never great. (We’re not discussing track.) Of course, I wouldn’t have even had the chance to become good at a public school. Lucky for the athletically challenged, my school was so small that the coaches of the sports teams didn’t even have try-outs. If you wanted to play – you simply showed up. The coaches rarely even knew the rules of the sport they were coaching, so the potential for progress in the positive direction was intense. All in all, my athleticism improved in high school, but that just brought me closer to average and further from talent less dweeb with two left feet.

Socially – I was never the top either. I was the president of one club that meant a lot to me – but that no one else gave two flying shits about. I mean – who wants to find their place as “The Best” in an all-girls service club? That wasn’t necessarily where I wanted to discover my unharnessed potential. Doing Meals-on-Wheels.

Towards the end of high school, I started realizing that the best way to get that attention I craved was to quit trying to be the best and focus more on being the weirdest. This was very easy at a small high school where the students wore uniforms. I learned that I could get just as much attention wearing black nail-polish as I could by getting the top grade on a test. And the black nails were much easier to accomplish. After relishing the stares and whispers after one day of wearing black nail-polish, I braved silver snake rings and black combat boots. OOHH! The attention! I even started dating an older guy!

For a short while, I guess, I became the best at something. I was The Girl with the Lyrics to Stairway To Heaven Written on her Jeans, formerly known as The Girl Who Is the Eucharistic Minister on Wednesdays in The Chapel. I was getting attention for becoming somebody different, somebody weird, and I loved every second of it. For the short while it lasted.

Unfortunately – I was only unique in my small world of a catholic high school. When I entered college, I learned the world was full of freaks bigger and better than I could ever hope to be. My hard earned title of weirdest didn’t even last past orientation in college. They guy with the purple mohawk and tattoos on his neck took it from me.

I find that my inability to find the one thing I can do AWESOMELY to be quite disheartening. I’ve been thinking about Life Lists lately, and I can’t get past #1 on my Life List: Become REALLY Good At Something Other Than Watching Television.
So – I think I want to tinker with some skills to try to find my calling. I’ve already been working on web-design, but I think I lack natural creative vision to excel at that. There’s blogging, of course, but I lack natural grammatical skill to succeed at that. I’ve tinkered with scrapbooking, but my attention span (32 seconds) keeps me for getting into that. Creating my own greeting cards is okay, but I’ve not shown any natural ability for that skill either. Especially since my handwriting is so ugly.

What are you hobbies? What are you really good at? Can you teach me? Do you also have an unquenchable desire to be the Valedictorian of something (to quote Dooce)? If so, let’s do this together. Unless you turn out to be better than me, then I’m ditching you for a less capable partner.

Of course, as an adult? I want nothing more than to be able to do the same thing with my kids someday. And if they whine like I did? I’m packing them in the trunk with the tent. I’m not as tolerant as my father was.

One of the first places we stopped was The Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota. It is exactly what the name implies, more or less. It’s like a corn museum. Decorated with corn. Full of displays and exhibits about corn. Corn. Corn. Corn. And more corn.

It was every bit as exciting as it sounds. Now, imagine being a bitchy 13-year old at the Corn Palace. Or worse, imagine being the parent of the bitchy 13-year old.

As bored as I was there, I have often spoken of the place flatteringly because I was truly amazed by the murals done entirely in corn on the outside of the building. If you Google Images of the Corn Place, you can see what I mean. To make an intricate mural using only corn, in it’s various naturally occurring colors, is damn impressive. I can’t even replicate those pictures using crayons, much less produce. Much less doing a new set of murals EVERY YEAR. As a museum, it was a bit boring (13 year-old Zoot: “A bit? Only a bit?”), but as a work of art? I am still amazed.

So, image my disappointment when I heard they weren’t going to be able to re-decorate this year. The dry growing season has hurt their supply, especially of the colorful corn. I’m certain the farmers are more concerned with their income, than with the outside of some museum, but it makes me sad. I mean, some say global warming has depleted the ozone, poisoned our land and our water, changed our climates and magnified our severe weather. Whatever. It has now screwed with The Corn Palace. I’m officially pissed.

When I got braces, the goal was to move the teeth back where they belong to make room for fake eyeteeth. They put the fake teeth on a temporary bridge and glued the bridge to the back of my two front teeth. This bridge started falling out a few years ago, whereby providing me with several humiliating blog entries. (Here, here, and here, just to link a few.) There is a $3000 procedure that could give me a permanent bridge, but two insurance companies have already denied me coverage since they consider my lack of teeth a “pre-existing condition.”

For some reason, when the bridge pops out (making me toothless and ruthless freakin’ humiliated), I am able to pop it back in and it stays. I have no idea why this works, but it does and I’m grateful because it pops out ALL THE DAMN TIME. The last cementing I got only lasted four weeks before the bridge came loose again. And if you’ve never spontaneously lost your two eyeteeth – then you don’t know the humiliation, so you’ll have to trust me. It’s really damn humiliating. It has popped out while I’ve been talking to people; it’s fallen into my plate of food during dinner; and its simply fallen out in my mouth while I’m doing nothing more than sitting. Minding my own damn full-mouth-of-teeth business. There is something incredibly demoralizing about having to scramble to find two of your teeth in a plate of rice at your favorite Mexican restaurant.

Where we are today in Zoot’s dental realm: I’m getting new teeth!

We finally worked out a payment plan with our dentist and I go to the first of two procedures next Thursday. I have no understanding of what – exactly – they are going to do. They have explained it to me several times, but each time I only care about one thing: “I won’t be stuck between procedures without teeth, will I?” They have reassured me dozens of times that when I leave the office after the first procedure, I’ll have a temporary bridge (with teeth) that will last me two weeks until I go back for the permanent bridge. There is a chance it could take six weeks, but I’m hoping for two.

If the two-week mark holds solid, I’ll have new (and permanent – for all practical purposes) teeth on April 6th. I’m thinking about scheduling some time with corn-on-the-cob, overcooked steak, gobstoppers and bubble gum to celebrate.

The EXACT same thing goes for Sports People.

Now, I am not as extreme as Jimmy Fallon was in the movie. MrZ has me beat in all time knowledge of the teams I root for. Stats? Not my thing. Historical trends and betting lines? Bah. But watching a team do something that makes you cry? Been there. Done that.

I grew up in Knoxville, TN – so I didn’t have much of a choice other than being a TN Vols fan. However, it was my Mom and her friends who really turned me to the Orange Nation. We would spend Saturdays watching the games surrounded by people who sang Rocky Top whenever the band played it (an average of about 40+ times a game). Everyone wore orange on EVERYTHING. I remember taking LilZ to his first Grammy Football Experience in October 1995. We drove to Knoxville to watch the TN/AL game with all of her friends. He fell asleep halfway through the game and even stayed asleep while I held him against my chest screaming at the top of my lungs: “ROCKY TOP….YOU’LL ALWAYS BE…” because we had just beat Alabama for the FIRST time in TEN YEARS.

And we all declared LilZ the good luck charm, of course.

I will never forget that night and the power of a victory that I had been waiting for for TEN YEARS. The excitement was brilliant and the energy was intoxicating. And I cried.

I spend most of my Saturdays (at least the last 11 years or so) surrounded by NON-VOL fans. I live in Alabama, it comes with the territory. I’m the one in the orange. See what I mean? Well, the SEC Championship game of 1997 was no different. I was watching it at Stace’s house surrounded by people rooting for Auburn. We were down 20-7 to Auburn in the second quarter and they would NOT let me ignore that fact. I ended up hiding in a bedroom to watch the rest of the game. We ended up winning 30-29, and the feeilng of being able to step OUT of that bedroom and smack talk the entire house? Priceless. I cried.

But nothing has as much emotion tied up in it as the 1998 Season. My mom’s roommate of 8 years, Enza, died unexpectedly early in the season. She and my mom were both VERY extreme Vol fans and the next game after she died was the TN/Florida game. Then entire game I sat there praying for a win, not only because I hated Steve Spurrier with every ounce of my soul (still do), but also because there was some part of all of us who knew Enza that would feel like IF Tennessee won, it would make her death make sense. We won off a botched field goal from Florida. A field goal he SHOULD have made. My mother called me immediately and said, as she’s screaming, “Enza noogied the kicker! She noogied the kicker!” I cried quite a bit that night too.

We ended up having a perfect season that year, and becoming National Champions. If there is a God, he definitely put Enza in charge of NCAA football that year. The emotions behind every game ran so high that I spent the entire season drunk. Seriously.

But non-sports people? Just don’t get it.

I may not be AS into Vol football as I’ve been before, but the emotions are still there. I am embarassed to say how many times I’ve teared up and said to MrZ when he insults someone related to TN football “See? That’s just NOT nice. I don’t insult YOUR players, please don’t insult mine.” Seriously, it has made me CRY before. But we try our best to respect each other’s preferences. But, when MrZ cried a little over Bama beating the Gators two weeks ago? I cried too. Because I know that feeling. That feeling of FINALLY seeing the team you root for with ALL your heart and ALL your soul, see that team FINALLY go above and beyond what you were hoping for. It’s an amazing thing that only sports people understand.

So today, for MrZ? I’ll say, “Roll Tide!”

Next week? A whole other story…