The Peanut Chronicles

Sunday, June 11, 2006

The gates of hell

Nut and I went on a grad adventure the other day. No, not true. Nut and I went and played Trophy Wife and son for one of the Bear’s most prestigious clients.

Bear’s client has a son tat works at Bear’s office. This son is one of the nicest guys I know. If I were single and a decade or more younger, I would totally date him. He is really just a genuinely nice guy and seeing as I am incredibly jaded when it comes to men, to say that means something.

Anyway, the son graduated from High School Friday night. Not just any high school… MY HIGH SCHOOL. Shhhh… hear that? The gates of hell are opening up now. Bear and the family are invited to go to the graduation. Bear can’t make it so Nut and I go instead because in Bear’s profession, it looks god to be involved. Plus, the only teacher who had faith in me in high school was teacher of the year and retiring. I figured I would say hi and tell her thanks for the faith because she was right, I did go places.

Oh my god.

Getting Nut ready for the event was hard. It seemed to me that every outfit I put on him he would immediately spit up on. I knew what he was doing. He was trying to get put into the onesie that said “Party at my crib, 2am. BYOB” with a picture of a bottle on it. NO., this was not going to happen. I was going to have him be wonderful. I was going to look fabulous. I was going to march up to the evil English teacher who literally said to me on the last day of school “Find yourself a nice man because I don’t really think you are made for anything else”, point to my 4 thousand dollar wedding ring, my angelic son, look radiant with my long hair and wrinkle free skin and brag about my degrees, publications and books. Basically, I was going to make it clear to Ekatrts that he was dead wrong about Ms. Joanna. I am incredible, kiss my ass.

When I finally got Nut into an outfit he didn’t spit up on (very cute polo and pants) I set out to get my own outfit together, I went with jeans, my clogs and a nice thick strapped brown tank that had a princess gathering under my breasts. I put on my favorite light green and gold necklace and I put my hair in the most flattering way that I could imagine. Oh yes, I looked good.

I grabbed my diaper bag (bear and I have two diaper bags. His is a backpack, mine is a camouflage side sack. Mine is better because being a mommy in Metropolis reminds me of guerrilla warfare sometimes.) and was sure to throw the camera and my dairy into the sack. The camera was for pictures. Like I said, I really like this guy. The dairy was because I knew I was going to be bored.

Nut and I arrived at the school and had to park on the main drag a few blocks away. I put Nut in his stroller, slung the diaper bag on the shoulder, and bolted across the street between cars. I probably should have taken the cross walk but oh well.

I swore when I graduated that I would NEVER step foot back on that campus. NEVER. Over a decade later, I broke my promise to myself. Honestly, walking on to that campus, somewhere in the back of my head the sound track to “The Omen” was playing.

“Just take deep breathes Joanna. There is no one you know here,” I kept muttering under my breath. “Deep breathes”

The campus has not changed at all. Still the same hollow halls where your footsteps echo. Still the same crappy, sod pocked quad where lunch takes place. Still the same ugly tan paint. Yes, nothing changed. Then I got to the football field area where graduation was to take place. New field, new pool, new locker rooms, state of the art score signs, new track, new bleachers…. Ahh, you can tell what is important to people at this school.

The stands were already packed so I knew I had a shot in hell to find the family in the bleaches. With Nut’s SUV, I decided to just sit on the track. I wandered over to the end of the track, still scanning the bleachers for the people I have met only once, on the off chance that I might see them. Nope. I settled myself into my spot. Nut beside me snoozing. I was ready for my hour and half annoyance of what was a high school graduation. AS the grads came onto the field and people began to applaud, I reached into the bag for my diary.

Let me explain something about my diary. I started my first diary when I was in the 6th grade. I was 12. I still have it. It chronicles such hilarity as meeting Hurricane, dance competitions, art class madness and, of course, the big 6th grade science experiment. I liked keeping a dairy and have kept one ever since. When I was 16, my dairy became more of a journal chronicling the day-to-day adventures and survival skills I was honing at said high school. My journal became the friend that I told EVERYTHING to. My crush on my brother’s friend, my secrets thoughts about the evil LS teacher, and my hopes for whatever my obsessions for that week were. It also talked about other stuff… sex, drugs, and alcohol… all the stuff you don’t want your mom to see. I knew my journal as Jo. My friend. My confidant. Even my best friends weren’t privy to the Jo information. There were many a times where I was worried that my Jo would be stolen. I wrote in Jo everyday, usually in class. Everyone knew I kept Jo with me at all times. What would happen if Jo fell into the wrong hands? In high school? In a school like mine? It was a nightmare that I never wanted to come true. Thankfully, it never did.

As I got older Jo became much more important to me for my sanity. When I began facing real “adult situations” in my life and couldn’t talk to anyone without feeling judged, I talked to Jo. She helped me sort out my thoughts in my very turbulent late teens and early twenties. In fact, when I turned 21, my grandfather gave me a new Jo, beautifully leather bound and Celtic knot carved. It was refillable. I used that Jo for years until he died and it hurt to look at it.

More recently, Jo has become the companion about Nut. Jo is a small, black, moleskin journal. She is wonderful. Sure, some of Jo makes it online so people can hear about how Nut is doing and sometimes how I am doing, but in reality, I think only about a fifth of my real thoughts make it online. And more recently, Jo and I have been talking about some really serious shit that not even Hurricane and Moe know about. (Yes, girlfriends are great. You love them to death. But some things they just don’t need to know.) It’s amazing what a person can work out through writing.

But I digress…

As the off key singers start up their songs for the graduation, I roll my eyes and reach for my pen and Jo… only to find that there is an empty spot where Jo should have been. I don’t panic. I notice the camera is gone too. Nut and the stroller have not been more then a foot away from me. That clunking noise when I went over some speed bumps while looking for parking must have been the camera and dairy falling out of the bag. No big deal. It just meant I would actually have to LISTEN to this pampas bullshit.

Nut began to fuss a bit so I picked him up and bounced him. He liked the speech that was first (so did I,; the guy was frigging hilarious!) the rest of the speech made me think back to over a decade ago when I sat on the same field thinking I was the bomb and I had it all figured out. 10+ years later, I realize that these kids (and they are kids) have NO IDEA what the world is about. But it was interesting to watch them sit there, bright eyes and futures wide open.

Remember how I said I wasn’t going to know anyone? Heh… karma dislikes me. Five rows behind me, I realized when one name was called, was a girl I graduated. SHE HATES ME. (That’s ok because the feeling is mutual). But she puts the blond in blond jokes and the world slut is a great description. That isn’t me being catty, everyone I know agrees. Last I heard she was cleaning offices in Metropolis. She failed out of three schools that were the “easy schools” in this tiny state we are in. don’t think she saw me. My god, she got fat (she used to be a coke thin girl. Now she has more then a rather large spare tire. I didn’t even recognize her at first, I recognized her sister!)

The boy graduated, Nut and I cheered. After wards, we wandered onto the field in the mass of graduates and their adoring families and fans. To find the boy would be a needle in a haystack. I was one of the only people there with the SUV of a stroller. The boy could find me. Besides, he knew I wanted to talk to Mrs. Smith so he knew where I would be. I decided to descend on the stage where my teacher who inspired me was. I walked up, parked the SUV, pulled out Nut (who was crying) and brazenly made my way to the stage.

I stopped in front of her. She was staring out over the crowd.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Smith?”

I was sure I would have to introduce myself. Mrs. Smith looked down, saw me and grinned.

“Joanna!!!! OH MY GOD!!! How are you? This must be Nut! Boy told me about your baby and the whole surgery and you look great and I am so happy you came!!”

I grinned as she cooed at Nut, who of course was a charmer and flirt right back, smiling his gummy smiles. I let Mrs. Smith know what I was doing, how much she inspired me (it was her Psych class that I took senior year that got me interested in the field!) it was great. What was even funnier was that she whipped out her palm pilot to show me her “retirement day 1 schedule”. I was shocked and delighted to see that number two on the list, right after sleep in, was “email Joanna Joseph for coffee”. Wow.

Boy found me and I went and hung out with him and his family. His brother cracks me up. He thinks about as highly of the school as I do. He said when he saw me, “I thought you would have burst into flames when you got here.” I laughed and mentioned my theme song from the Omen going off in my head.

All in all it was not so bad, though I never want to go back there again. I said hi to some teacher (“oh my god, you haven’t changed a bit Joanna”) and did get to mention my book and journal articles and master’s degree to a few teachers in shot of Mr. Ekrats. Ahhh… that was a dish best served cold all right.

But you knew that something had to happen. There is no way you can make a clean escape from hell. Yesterday, I went down to the car to the trunk to get the camera and diary out. I cleaned the whole car and trunk only to find… the camera and diary were missing. My heart sinks. The camera was important. It was a digital. I had pictures of Nut that I can’t replace on them. HOWEVER, more importantly… JO WAS GONE.

I feel like a friend has died. I have a good theory what happened too. Remember that bolt across the street? I think I bounced the two items out of the bag.

The irony that I lost my dairy, nay, my little black book of secrets at my fucking high school has not escaped me. My secrets are now out there for someone to read. It’s true that my name is not in the diary anywhere but I do have on inside cover, “If found please call (***)***-****. One hundred dollar reward.” No big deal. However, if someone finds it, calls and I have to pick it up, will they recognize me? Small town, big mouths, hicks with money who like to gossip. And if I “haven’t changed a bit”, what is the likelihood that someone will know who I am and spill my secrets? Because, let’s face it, Hurricane was right: “If I found a dairy on the street I would totally read it and then return it for the money”.

Face it, wouldn’t everyone do that?

I’m sooo fucked.

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