maybe i would have felt differently if it was sting. you know from the music video?

so i was trying to find a paper i wrote about earth day 1990. i seem to remember that my college professor liked it a great deal and suggested i send it to the local paper as a sound off piece or letter to the editor.

did i? no. i was too busy canoodling with my boyfriend at the time to pay too much attention to anything else. i should have, though. dumb old boyfriends.

anyhow, i didn't find that paper but i found another one. from the school year before when i was a senior in high school. this one was about my involvement volunteering for the democratic campaign and my subsequent reaction to the presidential election of '88. you know, dukakis and the first george bush?

it was actually really good. i was impressed with my 17 year old self and the points i made. i was also impressed with how well it was written. probably because i had no dumb old boyfriend.

i did have a boyfriend briefly at the beginning of the year. the french canadian exchange student. but then he dumped me because, and i quote, "you are not popular enough."

yeah. now, imagine that in a french canadian accent. in a crowded cafeteria. by a boy who is wearing shorts made by his mother.

fucker.

but, i digress.

back to the paper. can i just say in this paper i manage to make a reference to rob lowe and his perfectly chiseled features, quote herman hesse, and put forth my opinion that bush won because he really did have more experience than dukakis and america, especially and surprisingly young america, responded to that in droves?

yes. i did.

and i got an A.

from an instructor not known for his handout of As.

though, to be fair, i did find a card years later i forgot i had. it was from this same instructor given to me that same year. and while i probably thought nothing of it at the time, you know, because i was 17, reading it later with the gimlet eye of an adult gave me pause. it was, and remained, a slightly inappropriate communique from a teacher to a teen aged female student. the words creating a bit of a portal if you will.

which gave me a bit of the eww. and then of course i called up all my friends from high school and promptly read it to them and got a collective eww. the kind of eww that can only come adolescents grossed out by an adult. because while you may leave high school, it certainly never leaves you.

so, is that why i got my A?

i sure as hell HOPE not!

i'd like to believe that i can include rob lowe, herman hesse, and george bush sr. in a high school american government paper and do it well enough to get an A.

x.