Personal Narrative

“Good morning, what can I do for you today?” a fat white lady stands behind the monotonous steel grey counter in the Admissions Office. “Yes”, I reply, “I’m new and don’t have a schedule. Um, do you know where I go?” I proceed to tell her my name, probably with a nervous shake in my voice. The fat lady was nice enough, but that’s all she was, “a fat lady”. Her face was official and her eyes never engaged mine. We walked, and I followed close behind her (watching her skirt swish swash swish and her big bum shake as her fragile heels looked like they were about to snap) to a room with about forty computers lined up in five rows of eight. They are black and new looking. I don’t remember signing up for a computer class; the fat lady explains that my schedule has not been processed, and blah blah blah. I don’t really care, all I hear is that I’m going to be waiting here until “they” figure out my classes. The room was still. Be still and know that we are taking care of you, over there in the office with the papers and the copy machine. There are other students here. Others. Strangers. Swirling eyes and dizzy glances. It reminds me of a circus, but not a real one, one depicted is some artsy independent film. When the screen is actually still, but then zooms into a nameless face of some clownish character. And then the freakish clown starts laughing and it’s like a horror movie. Not really though. Behind me sits a girl- she is by herself at one of the computers. She is petite and wearing a purple, red, and white striped shirt and jeans that are tight and big Vans shoes. Her hair is curly/wavy in a natural way and pinned half up half down. She has a light purple back pack slouching across the end of her chair, and she looks awfully bored and just as irritated as I. Why not, I think, and move my things over to where she sits. I’m a shy person, why am I doing this? Introductions made: Kim Carpenter from El Paso, Texas. She thinks its cool that I was home schooled. They’re making her schedule over in that there office and she’s just a sittin here and waiting, yeah. We will become best friends, forever, and be like oh my gosh! And tell each other everything. We will go and find boys we think are cute and talk to them about nothing and then they will feel us and we will go crazy wild with life; we will run through woods together, this Texas girl Kim and I, drunk but laughing and falling and oh, and oh we will cry and fight and hate and love and hurt. But not now. Right now we are in a room with computers waiting for our schedules. Tick tock tick tock. The unfriendly clock is passing away and, what? It’s almost noon. I eat lunch, and my grilled cheese sandwich is kind of like one of the rocks I find in the horse paster, except yellow and oozing and smelling like old mothballs. I have a stomach ache for the rest of the day. My first day at public school.