Heavy Duty Ponders

Up early this a.m., baking up blueberry muffins for my just-adopted ANC freshmen boys.  (Carl Asplundh's family belong to Fred's & since everyone at Fred's is family that makes him a nephew by breakfast club.)  As  I was checking to see if the muffins in the portable oven (on extra high heat) were ready for transfer to the toaster oven (lower heat), saw a KOB that I keep in a place of honor.  A small square of folded notebook paper with the name SNOOPY penciled across the front.  

Suddenly, I was a sophomore in high school, at ANC.  The note was from my DEKA secret sister, Margie Cranch (Echols).  It is one of my great treasures.  I was code word Snoopy, she was - naturally - Pooh ("Because, like Pooh, I am a bear of very little brain," she explained.)  A lifetime of special memories rushed in, from sophomore year.  

Vera Powell was our homeroom teacher, I think it might have been the year she & Bruce Glenn first fell in love.  The biggest news was getting a new classmate - Neva Gladish.   My main memory about socializing was helping locate a place to get dry ice so we could have "ground fog" at the Sophomore Party.  

The best part about sophomore year was that we were FINALLY full-fledged high school students, eligible to participate in more sports (always INTRA-mural, class against class;  no mixed class teams, except GAA, since we never played other schools - not proper for the feminine) & to join the AKM (it was extremely rare that freshmen lived in the dorms) & get into the chorus if the school was doing a Gilbert & Sullivan production.  We had arrived.  And I had the blessing of Margie as my not-so-secret sister.

Thoughts of Margie & our lifelong friendship brought me around to thinking about my high school years, which - like many kids - were none too happy for me.  Which is strange, because being who I was they should have been a blast.  If only I had known who I was - aye, that's the rub.

Looking back, it feels clear that the person who hand-drew a card & sent it with as a "so glad you're coming" note to future classmates was my natural self, bonhomie in my very bones.  The person they met when they arrived for school - ah, that was my nurtured self.  A very different creature.  Put the two together & you had a strange critter.  

Enough years were spent being that critter; there's no sense dwelling on whatever created it (besides, any surmise I make is certain to be off by a mile).  It is realizing how disparate the two  qualities - nature & nurture - were. This I do know - if I had given myself over to my true nature, I would not have fit into my family life.  And that - more than possible friends - was all-important to me.  I didn't see the disconnect because of being heavily invested in blindness.  

Sheez - a lot of heavy duty pondering, all due to spotting one small square of folded lined paper with a name across it.