The Write Stuff??? (Part 1)

So I've been asked to write a recommendation for a friend of mine. Not a big deal, right, because I've written a few completely trumped up job references before, making the said candidate sound like they really should be working for the Supreme Court or something. But this isn't for a job. This is for a friend's MFA Creative Writing program admission. Huh, you say? Yeah, me too.

But not just any friend, well, because, I don't have that many friends. Ha! Just kidding! I'm super popular. Or not. Anyway, I've known this cat since fourth grade, and even in fourth grade, he wasn't a guy, or a boy, he was a cat. He was that kid who had hair that was too long, had a really cool name and his parents were rumored to be hippies. Yeah, I had a terrible crush on him. He ignored me completely and I think he told me I was stupid at some point on the bus ride home one afternoon. But that was fourth grade, and then a new boy transferred in to school starting in fifth grade and I had a new crush. Who also ignored me and told me I was stupid. My sixth grade crush turned into an actual boyfriend, you know, who actually asked me to 'go with him'. Seventh grade crush was the guy who I snitched out for giving me pot in tenth grade, eighth grade crush also thought I was stupid, ninth grade crush dumped me for one of my arch enemies, and so it goes on.

I got completely off track there. People keep texting me and I can't concentrate. See, I told you I was popular! Anyway, my fourth grade crush and I never had any classes together until high school. My school was small, and there were probably only about enough students for four or five separate classes (if I recall correctly) per grade, and I was always in the second smartest class. Those 80's standardized tests pretty much kept the same kids in the same class with each other all the way through middle school. I always realized that I was never in the smartest class, and watched other kids filter in and out of the second smartest class, but I never seemed to be able to work my way into the smartest class category. I blame this partially on my mother for not giving a fuck about my education other than to harass me endlessly about why I wasn't doing better (even though I think I recall her never making much of an effort to help me) and I blame this partially on myself for being pretty much satisfied with second smartest class. And maybe a little blame goes on a couple of teachers here and there for just sucking in general.

By the time I got to high school, I had determined that the only way that I was going to succeed in the high school social game was going to be by making smartest class. I buckled down in ninth grade and actually started applying myself and applied for the 'honors' type program, which really wasn't honors but probably more like what the good high schools were teaching, and voila! Social entree was mine! All of a sudden I was in the smartest class, minus math. I compensated for that by being in the retard math classes. And a whole new world of kids opened up to me, those kids who had always been in the smartest class and had been together since fourth grade (or before). I had a lot of catching up to do. Suddenly, I was in class with my fourth grade crush. Awkward high school friendships were formed, because these kids knew I didn't have the history with them that they had with each other. I stayed in smartest English and History classes for the rest of high school, and supplemented it with French (where I insisted on only speaking English, because really, I was just taking that shit for college, not to be able to actually speak it), and did a few other things, along with remaining in dumbest math class that was almost learning disabled (still with the guy who gave me the pot - there's a reason for this, I think) and working my way down from smartest biology to pretty damn stupid chemistry.

The friendship that fourth grade homeslice and I had was strange, because I thought he was a little weird in that hippie-commune kind of way, and he probably thought I was as self-absorbed and shallow as any teenage girl. Our friendship was also made even more awkward by the fact that my stepfather had, on occasion or two, arrested his father. And I think his uncle. And was gunning for him to make it a hat-trick. Homeslice knew this, I knew this, my stepfather knew this and his father knew this. So he and I would kid around in school and then go home and have to individually hear shit about how the other's person's dad or stepdad was a shithead, blah blah blah. For a lack of a better word, the friendship was precariously based upon whether or not my stepfather was going to be involved in arresting one of his relatives. That always seems to complicate shit, you know? I was desperate to be included in all of the cool parties that I always heard about AFTER THE FACT, and I've convinced myself that homeslice and our other classmates were probably torn between inviting me and living in fear of getting themselves locked up. I don't care what anyone says, growing up with a (step)parent who is the long arm of the law in a small town, and eager to be a complete dick, really, really, really sucks. Period. I think most of the trouble that I got into in high school was directly related to my desire to prove that I wasn't a goody two-shoes.

And that's it for tonight. More tomorrow, as I try to piece this recommendation together in my brain.