Something goes wonky when we think another person is more powerful than we are. The exalted ones get this big complex about how they’re supposed to be better than they are, and the lowly ones get this big complex about how they’re not good enough. (It’s the exact same complex, mind you, just with different access points and justifications. Wouldn’t wanna give exquisitely talented brains too easy of a Rubik’s cube.)
Morning Glory wasn’t about to play with that boring old game. She’d seen it in her dad’s hands for years, and he’d get all worked up about the square little crapper so he wouldn’t even finish his cereal or look at the cool bird (look! look!) she was pointing out.
Well, it wasn’t gonna be her gig.
Even so, there were several new words that Glory learned when she landed in sixth grade: muffintop, cameltoe, bitchy resting face, etc. None of these were of any use to her at all. Due to the tonality and timing of their delivery by others, she inferred that she was supposed to take offense at them and organize her life so as to avoid them being directed toward her at all costs. The cost, however, was quite obviously wrapped up in the organizing. Glory was uninterested in playing that game. Thus, many people said these words to her. And many people suffered the dissatisfaction of getting no reaction.
She had noticed the same difference in her friend Marma. There was absolutely no reason why people ought to assume they have any idea what’s going on in Marma’s head. This is true about everyone, of course, but in Marma’s case, being moderately autistic and very colorblind, information was being processed on pathways that most of her schoolmates would find about as accessible as a Texas oilfield after dark. And yet, so many kids were working very hard to make Marma into a colored square in their endlessly-shifting cubes.
Marma had no concern for the opinions of others. She was constantly teased, belittled, and mocked, according to the standards and agreements of most of the sixth grade cohort. However, according to her own standards and agreements, it went like this: people made a lot of effort to get her attention, and then when she gave it to them, they got very excited and squealed with laughter. No problem there. People are very interested in expressing connection. Middle school students are no exception; in fact, they are torch-bearers of the rule. Due to an unquenchable desire to experience connection, they tend to try many more approaches than the average adult does. Naturally, they encounter more frequent misunderstandings and maladjustments of the best methods of expressing and experiencing connection. But it’s not that they try to be difficult and obstinate. It’s that their moral values have not congealed into the lifelong molds in which they will try to determine and control their sugary, gelatinous futures. So they mess up a lot, give up a lot, try again a lot. It gets sticky.
Meanwhile, in the process, they’re all co-inventing a rampantly-growing, constantly-rearranging, nebulously-unpredictable culture of clownery. So courageously silly, the lot of them. So many Totally Screamworthy Scenarios and Unbelievable Madness and Big Romantic Ordeals. Not unlike any given channel on the teevee.
On this particular day, the very day The Frozen Fogstorm would hit the little town of Everett, Glory had seen several of her peers have the worst day of their lives, several others have the best day of their lives, and a few of them have one then the other, back to back. Marma, for example, was having the best day of her life.
“Oh Glory. What did I tell you? There was no way, no way that fungus could have formed so fast in my project if I hadn’t used saliva. Do you understand what this means?”
“What, what?” Glory was excited, but unsure whether it was due to her friend’s experiment or her friend’s rare glee.
“It means that life forms evolve more rapidly with the help of other life forms!”
“Wait, what? How does it mean that? You spit in a container of spores. If I were those spores, I might have a problem with that.” She knew better, in fact she had studied agricultural methods of indigenous cultures for her Humanities class last semester, even though the assignment was just supposed to be about the history of corn as a cash crop. But she liked to crack the top of the proverbial crème brulée as much as she liked to tease Marma, sometimes just to see if it went undetected (which it usually did). This time, it elicited a little snort and a wave of the hand.
“Glory! Spit contains DNA, man. Personal life codes! Do you know what kind of gift that is? It’s like giving them a lifelong battery booster. It’s like giving them a treasure map! It’s—”
“How’s the cheese, little mousies?” Bree The Soccer Duchess came by to take her usual handfuls of their lunches. Today she scored trail mix in one hand and dry Cocoa Puffs in the other. Her demeanor was not noticeably squelched by the disappointment. “You little ladies staying out of trouble? I don’t want to have to call your mom’s ass on you, Marmaduke.” Marma’s mother was the principle at the middle school, partially responsible for the excellent specialized education spectrum that spanned every grade and ability level. The kids had no conception of this, nor of the benefit that they derived from it. They did know, however, that the woman had a categorically wide rear end, and that they could, if they wanted to, inform Marma about it all day long.
“Yeah. I wouldn’t want to bother her. She’s working.” Marma wore such a wonderful poker face, one would think she was trying.
“Well…” Bree looked over to her designated slot at the popular-kids table. No help arrived. “You better watch your back, she’s been stomping that booty down the halls all day… we felt it in math class and thought it was an earthquake… maybe a storm brewing… might affect your driving conditions… you might have to camp out here overnight for safety.”
Bree was full of as much shit as usual, flailing around for an upper hand to use in slapping her bored targets awake. She spewed showers of puff cereal as she spoke, unaware, in the way of most Fools, that she was courting a possible future. Like a physician prescribing a drug, one of whose multitude of side-effects happens to actually attend to the matter for which you have come a-calling. Lucky chum. Or highly skilled. Take your pick.
When Bree finally got tired, or full, or both, she recoiled back to the winners’ table, where she bent heads and giggled stupidly with her flock.
“We should give her a little treasure map, eh?” Glory said.
Marma stared through an unflinching glaze.
“You know? Spit on her?”
No change. “Why would we do that? I’m not invested in seeing her particular configuration charging ahead in evolution.”
Beaten by the best, Morning Glory merely rolled her eyes.
“I’ll spit on you, then!” Marma grabbed at Glory’s hand in an unusually frolicksome manner. Unperturbed by their daily shove from the usual contender, Marma was high on scientific possibility. Nerd to the core, Marma continued throughout lunch to pontificate on her theory. She glowed & beamed & scribbled notes through mouthfuls of nuts.
Glory finished her sandwich in a blissful state of gratitude for her choices as a person. Popular kids looked super boring. Meanwhile she had this treasure trove of friendship. Marma was such a great little Squirrel. With no disrespect to rodents of any kind, Morning Glory quite preferred her to the company of Meangirl Rats. Or… wait, Rats are cool. Something more snivelly… like… a mole. Or… a Possum! A stupid Possum.
Hey! Nothing wrong with a Possum, Glory’s inner reporter retorted. Nothing wrong! There’s no shame in Possoming. Funny how much like Dennis her inner reporter sounded.
Glory carefully poured her last bit of milk into the tiny paper bag of cereal. The game was to eat it now before it soaked the paper. And to answer the reporter calmly. It’s just important to be accurate. Bree is a spandexed Possum trying to play fisticuffs. That’s fine for her. And other sporty Possums. Meanwhile, we’re busy, the Squirrel and I, finding out about the building blocks of life.
Morning Glory won the cereal game with flying colors, but Marma was unimpressable and engrossed in her treatise on saving the world one spit at a time. No matter. Glory found herself absorbed in a question she had often entertained: What kind of animal am I? She continued to flip through mental slides of obscure amphibians as the bell rang to usher the herds into the hallways.
Lunchtime was followed by a quick study hall, at which time Glory normally stared out the window and wrote renegade haikus. Today, she was disappointed to find thick clouds obscuring her view of the sky. They were so thick that she couldn’t tell which part was cloud and which was the standard Everett atmosphere of wintry grey. They were so dense she couldn’t get any read on how low they hung. Her depth perception pulsed with vertigo when she tried to see. Thus it became a much more enjoyable game than cleverly arranged syllables. One by one, everyone’s gaze was drawn by the white gleam through the windows, all except for the teacher who droned on with his back turned. The whole room seemed to darken, tick by tick, as the clock inched closer to its noisy celebration of released captives.
The air grew curiously heavy. The untamed creature in Glory sniffed the air carefully, as molecules of her experience “indoors” began to swirl in an eerily familiar pattern that she was used to labeling “outdoors.” The other kids said nothing; however, more than a few had passed out on their desks to drool and dream, youngsters who usually spent their study hall time outrageously amped-up, fighting about pens and squealing about gum. Not surprising. The pressure drop was palpable. Morning Glory imagined her dreaming Dragon out in that dark light, and she was transported to a stillness of time, an awareness of unseen distance. She dizzied in the fluid of air and swam in the amplitude of her lungs. She felt unchanged across time, some kind of echoed birdsong mocking every clock & chalkboard in her mind.
The bell sounded, sending a sharp shock through the drowsy silence.
-**