Alphabet: A History (T) Truth or Dare
It's the last week of August — the last week of summer before school starts again. I'll be in ninth grade this year and I'll have my first boyfriend and we'll make out after school in front of the buses and the assistant principal will time us so he can tell my mother, who teaches at the school, how long we stood there kissing in public. It's the last week before school starts and I'm taking a trip with a church youth group to Garmisch for the weekend. I don't like church at all and in a couple years I'll stop going altogether, but I like this youth group because a lot of my friends are in it and we don't talk about the bible too much and sometimes we get to do cool stuff, like go to Garmisch for three days without our parents.
We leave super early in the morning and some of us have spent the night at the church so our parents don't have to wake up at the crack of dawn to drop us off at the bus. Late at night we play Truth or Dare, and some of us stand at the pulpit and pretend we're giving a sermon. I want to kiss someone at the altar just because it seems so sacrilegious, but there isn't anyone in the group I feel like kissing, and besides, wouldn't it be weird to have your first real kiss in a church?
In Garmisch, we stay in dorms, and we wake up early in the morning to have prayer circles. This is my least favorite part of the trip, not because I don't believe in prayer, but because I think praying in groups or just bowing your head while someone else says words that aren't necessarily what you'd say to God is disingenuous. I like to pray when I'm in the bathtub or when I'm lying in bed trying to fall asleep or when I'm in my room and I can hear my parents fighting. I don't like praying in groups, so instead of praying, I count. I squeeze my eyes shut, bow my head and count to 100 slowly. Years later, I'll realize I count whenever I'm bored or nervous. I'll count in job interviews and in meetings and when I'm sitting in a bathroom stall waiting for the other people to leave so I can do my business in private.
After the prayer circle, we sing, which I actually enjoy because we don't sing church songs like I did in vacation bible school as a kid; we sing normal songs like "Leaving on a Jet Plane," and "Ob-La-Di, Ob, La, Da." These songs stay in our heads all day long, and later, when we're on the lake in our paddle boats or sitting at the dinner table about to eat some schnitzel, a bunch of us will spontaneously break into song and it will feel like the most normal, natural thing in the world, and I'll wish everything could always feel so easy.
We're all a little closer on the bus ride home than we were on the way out. We have inside jokes now that we repeat over and over and over so we don't forget — so we don't forget in that space between this moment and next week or next month or next year when we're all just faces in the hallway. And we sing our songs and we play Truth or Dare and we all say who we'd marry if we had to marry someone in the group.
A few months later the war in Iraq starts and our youth group
leaders all get deployed. New leaders take their place, but it isn't
the same. Besides, youth group is starting to feel a little young for
me and we haven't done anything cool in a really long time and I've got
a boyfriend now and that takes up a lot of my time. In a couple of
months he'll break up with me and it will be a bit of a shock. He'll
tell me he's bored and I'll spend weeks trying to figure out if he
meant that I'm boring or if we were just boring together. I decide maybe I'm boring and I vow to be more exciting in the future.
The next year we move again and I don't have the energy to make new
friends. They're all going to move anyway, or I'll move, and graduation
is only two years away and I'll just wait til college to make new friends. In English, we have to keep a journal and I write in mine how much I
hate school and how I think everything is so stupid and my teacher asks
to speak to me after class. She talks to me and I can tell she cares —
or wants to seem like she cares — but I can't hear anything she's
saying. I see her lips moving, but I'm just counting until she's done.
One-two-three-four...
I spend the next two years counting. Graduation can't come soon enough.
Awww, I was just thinking it had been awhile since you posted something in your Alphabet Series. These really are my favorite posts you do. Thanks again for sharing with us!
Posted by: Kathleen | September 01, 2010 at 12:48 PM
These posts really are something special. I enjoy reading them, too.
Posted by: Kate | September 06, 2010 at 12:28 PM
awww. the counting thing is so sad. Im going through a bunch of your posts for the first time. I love these!!!
Thanks so much for posting such personal things.
Posted by: pereiraj | February 14, 2011 at 11:38 AM