Comments on: Revelation V Revolution or Perfect Attendance: It F*cking Matters

By: Demure Lemur

Demure Lemur — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:37:57 +0000

This is brilliant.

Because I was completely unable to play any instrument, even the tin whistle, with anything even resembling competency, I was named class conductor. I had to stand at the top of the classroom and wave my hands about. None of the other classes had class conductors. I was so upset when I was told that I wasn’t allowed to march in the school band with everyone else on St. Patrick’s day that the principle announced I could march alongside and blow a whistle when it was time to change tunes. I couldn’t even get that right.

By: admin

admin — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 23:08:55 +0000

When I was eight, I wanted a perm. I wanted a perm and I wanted long, flowing locks, and I wanted bangs and I wanted to have hair long enough to have Princess Leia buns. I wanted it so bad it hurt. So my mom took me to her hairdresser, Judy, who specialised in the old Boston Dowagers but cut hair at a discount in her own basement, and I was all excited that I was gonna look like Farrah Fawcett or Wonder Woman, and I sat myself in the chair and chatted away until I noticed that she was *cutting it all off*. At the end of the day I had this puffball ‘do that looked like it had been peeled from the scalp of a 40-year old woman. I cried and cried and cried, and my mom was like, “That’s not nice to Judy! She gave you a very pretty haircut!” And I cried because I felt guilty because I upset Judy, who probably did think she gave me a pretty haircut, but I was eight, and I was just starting to get a little bit fat, and giving a perfectly spherical haircut to a fat child made me look like a brown snowman. Oh, how I cried for myself, and for Judy, and for my mom, and for myself, and out of sheer jealous rage at all the eight-year-old girls who had hair that lent their Wonder Woman Underoos some authenticity.

The next year, they let me get my perm. Over the two years or so that it took that perm to grow out, I got fatter and fatter, as if the weight of the fat itself was pulling the curls out. I still collected stuffed animals, and they had names and personalities, and I made them talk to each other.

Amiee, don’t tell Spideog any of this because while I appreciate that your cat thinks I’m cool, but I know her approval is pretty conditional.

Oh yeah, and I remember why they cut all my hair off. They cut it off because I got lice.

By: Amiee

Amiee — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 22:58:52 +0000

Amiee here, just wanting to say I think you’re cool. Spideog thinks your cool. I never had perfect attendance — my dad used to take me out of school to see movies with him. I do have a lot of embarrassing stories from that era involving bad haircuts. Very very bad haircuts. And a desire to be the next big professional hip hop dancer.

By: Red Links 18/01/10 | Alexia Golez

Red Links 18/01/10 | Alexia Golez — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 10:48:33 +0000

[…] On perfect attendance. […]

By: admin

admin — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 19:24:13 +0000

Ouch! Ouch!

We definitely need to do some Chaos Thaoghaires about the desperation to be popular. I like to say I would have done anything to be popular, but at the same time, I really thought I could be popular AND be myself. Sigh. Totally misunderstood the concept. Still do, I think.

By: Catherine

Catherine — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 19:16:46 +0000

I auditioned for our convent school musical with paltry hopes of maybe playing Liesl — flouncing round the stage in a pink crinoline and getting to kiss one of the handful of boys shipped in from the Christian Brothers seemed like a surefire path to social promotion. But, alas, our drama teacher reckoned my buxom blonde classmate would make a better Liesl, and that there was really only one place for a tall awkward podgy ginger with glasses, braces and a wonky fringe. And so I donned a wimple fashioned from a white poloneck and the fearsome persona of the Reverend Mother, under the tutelage of my very own REAL NUN vocal coach.

Even my little sister, who had cropped hair and thereby had to don lederhosen and play Friedrich, had a handier time of it. I still got recognised around the town two years later.