Tiny Commotions

 Skirt:

Top Ten Most Influential Childhood Movie (In No Particular Order)

1. The Wizard of Oz
2. To Catch A Thief
3. Star Wars
4. Raiders of the Lost Ark
5. Pretty in Pink
6. The Goonies
7. The Wiz
8. Desperately Seeking Susan
9. Sleeping Beauty
10. Fame

When I was in the first great, I had a teacher named Mrs. Standafer. She was elderly, often rattled and easily convinced that I was sick and needed to be sent home, a fact I exploited almost daily for a while because I spent most of my childhood bored to tears in school. Mrs. S believed I was fragile and suffered from an acute learning disability because I could ace her tests without doing the work. Or rather, without doing the work at the pace I was supposed to be doing it.

For example: she had this box of 100 cards. Easy reading. One paragraph. Maybe two or three sentences. Followed by two or three simple one-word questions. We were allotted about an hour to do one, maybe two of these each day. We were not supposed to do anything else with that hour, like read the book you brought from home, draw pictures of fancy ladies, punch Dennis, the kid that set next to you who kept trying to get you to show him your underwear.

I’ve always been a fast reader and I was well into chapter books in the first grade. It took me, maybe, five minutes to do two cards. I could have easily finished 20-25 in the hour. I could finish the whole box in a week and move on to something more valuable like “The Secret Garden” or “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” or pretending I was Grace Kelly in “To Catch A Thief.”

I believe I made this point very rationally to Mrs. Standafer. I gave evidence. I showed her how fast I could read the cards. I answered all the questions accurately. And yet, she wouldn’t budge. “Only two cards per hour,” she said. “You need to learn how to go slower. Everyone else is going slower. Even if you can go faster and be just as accurate, you need to slow yourself down so you’re at the same speed as everyone else.”

In retrospect, this wasn’t some weird proto-Marxist leveling of the playing field. It was that Mrs. Standafer was an underpaid North Carolina public school teacher with neither the time nor the inclination to come up with a separate curriculum for an over-confident, seven-year-old pain in the ass. I was not some special genius. I was just a kid who learned to read early, perhaps at the expense of other more practical skills (I could neither ride a bike nor correctly operate a pair of scissors until I was nine years old).  And as someone who would grow up to work in a field that runs on hourly billing, there could be real value in learning that people don’t always need to know how long it takes you to finish things involving words.

Mrs. S tried to incentivize me to follow the rules by promising that I could spend part of the morning in the classroom reading corner, listening to a book on a cassette, while I followed along with the picture book. This also made no sense to me (I mean, I could read the book to myself), but at least it killed time. And one day when I finished listening to some Cooper Edens-esque book on tape, I flipped the cassette over to see what was on the other side. And hand to god, the other side of the tape was, like, the extended cut of “Fame.” Inexplicable. I have no idea how it got there either, but I was a highly superstitious seven-year-old. I loved the song, and I figured the universe was telling me that I should spend as much time as possible in the reading corner, pretending to follow along with the picture book, while instead daydreaming about legwarmers, disco balls, and how I was quite sure I could leap through the air like sprinting doe in pointe shoes if I could just have the right outfit.

I’m pretty sure none of us who bought this skirt are real dancers, but that does not stop us from listening to “Fame” and daydreaming instead of doing our stupid busy work.

The Outfit: Speaking of the reading corner, I took myself in this outfit to my favorite local bookshop where I spent a mess of gift certificates (and sill more money otherwise) on a balustrade-sized stack of books. When I checked out the cashier asked if I needed a box for transport and I did.

I need to buy a new bookcase or twelve. I need built in bookcases. I need someone with a larger car than mine to take me to IKEA. I say all this as way of saying that I don’t need any more books. I have nowhere to put them, and I give them away all the time. I know what you’re thinking “why doesn’t she go to the library?” You’d be surprised how many books I want to read are not at the library. Also, I’m terrible at returning them.  Is there a treatment program for book buying? I might need it.

Skirt: Athleta, 2022

Sweater: Lulu’s, 2022

Sneakers: Adidas, 2018

Earrings: Christmas gift, 2020