Oh...by the way...I'm a vampire. I thought you knew.

Was trying to explain to someone today why I dropped out of high school. It's easy to say "Well, I was smoking pot, you know...not applying myself." But really, there is so much more to it than that.
I had had to repeat the eighth grade. And I had forgotten that fact until just now. Thinking back to why I failed, I can not tell you exactly what it was. I had a lot of stress: had to change schools due to a rezoning thing: I was on the local news for that one. Kids were teasing me relentlessly, because I did not wear a bra (apparently by the eighth grade a training bra or something is necessary). I was different, and the kids somehow zeroed in on that. I was always trying to just get through the day. I suppose that took its toll when the report cards were sent home.
Be that as it may, I eventually made it to high school. Coconino High School, in Flagstaff, Arizona. There were a lot of activities going on. Parties. Sex. Rock and Roll, drugs. Booze.
What I recall is that sometimes I took a can of half soda half vodka to school. How I didn't get caught is anyone's guess. By that time I was thoroughly traumatized just being at school.
Some classes were great. English, Shakespeare. Arizona History. Math was ok...we had a fine fine teacher named Mr. Painter. He was also the announcer for the football games. I'd listen to the football games on the radio just to hear his voice..he was a great teacher who showed an interest. It was too late of course, by the time I reached Mr. Painter's class I was too far gone.
Phys Ed... that was horrid. I'd gotten to high school without the knowledge of how to buy a bra, how to shave my legs/pits. I'd not been taught or even exposed to trimming my nails decently, or having my hair cut fashionably. I wore Levi's and tshirts. There was NO WAY you were going to get me to dress/undress in front of anyone in the locker room... and the Gym teacher, Ms. SPIGNER... ugh. She was HUGE, with a flat-top hair cut. Someone told me she had been a drill instructor in the Marines.
I was terrified of her. She dogged me. I wanted less attention but she gave me too much. I started ditching class. I ditched on a regular basis, that and math.
To this day I have ditching dreams where I wake up sure that I've missed class... again. It's weird.
I had to find a place to ditch so I chose the orchestra pit in the theater. That was a good place until they had a play going on and sets were being built and then I had to use the boiler room... I spent a lot of time there. No one asked me why I was ditching... ever. They just yelled at me for ditching. I began smoking pot with a friend on school grounds, in order to better enjoy my ditching, but it wasn't the cause of my ditching. I was bad at math; horrid in fact. I was scared of my gym teacher, who had told me to "Open my towel" so she could see if I had, in fact, taken a shower. WTF?
And there were the kids that tortured me. I had, at the time, canines that were way too far up in my gums and made me look like a vampire. They've since been lowered but then... my lips would get stuck on them and they'd be shining... and some girls would chase me around calling me "vampire". Literally, chasing me calling me that.
I'd run. Fast. And far.
And at some point in gym those same girls saw that I had not shaved my legs (I didn't know I was supposed to for one, and secondly, how? With what?) and then they had a field day. Now not only did they call me vampire they called me LESBO.
I didn't even know what that WAS!
They chased me and stole my brand new watch... they put mean notes in my locker. (Why didn't my mom buy me a lock? )
I remember vividly showing up for gym one day and Ms. Spigner (we called her Spikey) told us we'd be running up to Buffalo Park and back that day, and being timed.
I ran up and back (it's a pretty steep trail, with plenty of prickly pair cactus)so fast that she was awed and asked me why I didn't join the track team, oh yeah, I'd be a star...
I had done it just to show her I wasn't a slacker, as she kept trying to intimate.I didn't know how to tell her she creeped me right the fuck out, so I showed her I was an athlete, and that I could run, but what she didn't know was how I learned to run and why.
At some point my grades were so bad (My report card looked like this: F,F,A,A,F
...due to ditching certain classes, that my mom said "If you are not going to go to class, why not get a job?"
*sigh*
I did.