Pedestals, Paradoxes, and other Perils of Potential

My educational journey began when I was a toddler, prompted by the incessant repetition of a four-word phrase with which I drove my mother crazy. “What does that say?” I’d want to know, as my chubby little finger pointed at the sentences in the storybook Mom was reading to me. “What does that say?” I’d wonder out loud, looking up at Dad’s name patch on his Army fatigues. “What does that say?” I’d ask, every other second, as Mom and I wandered down aisles of colorfully-labeled bottles, boxes, cans, and jars at the grocery store. Everywhere we went, everywhere I looked, there was a wonderful wilderness of words to be explored, and my adventurous young mind wanted to know, with increasing impatience, “What does that say?”

Exhausted by my ceaseless inquisitions, my mom taught me to read when I was three years old. I learned quickly, and before long, I was learning other skills quickly, too: colors, numbers, shapes, sorting, advanced trigonometry… Well, ok, maybe not that last one, but I did find my first week at kindergarten to be a complete and utter bore. While all the other children were happily eating paste, and separating the red blocks from the blue blocks with wonder and amazement, I was chomping at the bit to learn the answer to that age-old question, “How much is two plus two?” I didn’t want the teacher to read to me during story-time. I wanted to read the book for myself. In fact, I wanted to write my own stories!

So, after enduring about a week of the kindergarten equivalent of underwater basket weaving, my mom petitioned to have me tested for possible grade advancement. It took a few weeks, but her request was finally granted, and when all was said and done, I tested between the fifth to eighth grade levels in many areas, and was promptly promoted to first grade. I was so excited to have the opportunity to learn new things!

I have mostly fond memories of my years during elementary school. I was always at the top of my class, and my friends looked up to me because they thought it was cool to do well in school. I was polite and well-mannered, so my teachers enjoyed having me in their classes. School was a place where I could feel confident and accepted, and since I loved to learn, it was one of my favorite places to be.

My success did have a few drawbacks, though. The older I got, the higher I was placed on a pedestal, in terms of grownups’ expectations of me. Whether they intended to or not, my parents, teachers, and Sunday School leaders put more and more pressure on me to be perfect. And after all, why shouldn’t they? I got perfect grades and had perfect behavior. One principal even called me to the front of the school auditorium, during an assembly I will never forget, and told the entire student body that he expected everyone to strive to be as perfect as Sarah Fox. My pedestal was thrust so high into the atmosphere at that moment that I’m surprised my nose didn’t start bleeding! At nine years old, I was a model student, and—pardon me while I switch metaphors here—an amateur weightlifter. I felt the weight of my own potential on my shoulders, and it grew heavier year after year. By junior high, it was crushing me.

Seventh grade was a miserable time in my life. I moved to a new state, new culture, discovered I was supposed to shave my legs, and worst of all, learned that academic excellence was the calling card of freaks, geeks, and weirdos. My first weeks of junior high were an alien experience of being bullied and ridiculed by the delinquents and the cool kids, and befriended by the equally bullied and ridiculed dorks who rode the bus, and hadn’t gotten the memo about shaving their legs yet. If seventh grade was a game of Wheel of Fortune, “nerd” was the final word, and I was the winning contestant!

In eighth grade, I lost my virginity…my academic virginity, that is. I got my first B, and in short order, even my first C. Being smart and getting good grades were heinous crimes in my adolescent community, and when I stood before a jury of my peers, they unanimously declared me guilty of being a schoolgirl in the first degree, and sentenced me to strife without parole.

I found out it’s really tough to lift weights when your hands are cuffed behind your back, so I offered a plea-bargain. I agreed to tone down the book smarts, and did nine months of community service learning how to be too cool for school. I started swearing, ditched class a few times, and abandoned my nerd friends for the privilege of being a peripheral member of the in-crowd. To borrow from the scriptures, “I gained the whole world…and lost my soul.” Eighth grade was both the best and worst time of my whole student career.

The thing about being placed so high up on a pedestal is that you have so much farther to fall, and the impact of the crash is all the more traumatic. I guess I didn’t so much fall off my pedestal as jump off. By ninth grade, I hated who I’d become in order to be accepted. Popularity didn’t matter, because I couldn’t accept myself. So I jumped. No longer was I the ‘wonder girl’ who every student secretly envied and every adult openly applauded. I was just…I don’t know. I still don’t.

My high school years were spent in a state of amnesia. I have hardly any recollection of that time in my life, aside from knowing how miserable I was, and how much I hated school. I’d lost my identity, my confidence, my friends, and my potential. I begged my parents to let me home-school, and they finally relented my senior year.

Twelfth grade was a time of quiet victories for me. Being the only member of my class, I was voted Most Congenial, Best Smile, and Class Clown, and was valedictorian at my graduation ceremony. When I received my diploma, it was like winning that silver Lombardi in the Super Bowl of Life. I’d defeated the delinquents, who had the home-field advantage, but lacked the dedication to win; I’d defeated the cool kids, who were faster than me, but lacked endurance; and I’d defeated the grownups, who knew how to compete—and win—but had forgotten how to play “for love of the game.” My cheerleading squad—the nerds of the world—was there in spirit, celebrating my victory with me.

After the euphoria of graduating from high school, I was convinced I had reached the height of success, so I decided to rest on the laurels of my accomplishment. I pretended to be a college student for a few semesters, just for fun. I worked, I played, and I lived. I wanted nothing to do with responsibility, because I was afraid of climbing back onto the pedestal. I continued my game of ‘make believe’ throughout my twenties, getting married, pregnant, and divorced along the way. I’d recovered some of who I was during my senior year of high school, only to lose it again at the hands of the new bully in my life: my husband.

My marriage was like wearing a new set of handcuffs. My divorce brought me freedom, but it wasn’t like having the key that quickly and smoothly unlocks the cuffs. It was as though I’d had to cut them off myself, with a dull handsaw. To say it was painful is like saying Keanu Reeves’ acting is kind of wooden—gross understatements on both accounts (although the Reeves one may be worse…tough call.) However, it is said that “what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger,” and I can personally attest to that. Ask me to lift weights now, and I’ll tell you to add a few more pounds on each side of the bar, because I know I can take it!

After my divorce, I was forced to face reality; no more pretending for me. I was a single parent, I had few marketable job skills, and I had freshly-acquired strength and experience that needed to be shaped and conditioned. I was thirty years old, and found myself in the unexpected position of being a student once again. But the great thing about going to school as an adult is that the dorks and delinquents and cool kids don’t factor into the experience anymore, and the grownups aren’t my overzealous fan club—they’re my peers. I am free to be as perfect or as paltry as I want to be! I just want to do the very best I can.

My educational journey began in my youth, but it certainly didn’t end there. I am still traveling, still learning. Till the day I die, I will still be asking, “What does that say?” and I know that discovering the answers is going to be one amazing ride!

...a work in progress...

[These are bits and pieces of a poem I tried to write several years ago...just thought I'd put 'em together and see what happens...]

I built my walls so high
and now I can't see over them
I wrapped myself up tight
and now I cannot move
Dark figures beckon to me
I'd back away, but my feet are lead
They come closer, to call me
Our eyes meet, and I tremble
as my weaknesses grab me by the hand
and shove me into a canyon of shame
Why must I want you
the way that I do?
Why do you have such control?
This yearning, it started a flame in my heart
and now I am nothing
but ashes...

Target Practice

It was a sweltering hot day, without even the most impotent of breezes to cool her skin, which was slick with sweat. She swiped an arm across her forehead to whisk the perspiration away, but not before the saltiness ran down into her eyes, stinging them. With a heavy sigh, she arched her hand above her eyes like a visor, shielding them from the unrelenting brightness of the sun, and began scanning the horizon intently.

Something was up. Something that made her heart beat too fast and time move too slow. She’d felt it in the air the moment she’d stepped outside, just the way she had felt all those times before, when her bitter enemy – her most insidious antagonist – had intruded into her life with all the courtesy of a derailed freight train. He had the malicious determination of a guerrilla army cutting through the jungle, and he’d gotten her in his sights, like a sniper with a chip on his shoulder, patiently biding his time until he could shoot to kill. A quick movement caught her attention, accompanied by a foreboding quiver down her spine, and so, slowly, she looked up.

There he was. Leering down at her with dark, beady eyes that were always full of contempt. He had the confident look of a predator smelling fear, and she wasn’t sure what intimidated her more: his arrogant expression, or the unspoken loathing that crackled between them like diabolical electricity. She wanted desperately to run, to escape the evil that he intended for her, but she was trapped like a mouse under a serpent’s hypnotic gaze, and her legs had turned to stone.

Sensing her distress, he took his cue, and settled into position with the familiar ease of someone who has performed this routine so many times that it has become second-nature to him. Oh yes. He’d seen that deer-in-the-headlights look before, and he knew that the time had come to execute his plans for her. She almost made it too easy for him, really, the way she stood frozen in place, and he glared at her fiercely, hoping to make her jump a little, to mix things up a bit. He liked it better when they tried to get away. He got to show off his skill then, and the adrenaline rush of the pursuit further heightened his speed and accuracy. She looked away from him, just for a split second, and he knew it was now or never.

Like an Olympic runner, she bolted at the first indication that he was going to pull the trigger, and if an official had been around, she’d have been penalized for a false start. It didn’t matter, though. She was never meant to win this race, he’d known all along, and as his ammunition hit his target with stealth-bomber precision, the victim fell to the ground with a primal groan that seemed wrenched from her body, and lay gagging in the dust as it settled all around her.

When a man finally came to her aid, having heard her guttural cry, the grisly scene that he came upon was one he would talk about for years to come. The woman had been struck squarely on the top of her head, which had the splattered appearance of a paintball target, and her body shuddered with silent sobs. Hoping to redeem the situation, the man looked around for any clues that might cause the perpetrator to be apprehended, but justice was not to be had on this tragic day. He could only wonder about the identity of the woman’s attacker, for he was nowhere to be seen. However, on the ground a few inches away from her, the villain had left his calling-card, of sorts: a graffiti-like splash of gritty white, surrounded by a flurry of feathers.

*written by Sarah M. Fox on 11/9/07*

Highway From Hell

[I wrote this for a Creative Writing assignment in Fall '07. Our class held a competition - with voting opened up to our class, and any other students who wished to participate in judging - to determine the top three story entries. The requirements of the assignment: the story had to be exactly 200 words; had to contain a supernatural element; had to have a local setting; had to feature two of the five senses; and had to have dialogue/speaking part. My story was voted 1st place!]

He staggered past boulders in suffocating heat. His feet burned, hot gravel crunching loudly beneath them, as heat-waves hovered above the highway like a fiery fog. His eyes felt like sandpaper with each blink. His mouth was Sahara dry, and his tongue, swollen, like a bloated, beached whale. He reeked of urine and sour milk – the putrid stench of salty sweat.
“Where the hell am I?” he asked himself, smirking at the irony of his question. Hell was a vacation destination, compared to this furnace! Angrily, he thought of Lucìfa, who was responsible for his being here on this dusty, lonely road. He’d done everything she wanted, no matter how evil or despicable her request, in order to be spared from her wrath: the black flame of her glaring eyes that seared his flesh and incinerated his very soul. Still, she’d thrown him down the one-way portal from Hades to this desert wasteland.
He looked around helplessly, wondering about the name of this punishing new home to which he’d been banished. A battered metal sign standing a few yards away, glinting in the blazing sunlight, caught his attention. “Imperial County,” he read aloud. Overhead, a lone buzzard shrieked his welcome.

Above the Sky

Poorest child, ragged and frail,
I am but a sparrow,
and where I am to rest my head
You’ll give to me tomorrow.

Though cold and weary to the bone,
I will never sorrow;
Loving Arms wrap ‘round my heart
and warm me till the morrow.

And even if I die
without a penny in my hand,
I’ll fly beside You, Jesus, Lord,
to my home above the sky.

Quiet keeps me company,
a lonely little bird,
but when Your still voice calls to me,
sweeter sound has ne’er been heard.

Weakest creature, heir of nothing,
worthless I, to most, appear;
this matters little to The One
who died to draw me near.

And even if I die
without a soul to call my friend,
I’ll ever praise You, Jesus, Lord,
from my home above the sky.

Empty though my pockets be,
nothing more could bless
than bowing low before Your throne -
riches flow from Holiness.

With many tears, both joy and grief,
this path, called Life, is paved;
I could not walk its miles alone -
Hallelujah, I am saved!

And when my time to die
greets me just around the bend,
I’ll run to meet you, Jesus, Lord,
in my home above the sky.

~ written by Sarah M. Fox on 11/21/04 ~

Requiem

Goodbye, my love, goodbye…
I pray you’ll come back soon
To hold me tight in your embrace,
And kiss me ‘neath the moon.

Goodbye, sweet friend, goodbye…
I long to see your face,
To hear your voice, and feel you near –
Memories cannot replace.

Goodbye, dear name, goodbye …
I’ll try to persevere
Though my prayers seem to chase the wind,
No matter how sincere.

Goodbye, cold stare, goodbye…
My affection I rescind -
You fooled me from the very start
And, smiling, planned my end.

Goodbye, dry bones, goodbye…
Like death, we do forever part;
I pray God grant you mercy,
For you never had a heart.

~ written by Sarah M. Fox on 9/19/07 ~

Comfort Me

Grey haze surrounds me, suffocating silence,
As I wake to a cold, still dawn –
The heart-shaped seams on my blanket
Are ripped out, as I hold it tight to me,
And I cry…

Through heavy mist You call my name,
Gentle pleas search for my soul –
While bonds of burden tighten their grip,
My eyes shut, Darkness takes a bow,
And I cry…

Comfort me
I don’t know where I’m going
I’ve lost the directions
Or I’m already there
And there’s just no one here but me
Comfort me

A flood of tears like liquid glass
Cuts across my face
And everything but my life
Flashes before my eyes
Guess I was already dead
Comfort me

Trembling hands reach, heavenward,
Straining against icy chains –
Fear and grief bleed through my pores,
Burn my skin - this shame seeks its relief,
And I cry…

Silver clouds gather above my head,
Living Water pours like rain –
Rays of gold beam from Loving Eyes,
Hold my gaze – cold gives way to warm,
And I cry…

Comfort me
I don’t know where I’m going
Give me the directions
And stay with me there
‘Cause there’s just no one here but me
Comfort me

~ written by Sarah M. Fox on 11/21/04 ~