ARCHIVE: Diary of a Low Budget Superhero

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You're reading an old entry from Michelle "Lexi Kahn" DiPoala's online diary, formerly called Jungle Sweet Jungle. Blog name changed to Low Budget Superhero in October 2005. Now I mostly go by SuperLowBudge. You can call me Lexi, Michelle or SuperLowBudge, or if you're my mom, then Shelly. Enjoy these old posts (except if you're my mom.) Please follow on Blogger at superlowbudge.blogspot.com. From there you can follow me on Twitter and some other platforms. Thanks!

Gooood Moooorning Sister Eileeeeen

(February 02, 2004)

So, okay. I get this email with the subject line "Blast from the Past." Here is what it says:

OK, this is going to sound wierd. I'm surfing the web, putting in names of old friends randomly, seeing if anything pops up. I plug in the name 'kennitha hoffler'...don't know why, I just did - she was an old classmate of mine in Waterbury, CT. Lo and behold, your website diary pops up, with a reference to a Kennitha Hoffler in the sixth grade. I thought to myself, this is too weird. Could this be one of my old classmates from St. Margaret's?

Yes, it could be! I am, we are! This email is from a person that I haven't seen since pre-puberty. How weird is that? It gets better: I was JUST thinking about him. I was. While I was packing to move I found my St. Margaret's yearbooks. Before I boxed them I opened up to my class and scanned the rows of shiny-cheeked cherubs to see if I could remember everyone's name. When I got to Kenneth Longo I chuckled. I remembered his mom and mine working together on the big huge parish-wide tag sale that was the fund raiser one year. My mom loved his mom, got a real kick out of her, but I could not remember her name. I tried for awhile but couldn't...Peg? Diane? Sue? Anyway, his email came a few days later.

Eight years of Catholic school. I only had a few friends, but I loved my friends. I really did, and think about them all the time, particularly Michelle Brown. I'll have to do a whole separate entry on Michelle one of these days. My "girls" were Michelle, Sherah and in 7th grade, Jennifer, the new girl who for some reason started off talking like "a Val." Yes, a Valley girl. Like, ohhhmiGAWD, Toootally. I didn't care, I loved her, plus she had the cutest little sister (to whom I later gave all my Barbies, which pissed off my mom). Other people I liked were Colleen, Tracey...oh and Beth Perri! Beth, I thought, was the prettiest girl in class.

The boys? Well...I pretty much had a crush on Paul Pastore for all eight years. I liked Paul so much, I couldn't even look at him. But a couple of other little boys caught my fancy too. One was Kenneth Longo. Paul was the Bart Simpson of the class, but Kenneth was smart. And polite! And non-cliquey. Kenneth was equally nice to EVERYbody. Unlike Paul, Kenneth never made fun of me for winning the Archdiocese spelling bee three years in a row. What the fuck is an Archdiocese anyway? Whatever, I could spell encyclopedia so it was all me.

When he emailed me his signature line included a link to his lab, which has a "Personnel" page containing the staff cv's. High honors...magna cum laude...Dartmouth...medical school...numerous publications...grants, fellowships, awards...See, it isn't a recent development, I was ALWAYS a sucker for the brainy ones. Who takes a picture with a skeleton, seriously? An endocrinology nerd, that's who. Yay!

(Okay, an aside? My god I have to put some better pictures of myself in Friendster? Yeah. Kim Genereaux took a pretty good one at the Maxie Awards, maybe I can get that. It was right after I won for Best Female Personality again, oddly. Why oddly? Because I had no expectations of winning with Amanda Palmer in the running, since the Dresden Dolls won in every category for which they were nominated! Okay, that's the end of the aside.)

So Kenneth (I don't recall him ever once being called Ken or Kenny) is in my Friendster now. If YOU are in my Friendster then you are connected to Kenneth and therefore connected to my vortex. Watch out for...anything.

It's surreal to reconnect with someone after twenty years, an incongruous hiccup as you try to respond as your current self to someone who knew you, basically, as a child. It's like light hitting a crystal and all these prism'ed selves come beaming out.

"Um...in high school I listened to The Pogues and the Beastie Boys and Duran Duran, obsessed about my weight and got out of gym by complaining of cramps."
"This one summer I was on a vegetarian kick but my docter told me I was anemic and gave me five dollars to go get a hamburger...so...that vegetarian thing didn't work out."
"I learned how to tie a toga my first week in college."
"Skipped the prom."
"Lost my virginity at 19. That guy wanted to get married, can you imagine? I didn't mean to laugh when he suggested it but it was so very ludicrous."

Seriously, what do you talk about? "SO! How've you been?" Gah! Essentially what's happened is this: Seeing Kenneth's name again has got me thinking about St. Margaret's.

Cue swirly flashback music. Remember...

...all those times Sister Mary Shea put Kathleen into the trash basket? Is that even LEGAL? One time it was because Kathleen's slacks were turquoise instead of dark green. Come on, that is a PARENT'S responsibility. Call her mother to find out why she's out of uniform, don't embarrass the kid! Fucking Nazi nuns.

...Lisa pee'd sitting at her desk because Mrs. Signori didn't let her go to the girls' room? That was weird! She didn't even say that it was an emergency. I'm SURE Mrs. Signori would have said yes to an emergency!

...how everyone would change for gym class, but change into their coolest non-uniform outfits? Tight Jordache jeans, clean white-on-white Nikes. Belts! Who goes to put on a frikkin' BELT for gym class? Some of the girls put on those retarded glitzy headbands that left a braided-looking indentation in your forehead.

...the time Mr. Martone lost his temper and threw Robert up against the blackboard?

...jolly, huggy Mrs. Jones' music lessons with us singing along to all those folk records she'd put on the turntable?

...MISTER Jones coming to visit Mrs. Jones with their Irish Setter?

...FAMILY LIFE! Sex education from Mr. Flaherty, of all people. He turned practically purple with embarrassment while describing an erection, and from then on the words "longer, thicker and wider" were the funniest things any of us had ever heard.

...all the teachers? I think I can name them from first grade on. Sister Mary Shea, Mrs. Levine, Mrs. Donnarumma, Mrs. Jones, Mr. Flaherty, Ms. Signori, Mr. Martone and then we got the new chick for eighth grade when Mrs. Moran retired. She had us call her Mrs. D (for Dorozinski) and she took us to that resort that time on a day trip.

...first Friday mass every month? It was KINDA cool to get out of class I guess.

...when rickety old Sister Cosmos couldn't handle us anymore they got us a music teacher and it turned out to be this hippy with an acoustic guitar, Mrs. Miniter? Long rust-colored braids, long prairie skirts and lots and lots of "This is the day/this is the day that the lord has made/that the lord has made..." I can still sing the refrain in Spanish.

...when I passed out cold in church? I still have no idea why I passed out, but I hit that marble aisle hard, yo. Perhaps struck down for being a godless tart.

...all of us being checked for lice every damn month?

...when young, smiley Sister Eileen left and no-nonsense Sister Claire took over as Principal? My mom said the parish didn't like Sister Eileen because she wore pants and suits and no habit. One o' them thar modern nuns, I take it.

...Father Elder? SO cool. He was the only black priest I ever knew personally and was such a genuinely good person that he might have been the sole reason I didn't chuck the whole Catholic thing a lot sooner. My mom said the parish didn't like Father Elder because he was un-priestlike. Yeah, he didn't hate us and he spoke to us like we were worth communicating with!

...Christmas concerts in Father Brennan Hall?

...hot lunch? One day a week we could buy either pizza or a hot dog from some service that came around. Every other day we just brought lunch. Why bother?

...the Bucktooth Beaver? I can't even remember her name. Sister...McSomething, I think. The assistant to the Principal, wasn't that her job? I don't know what she did there but I do know that she only ever spoke to any of us girls about our skirts being too short or to make us go wash off make-up. Absolutely no rapport at all with the kids, and I clearly remember standing in dumb silence when my mom was there to pick up the word lists for the spelling bee...struck dumb because this surly bitch was talking all sweetly to me for the first time ever. It was like having a mugger come running up to you with a knife only to kindly offer to pare your apple.

...the nurse's office? A closet-like room at the end of that long dark hallway on the third floor. What else WAS on the third floor, anyway? The school was so tiny we knew most of it by heart, but that one floor they barely used was so dark and quiet and therefore strangely compelling. I used to dream about it all the time.

...any time an adult entered our classroom, we were all to stand up and greet them in unison. For some reason, perhaps to get the unison part right, we dragged out the vowels in this long low drone. How fucking dildoworthy.

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