Freshmen

When I was young I knew everything
And she a punk who rarely ever took advice
Now i’m guilt stricken, sobbing with my head on the floor
Stop a baby’s breath and a shoe full of rice
I can’t be held responsible
Cause she was touching her face
I won’t be held responsible
She fell in love in the first place
For the life of me I cannot remember
What made us think that we were wise and we’d never compromise
For the life of me I cannot believe we’d ever die for these sins
We were merely freshmen

The Verve, 1996

---

He told us about Mike.

We sang the Adams family while we packed our cigarettes. We smoked in his mother’s car and ran through yellow lights and hit the roof
when it turned red,

because a teenager wants to get away with danger. Anything to make it stop.

The things a freshman is handed to carry on their 15 year old shoulders.

Gruesome.



They said Mike had taken acid. He chased his mom with a butcher knife.


I threw bottles of pills down my throat with cans of Barq’s
from my parents’
refrigerator.
To this day, I gag when I hear about that root beer.
ever since that Halloween.
How was 15 so fucking dark?

He knew,
I think he was scared.
Handing out candy on a school night
with his ex girlfriend
dying next to him
on the enemies’ front porch
swing.

I was dizzy when I got up to hand out candy. but
I still did it.

She slit her wrists, her dad was raping her, we didn’t know.

It’s ok, she got scared and showed her mom.

“We interrupt your midday cafeteria visit with an inappropriate teenage news break: Jamie tried to kill herself.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.”
We held the darkest of secrets.
She cut herself in her suburban bedroom where they left her alone too much.

She took more than indicated for a headache, and she tried to show her mom.

He sat behind me in Health class and asked why I didn’t just inject myself with an empty syringe.

I wondered too.
I didn’t know.

She was a cheerleader, almost like one in that video.
She ate lunch with a grunge girl
in a science classroom.
He probably saw The Breakfast Club at least four times.

We thought he was being so cool.

But really
it’s only right that a teacher do that for a teenager.

He was so cool, we thought, for letting us eat there everyday, instead of following cafeteria policy.

He was a cool teacher.

We shouldn’t have had to even think that, though.
They all should have been cool.

It should have been an expected accommodation. We don’t ask for much – just a place
to actually take a break
from the
Heathers and Veronica’s and J.D.s – some our closest friends.

Some things are a right, not a privilege.

Maybe they forgot. The Wall of Knowledge gets so high sometimes.

She knew about my abortion.
A girl on the squad was
in the same situation,
Smoker or cheerleader –

just little girls

afraid.

My God, what our bodies can do.
Ready to die and ready to kill.
All out of love,
“too little too much”.

This is not really
This, this, this is not really happening
You bet your life it is
You bet your life it is
Honey, you bet your life

Tori Amos, 1994

---

She told me about Jeff.
We knew his family didn’t love him enough.
It’s ok most families don’t.

We didn’t know we would live to 46, or
still know Jeff at 46, or
see his family
at his funeral
at 46.

We didn’t know his journal-
saying he tried to quit a few months ago-
would be at our fingertips
and his ashes
a foot in front of us.

We didn’t know how much it could hurt if we made it to 46.

Enough to take too much.
Too much is just too much.

Still they “grounded” us
isolated us
shamed us
hid us
away from our army.

They cut off all contact

with the ones who always showed up in the science classroom.

We were prisoners of war.
It gets so violent sometimes.

For the life of me I cannot believe we’d ever die for these sins
We were merely freshmen