Robbie Burns and my Skirt
984 Words
By the time we got to English class and were seated, I hated my skirt.
And it's all Mom's fault; she should have thrown it into the charity box she keeps under the stairs. Every now and then, Nanna collects it from us and takes it to the help center. I would have survived seeing my skirt on a meth-head/p********e. She wouldn't have known it was my skirt, and I wouldn't have worn it to school that horrible Friday.
Instead - because Mom listened to my whining to never throw it out - I am now the saddest human being on earth. In the galaxy.
Today, of all days in the lunar calendar, the Roman calendar, the Egyptian calendar, the Jewish calendar (you get the point) and any other calendar know to man or alien race, I would choose to wear my tartan skirt. The very same day that Mr O'Raw, our English teacher (and I forgot he is Scottish), decides to wear his kilt in honour of Robbie Burns Day.
I look like a dweeb. Really, I didn't even know there was such thing as Robbie Burns Day (okay, I did. I just forgot. And I sure didn't expect it to be today!)
One by one, as we entered the class, every student that entered before me just felt obliged to turn and look at me and laugh. I only found out what the deal was when I walked through the door.
Mr O'Raw smiled his broad, red-faced smile and tucked his shirt into his kilt.
"What a bonnie lassie ye are," he bellowed. Mr O'Raw never spoke with a heavy accent - except for today.
"You're all a lot of chumps, but wee bonnie Madi has shown you up." Mr O'Raw then bows - deeply and formally.
My despair was so heavy it could sink a thousand ships right then and there.
Mortified! That's the word. I was mortified. Wounded. Humiliated.
To make things worse, I knew that my face was now as red as Mr O'Raw's. And mine wasn't because I was a whiskey drinker.
I didn't hear him read 'ole Robbie's poems. I didn't hear him tell the class about the origins of haggis, and how it is in fact an animal that runs around the hills of Scotland in a particular direction, and how it has shorter legs on one side of it's body.
I only know that I missed all this stuff because he tells the same story every year.
On this particular Robbie Burns Day I decided a few things:
1. I hate Robbie Burns
2. I hate red red roses
3. I will NEVER fall in love
4. I hate tartan
5. I hate Fridays
6. I hate Leonora
By the time I had reached number 6 on my list, it was time for lunch. I left the class ahead of everyone else (they waited for the chocolate hearts that O'Raw was handing out - you'de swear it was Valentine's Day) and went to find a quiet spot behind the willow where no one ever went.
There had been a bee hive in the tree, and a student was stung to death. She didn't know she had an allergy, or maybe she just developed one while being stung by hundreds of bees. By the time the paramedics arrived, her face and throat had swollen closed and she suffocated.
I guess you could say I was feeling pretty low by the time I crouched in the shade behind the massive tree trunk. I sure didn't care about the stories of her ghost that cries in the branches when the wind blows.
All that mattered was that I had only eaten an apple all day. I hadn't seen Mom or Dad since yesterday. I had made an a*s of myself. I was dressed like O'Raw's twin sister.
There had to be another bad thing that really mattered. Surely the universe wasn't going to dump only half it's excrement on me before the weekend. Somewhere in another part of the galaxy, another heap of dung was preparing itself to be flung in my direction.
And then it all became clear. I had wished for a disaster and guess what? I got my disaster.
I realised it the moment I looked up and saw Roger Retard Jones standing in front of me.
Seriously, the universe was scrubbing it's toilet with my bobbed head.
"Mind if I sit here?" Roger said.
"I came here to be alone," I answered.
"So do I," Roger said. "Every day. Usually I get it right - to be alone, I mean. Because you're usually not here."
"Be my guest,' I said.
Really? If this tree belongs to anyone, it's the dead bee girl.
Roger sits, takes a candy bar out his pocket, snaps it in half and hands the one half to me. Then he leans back and closes his eyes, as though he's listening for something.
I don't know if it's ever happened to you, but sometimes the whole world shifts. The earth skips a gear as it turns. Or a star loses its way and lands in an ocean somewhere. A tree falls in a dense forest.
And nobody noticed.
You just know that something has changed. Something terribly important. And you can't say what it is.
Roger snapping off that piece of candy and handing it to me was that moment for me. Suddenly, everything that went wrong didn't matter so much.
And no, before you get the wrong idea, I wasn't falling in love with Roger Retard. It was nothing like that.
You'll think that I've lost every stamp in my album, but it was like I realised that I wasn't the only human being on the planet who mattered. My universe had expanded and I realised that other people had universes too.
Even Roger Retard had a universe that mattered.
- Writer
