10/04/2002 - 3:42 p.m.

Admit that the waters around you have grown

OK, now, I wasn't in school on Monday. Right? Everybody remember? No, I wasn't. So on Tuesday I asked Mr. Mahler (AKA Richard Dreyfus) if there was anything I missed, anything I needed to know, anything that needed turning in and he said "no". This much is true. I had heard rumours of the paper being due, and I thought, well, hmmm... But, that no seemed (to me) pretty much all inclusive.

So, today, I arrive to tell him that I have to be up in the choir room, and he asks me where my paper is. I look at him, bemused, "paper?" Well, it was due. I suppose that at some point I should've heard that, or maybe I should've just assumed, but I don't believe rumours and I just didn't think it needed to be turned in because of that all inclusive "no".

So, I go, I sing. And I go down and present my story to Glawe. Well, she's totally OK with my using her computer, so I write the whole thing in there, and I'm not really worried except that I don't have a very official looking cover page and the Bibliography page sucks hairy monkeys (it's got everything, but it's not right), which if I hadn't spent half fifth hour talking to Andy it might not've. I turn it in to him after 6th. We'll see how a paper I spent, let's see, 45 plus 60, plus 30, OK, 120 minutes on does. That's about as much time as I spend on my other papers, but I'm not as rushed. Well, that's definately not four weeks worth of stuff, except that I started it in my head then so really it was just a case of writing it down. So, I might do well, I might do really badly. For the first time I'll get a grade for what will most definately have been my shittiest paper ever. We already know that when I spend, like, twenty minutes on a paper my English teachers give me A's, and my essays for that class are always good, I guess we'll just have to see.

Other than that, while I was running from Glawey's room to Math, that evil SWS teacher stopped me for wearing a bandana. It was done up like those headbands that little kids wear, not actually covering my hair (because it's kind of not adjusting to the new shampoo, but not too badly) but just on it. Well, she stops me and tells me I can't have it. I ask her what I'm supposed to do with it then if I can't have it. "Just put it in your pocket."

Is the logic of this not screwy to anyone else? If I can't have it, why can I have it in my pocket? If all I have to do is make it so she can't see it, why doesn't she just look away? What was so offensive about doing my hair like a six year old? I might be in a gang. Yeah, that's me, I'm standing in the hall wearing a GS shirt for Chrissakes, and I'm in a gang full of bitter white chicks. Sounds like me all right.

When I went up to Math, I just asked Mr. King whether I was breaking any school rules. He gave me this funny look and I said, "no, just tell me whether I'm breaking any rules."

Mr. King is a rules expert. This guy knows the rules, he follows them, it ticks him off that other teachers don't follow rules. He doesn't allow students to break rules. He's a military guy- rules are something he knows and lives by. He gives me a long look- he can't see anything. I point out my particular infraction and explain to him that, though instructed to remove it, there was no way I would because she was the only person I had come into contact with thus far that day and if she was going to have a problem and no one else was, well... (I decided not to suggest she could shove it up her ass.) He laughed, said he didn't see what was wrong with what I wore.

I have a real problem with other people dictating what I wear simply because it's a rule. I don't wear sandals to school (technically, they're against health code, but no one upholds it), I don't wear tiny skirts, I don't wear explicit t-shirts. I do every now and then wear a shirt with a tiny Fosters advert on the back, but no one notices because it's just the name- no obvious beer talk at all. I don't have holes in my jeans just underneath the pockets, I don't wear white pants and coloured thongs, even though it's legal I don't wear just post-its on my nipples (it's perfectly legal to be topless if your nipples are covered, and in some places it's OK to walk around topless as long as you don't stop traffic). But every now and then I get up in the morning and my hair needs not to be seen by real people. I break out the bandanas. They yell at me.

Tomorrow I'm taking my Blue Meanie costume to school.
OK, for all of you that don't know, that's my paisley orchestra vest. I was in orchestra at Roosevelt two years, and then quit, and I have from that time a butt-ugly blue paisley vest which I will be planning Hallowe'en costumes out of for years to come. It is officially christened the Blue Meanine costume.
So, I'm going to take that tomorrow and ask her if she has any problems with my wearing that, because it's just as paisley as my headband, because what is the problem anyway?

If someone could give me a rational explanation, and not just "it's a gang symbol" (Mafia men wear suits and ties, how about we ban those because everyone might be a Mafia man?) I might be willing to stop wearing them. I love the swastika as a good luck symbol (its true origins, actually), but I don't use it because of the Nazi connection. I used to have a notebook with a "cougar" on it (my middle school mascot), which wasn't a cougar at all, it was a panther. I wrote panther underneath it in big letters and over time ended up colouring the whole cat black. Soon after I learned what the Black Panters were when a kid at school asked me if I were a member. I got rid of the notebook that day.

While I'm doing all this to prevent misconceptions and misunderstanding, the students taking archery in gym are allowed to use the face of Osama bin Laden as a target. I'm getting yelled at for wearing a bandana. How does this work?

Today was also National Day of Silence Day. A few of my friends kept silent (I can't do that, or I would) in recognition of all the people who have ever had to keep silent or have been made silent because of their sexuality. It was a bigger thing two years ago. I think there were four or five today, maybe more. I'm glad it didn't cause anything like two years ago, but I hope that somebody noticed, maybe. I'm sorry people, but get used to it, first African Americans, then women, then the disabled, now make way for the alternative lifestyle's rights. How can we do anything else?