My Teenaged Life: An Essay on Embarrassment 

Here’s something that’ll make your eyes pop: 50 years ago this month, I graduated high school. That’s a milestone to remember. Well, sort of remember. It was 50 years ago, after all.

The things I do recall include typing class, with fancy-schmancy electric typewriters, and Home Economics. “Home-Ec” was mandatory for girls in 1976, which was sheer torture for the more culinary- and sewing-challenged of us who burned cupcakes on a regular basis and couldn’t touch electric appliances without them bursting into flames. Really—the cord of an iron I was using suddenly caught fire and only my teacher’s fast action of ripping the iron out of my hands and pitching the incendiary device into the sink saved the school from burning down.

That’s a completely true story, one of the many high school disasters I fictionalize (and creatively embellish) in my 1976-set coming of age tale, My Bicentennial, written as Evie Kelley.

The characters in My Bicentennial are also fictional, but the emotions and angst they experience is all too real, especially embarrassment. In fact, embarrassment is pretty much a state of being for a teenager. From the first day of puberty until that last pimple fades is basically one long red-faced adventure. Hyper-aware, self-conscious, blushing, and unsure. Unsure of anything except the solid knowledge everyone is staring at you, judging and laughing.

For me, there was a specific wanna-die incident of embarrassment that topped them all—I fainted in the hallway at school. From really, really, ridiculously bad period cramps. And not just once, several times. 

Well, how could I not use this excruciating and “I’ll laugh about it later” moment as fiction fodder? I put Deidre Daly, My Bicentennial’s narrator, into this uncomfortable predicament while in Home Ec class. I’ll let Deidre tell you what happened after the first cramp hits….

 

“Mrs. Baker, can I go to the bathroom?” I asked.

“May I go to the bathroom, Deidre,” she said, smoothing her apron.

I groaned. This was no time for the grammar police. “May I go? Please?”

She sighed her permission and I rushed out so fast I forgot to get a hall pass. I raced down C corridor, aiming for the girls’ bathroom at the end. I darted past the open door of Mr. Aboody’s typing class. The clackity-clacking keys of thirty typewriters pounded into my throbbing brain.

I hadn’t gotten far when the next cramp struck. My belly contracted in on itself like a collapsing star. I gasped for breath. My legs trembled and my ears rang with a hollow, high-pitched shrill. Needles and pins prickled along my scalp. I went clammy all over. Fear folded over me, killing all other sensation.

I’m going to faint.

My brain droned like a hive of bees on the attack. Spots popped in front of my eyes and my knees turned to jelly. My vision closed, drawing me into a dark tunnel.

The bell rang as everything went black. 

***

I woke up stretched out on the floor. A murmur of anxious voices whirled around me. I swept the cobwebs from my brain and opened my eyes to see… Shoes. A lot of shoes. Every kind and every brand. Lace-up Oxfords, platforms, boots, and a variety of sneakers.

My cheeks burned. I’d fainted before, but always at home. Not with the entire school for an audience.

The sea of soles parted and a pair of brown penny loafers with shiny pennies in the slots stepped into view. Mr. Anger, the vice principal. A roly-poly man with a fondness for plaid suitcoats with elbow patches, Mr. Anger bent down and helped me sit up against the lockers. The cool metal felt good against my sweaty back.

Mr. Anger said something. He had a whispery voice as soft as a pillow and I couldn’t hear a single word.

“What?”

“I said, what happened? Are you on drugs? Are you pregnant?” This time he spoke loud enough to be heard down the hallway and halfway across the city. The crowd of gawkers broke into a hubbub of speculation and snickering.

I cringed, thinking I might faint again. How could I tell him I passed out from cramps? How could I utter the word period in front of all these people? “No. I’m fine. I just need to go to the bathroom.”

He took that with a nod and gripped my arm with both hands to help me up. I didn’t have the strength to stand and he couldn’t lift me. He looked around, a little frantic, then his eyes lit up.

“You. Come help this poor girl up,” he said.

By you he meant one of the male gawkers, who pushed his broad shoulders through the crowd and two seconds later, I was on my feet. I wobbled, still woozy and weak-kneed. The gawker put his arm around me to hold me up. I trembled again. Not from fainting this time.

The object of my most secret desire held me in his arms.

Carl Werzbicki. The dreamy guy with an old man’s name. The most popular boy in school. The guy I’d had a crush on since freshman year. Carl always had girls fawning over him and I doubted he’d ever noticed me. But he noticed me now, in all my hall-fainting splendor. I was as pale as a ghost, not to mention sweaty and let me say, whoever invented polyester should be shot at sunrise or sooner. The fabric didn’t breathe, like cotton. Every part of me dripped with perspiration. My pants and blouse stuck to me like an onion’s skin.

“Are you feeling better, dear?” Mr. Anger asked, his voice soft again.

“Much better, thanks.” Except for wishing the floor would split open and swallow me whole.

 

Poor Deidre’s embarrassment doesn’t stop there—she faces an overabundance of awkward and uncomfortable moments on her way to growing up and learning to accept herself for who she is. I hope you’ll join her on her journey.

 

Meet award-winning author Janet Raye Stevens/Evie Kelley – mom, tea-drinker (okay, tea guzzler), and weaver of smart, stealthily romantic tales. As Janet Raye Stevens, she writes both short mysteries and novel-length time travel adventures and historical and romantic suspense. Writing as Evie Kelley, she’s published the first in a young adult sci-fi suspense series, The Nascent Bloom: Book 1 Caught, and My Bicentennial, a coming-of-age set in the 1970s era of mood rings, platform shoes, and the eternal debate of who’s cuter, Starsky or Hutch.