Small Town Living

By Allison Roberts

I lived in a very small rural town from 5^th-8^th grade. I had moved there from a large suburb, and I was completely thrown off by the cows, the one street light, more bars than gas stations, and a school that held 2^nd-12^th grade in one building.

This was just not normal, and any person in 7^th grade should not, under any circumstances, have lunch and/or study halls with 12^th graders. It’s like putting a juvenile into adult prison, and then expecting them not to listen to the inmates.

I remember my first day of school—smack in the middle of 5^th grade (December). My teacher, Mrs. Washburn, stood me up in front of the room and said, “Class, this is Allison Roberts. She seems like a good girl so be nice to her.” Then she shoved me toward a chair in the row near the window, and went back to her desk. Mrs. Washburn was like 190 years old.

At recess, the interrogation began. A girl named Lori, sporting a snapped off browning front tooth, and a galaxy of black heads, started the rapid-fire questions: “Can you throw a ball far? Can you climb a tree? Can you run fast? ‘Cause Linda Miller is the fastest girl in fifth grade, except Robin Marlow. Are you a boy or a girl?” She smirked at this last question, but I didn’t care. If given the choice back then, I would have rather been a boy.

“I can run fast. I can climb a tree. And I can throw a ball,” I slurred, stealing a quick glance at the other girls surrounding my desk, then up to the lights; caked with dried bugs.

Within about a week, Lori had adopted me, and requested that I stop hanging out with Dina Patterson, the only Jehovah Witness in the entire world (besides Dina’s family, of course.)

“She’s weird, has huge glasses, and can’t even celebrate her fucking birthday,” Lori explained, dragging me behind her on the playground. “Besides, we’re trying to get Mrs. Washburn to let us have a Christmas party, and since Dina can’t celebrate that either, she’s no help at all.”

As it turned out Mrs. Washburn hated Christmas, so whether I hung around with Dina or not, it didn’t seem to hold much weight. “My husband died on Christmas day, so I don’t care about it at all,” she snarled.  “But if you want to have a Christmas party, by all means, go ahead. Just don’t drag me into the festivities.”

So someone’s mother brought in a small Christmas tree, someone else’s mom somehow finagled some cookies and soda, and though I have no memory of how, we were given some colored construction paper which we were allowed to make ornaments out of to hang on the tree. I might add here, that while all the “celebrating” and “joy” was taking place in the room, Mrs. Washburn sat at her desk and drank something out of what appeared to be a perfume bottle, that she kept in her desk drawer. Later that week, she stumbled into the water fountain and got sent home.

By 7^th grade, I had my “crew,” and we were pretty cool. At that point, older boys started sniffing around and my mother was starting to have heart palpitations. All I remember of that year is a lot of pot smoking, a guy named Pete, who had blue/black hair and alarmingly dark eyes, hanging out at a pizza place called the “Pizza Circus,” (where I became a notorious foosball player,) and a girl named Tracy, who was the size of Andre the Giant.

Tracy was supposed to be in 11^th grade, I think, but she was in 9^th. She had white-blonde hair, the wide facial bone structure similar to that of a horse, and arms the size of logs. Once she picked me up and placed me in the boys’ bathroom. I remember pretty much allowing this to happen, as A: once she had you in her grip, you really could not escape, unless somehow you had super-human strength or a pretty outstanding bribe, and B: because frankly, I knew she liked me; that this joke was just her way of showing me love. If she hadn’t liked me, I would have been tossed like a wadded-up Kleenex into the urinal.

Tracy got kicked out of school many times, as you might imagine, but the one time she was permanently removed was when she beat the holy hell out of the Principal, Mr. Merrins. I was in English class, in a room not far from the main office (that also doubled as the detention room,) so I got to hear the commotion and witness first hand as my English teacher, Mr. Baines, was called down to the main office to help with the fiasco.

Apparently Tracy was unusually mad at Mr. Merrins—theirs was a volatile relationship, built on power struggles, miscommunication, and a lot of swearing.  When the gym teacher and my English teacher finally got to the main office, Tracy had Mr. Merrins on the floor—after she’d kicked him in the nether regions—and was proceeding to hit his head on the floor.

Strangely, I never saw Tracy again…in school. If you wanted to find her however, all you had to do was go to the trailer park on East Lake Road where she lived with her brother, Randy (another Nordic anomaly,) and ask anyone you happen to see where you could buy weed.

About the middle of 8^th grade, my mother announced that she would be moving me back to the suburb from which we’d come. “I gotta get you out of here,” she said, after my brothers had graduated, and I’d been caught hanging out in an apartment at 10 AM, drinking beer, on a school morning.

Now, don’t get all mad if you’re from a small town, and feel the need to defend it. I don’t think everyone who lives in the country is a drinking pothead ass-kicker. I think the idea of living in a small town is great! As a matter of fact, I still visit there often, and have wonderful friends—still snuggled within the town limits—who are successful, fun, loving, kind, and mentally sound. But they are much less fun to write about.