Books : The Life History of a Star : Excerpts

from Part 1

Year: 1973 Name: Kristin Folger Age: 14 (but feel like I'm 50) Address: 4175 Mauna Loa Street, Glendora, California (also known as the sweaty armpit of the universe) Height: Who cares Weight: Under Hair: Nondescript brown Eyes: The same Best Friend: Carol, and Simon (when he's in town)

My ex-English teacher, Miss Colandra, gave me this journal last semester. Keep track of your thoughts, she told me, they're really quite unusual. Yeah, right.

April 3, 1973

It's the little things in life that get to me: TV dinners; boring teachers; pompous cosmetics clerks; packages of mustard and mayonnaise that only have enough for one bite of a sandwich; fairy tales that end in marriage; cheapskate ice cream clerks; lockers that stick; black-and-white gym suits; the Mod Squad...I could go on and on.

April 4

Mom yaps to her friend on the phone about the lateness of my "development." I try to explain the benefit of looking like a boy, the gift of invisibility. Girls are subject to all amounts of attention. My best friend Carol dresses in the frilliest clothes imaginable and has to put up with sweet remarks from just about everyone.

Spent the day at garage sales looking for a birthday present for Dad. Pretty difficult task since the garage sales in my neighborhood are filled with the most unbelievable junk known to man: dusty wicker baskets, blankets covered in cat hair, broken hi-fi equipment, plastic flower arrangements, scratched records. This is what happens when you live in a poor neighborhood. Nothing but junk at garage sales. Finally, Mom had mercy on me and agreed to take me to Kmart so I could buy Dad something new. But first I had to sit in the dressing room and do my homework while she tried on blouse after blouse after blouse (then didn't buy any). I didn't want to get Dad the typical boring present: Old Spice, soap on a rope, bathrobe. I lucked out, though; there was a big sale in sportswear and I managed to get a really nice Dodgers jacket. In a rare fit of generosity, Mom paid the tax.

I hope he likes it.

April 5

Dr. Alger was going on and on about the Big Bang Theory, much to everyone's boredom. I believe in the Small Fry Theory. I think the universe started not with a big bang, but with some tiny organism who was enough of a fighter to continue against the odds. Out of this organism grew the universe. I didn't share this with Alger, though. He got mad enough when I told him that a balanced ecosystem leaves no room for creativity and individuality. The top of his head turned practically purple and he ended class with the following cheerful statement: "One day, billions of years from now, the sun will collapse on itself and that will be the end for everyone. Keep that in mind when you're having your next adolescent crisis." You gotta laugh!

Still, the class gets under my skin. Last night I dreamt of the sun exploding, of Agent Orange and land mines.

P.S. Pioneer 11 launched to explore the vast fields of Jupiter.

April 6

Woke up late and rushed around looking for my anatomy book. I must've left it in the dressing room at Kmart. I dread telling Mom about it because she hates doing the least little thing for me.

Due to his sickly pathetic health, my dear brother Bobby has managed to get out of PE. Just because he's in high school, he gets to do what he wants. God! What I wouldn't give. PE was cooked up by jocks who want to punish intellectuals like me. I mean...every time that volleyball comes at my head -- I DUCK -- who wouldn't? Because of my superior instinctual response, no one wants me on their team. There's nothing like standing on the pavement watching person after person being called to a team until you're the very last one. Might as well be the last one on earth. Reminds me of that Twilight Zone: When a woman has the bandages taken off her face, she is beautiful. Unfortunately for her, everyone else looks like pig mutants and she's the outsider.

When Bobby came home I told him I'd kill to get out of PE. "You wouldn't want my asthmatic lungs, Kris," he said, puffing away on a cigarette.

Called Grandma about twenty times. No answer. Since she hardly ever goes out, I'm worried that she's dropped dead. I wouldn't be surprised. She has clogged arteries, a polluted liver, and dentures.

April 7

Dad's birthday went off pretty well yesterday. Bobby got him a power saw that he must have saved up for for about five months. Mom got him a fancy bottle of scotch, which everyone knows is for her. Dad made a big deal out of smelling it and savoring it and everyone got a taste (tasted like cologne). The big hit was the Dodgers jacket. Dad said it made him feel like he was back in high school. Then he went on and on about his bald spot and being middle-aged, which was really pathetic, and just about the time he's cutting the cake, we hear the ghostly sounds coming from upstairs. Everyone freezes like it's a photograph. Then we all talk real loud and pretend not to notice (as usual). But no one really touches their cake after that and the party breaks up.

April 8

Just finished reading A Wrinkle in Time for the third time. It's a kid's book but I like it. In the end, it's only love, not science, that can save them. Like the Beatles song, "All You Need Is Love." Unfortunately, no one has quite figured that out yet.

April 9

Pablo Picasso died. Simon will be devastated. I'm pretty sad myself, even though a lot of his art looks like a kid painted it. It says something for him that he could keep up that kind of spirit even though he was so old.

I miss Simon. He's my only male friend. But since his dad got the position at the university, Simon thinks he's better than me.

P.S. I thought up a new replacement for the Big Bang Theory: the Squeaky Fart Theory. The universe started with a squeaky little fart. Like the last gas of an old man, it stinks for a while, then dissipates into nothingness.

(This is the kind of thing I come up with when I'm down.)

April 10

Mom finally took me back to Kmart for my anatomy book, only to find out that some creep had drawn unsavory (to use a vocab word) additions on all of the skeletal illustrations. I showed these to her and she threw this huge fit at Kmart. The assistant manager assured her that none of his employees would do such a thing, but I saw one of the employees, this really pimply kid, giggling behind the stand of batteries and flashbulbs. The assistant manager offered Mom a $5.00 gift certificate. That placated her. She was even kind enough to give me half; it was my anatomy book, after all. I got a couple of really cool Peter Maxx folders, so the day wasn't a complete bust.

Later: Called Simon to offer condolences about Picasso. "He's in his room with the lights out and won't speak to anyone," his mother said. "But he'll perk up; his dad is taking him to Spain so they can both grieve in style in Picasso's homeland." I feel for him, of course, but there always seems to be some reason why Simon can't come to the phone.

April 11

Mom has been bugging me about bleaching my mustache and dressing like a girl. It's a very faint mustache, just a bit of peach fuzz dipped in chocolate milk. She even tried to get me to buy a bra, like I need it!

Later: Mom and I had one of our usual arguments because I wouldn't eat the gray casserole she called dinner. Everything she makes tastes like salt and lard. When she looked at Dad with this mournful "What are we going to do with our daughter?" look, Dad could only stare at the Hamburger Helper and shrug. Then, she started yelling about how nothing was the same anymore, as if that's our fault. She is the world's biggest blamer and every time she and I get into it, Dad ends up in it, too. Bobby stayed invisible. As usual. As far as brothers go, I could do worse. I just wish he would make himself more present. If he had been the small fry that started the universe, civilization would have ended right then and there.

P.S. Grandma is okay, but apparently fell asleep under the hair dryer so she didn't hear the phone. When I told Mom that maybe Grandma was dead in a heap, she said, "That's all I need." I should show Mom the definition of "narcissism" in my psychology book. She fits it to a T. All she thinks about is herself.

April 12

Called the Peace Corps to see if they could assign me to a scenic place like Biafra or Bangladesh. I figure the Peace Corps would appreciate my kind of energy. At first, the woman on the phone sounded interested, especially after I mentioned my experience in engineering (I didn't tell her that it was only hooking up some wires on a CB radio with my dad), but after I exposed my age (I lied and told her I was sixteen), she got all mushy and condescending about the "idealistic youth" and how the world starts in my own neighborhood. I should call in two years (meaning four), she said, and blah blah blah. Finally, I hung up on her, but I feel really bummed out. Here I want to do something useful and, as usual, my efforts are thwarted. I don't know. I vacillate (another vocab word). On some days I feel like I want to do something for the world -- something important. I wouldn't tell anyone but you this because it would hurt my image, but...I haven't lost all hope. I mean, there are days when the idea of some little kid not having books to read or somewhere decent to go to the bathroom makes me want to devote my life to service. But other days, walking down Alosta, observing the scrawny deadbeats and disappointed housewives with their dangling cigarettes and beer breath -- well, this is human reality and it just makes me want to push the button myself. The human race is a disappointment. We need to acknowledge this in order to improve. The animal world is more respectable. Did you know that if an elephant falls, the rest of the herd won't abandon it? I mean, it could break a leg and the others would stand right by it. Whales, in their amazing migration, take the very same path to spawn each year, traveling thousands of miles to Baja. Loggerhead turtles scurry from the ocean to the beach to lay a hundred eggs, even though most of the babies will never make it to the sea.

April 13

Carol and I are growing apart. She's my best friend, but she's changed lately. Yesterday, she got in a fistfight with Nancy Jennings about a comment Nancy made to Gloria Denim about Carol's father acting like a caveman at the baseball game. Carol wants me to ambush Nancy in the bathroom, but I told Carol to forget it! #1, I'm a pacifist. #2, It's too pathetic -- I mean, Nancy is one of these girls who end up cranking soft serve at Dairy Queen or winding the laces around the skates at Ice World for the rest of their lives -- I just wouldn't have the heart. Plus the whole thing is totally convoluted; everyone knows that Carol hates her father's guts. So what's the big deal? He is a caveman -- and a pig. Still, the whole thing got me thinking about that "man versus man" stuff that English teachers are always going on about. I asked Bobby about this, but his idea of rebellion is peeing in the swimming pool or cutting the "do not remove under Penalty of Law" tags off of pillows.

I wonder if Simon's in Spain yet.

April 14

Found an interesting book about some lady's childhood in France. See, her parents ignore/don't understand her, so she forms this intellectual life-of-the-mind thing. It's called Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, by Simone de Beauvoir.

April 15

Mom and Dad are having a nervous breakdown together and, as usual, are filing an extension on their taxes. When Dad gets freaked out about finances he goes into the garage and invents gadgets. His latest is a contraption that opens jars. I think it's kind of pointless to invent a complicated gadget to do what can be done simply by the human hand. Dad has things reversed a bit in this sense; his creations make things more difficult rather than easier. Still, he enjoys it one heck of a lot, so I'm not going to butt in.

Meanwhile, Mom is on a determined kick to "reduce," so the rest of us are stuck drinking pale watery milk, salads covered in vinegar and lemon, raw carrots and salted celery. Yum. She drinks about twenty diet sodas a day and calls this a health food diet. You don't have to be Einstein to figure out that consuming that many chemicals a day will pickle your organs, not to mention the amount of vodka and bourbon that she adds. Naturally there are no more cookies, cakes, chocolate milk, etc. available. Her rationale? "It'll do us all good." Even Dad knows to head for the garage when she starts in on that line.

Bobby's been bugging me to play a musical instrument. He's learned to play the guitar really well and says that family groups are in these days. I can just see us: the next Osmonds. He's such a dork, but it's hard to get mad at him. He has such a pitiful look on his face when he fiddles with his glasses. He looks twelve, not sixteen. Still, I hate myself for being such a softie. Anyway, I told him that I would try to talk Dad into getting a piano or something.

Carol's father, the fascist, caught her smoking and made her smoke cigars until she threw up all over the lime green shag carpeting. Carol's mother, Tracey, was furious. She said she worked all summer just to pay for that nice carpet. Tracey kicked the basset hound, which was asleep and didn't notice, but Carol's dad loves the dog, so he hit Tracey in the mouth and knocked out one of her teeth. Nice, huh? I feel sorry for Carol. Even though my parents are neurotics, they draw the line at kid and dog abuse.

April 16

Ghost howling all night. There's nothing scarier.