In 6th grade, I was called to the principal’s office because my friend Angela was caught reading my copy of Judy Blume’s “Forever”. It had my name written in it and all of the “good” parts highlighted in yellow. I was so scared! Scared that I would never get my book back!
Mrs. Gillespie, my principal since kindergarten, was disappointed in me. She, of course, was friends with my mom. All of the teachers at Diekman School were friends with my mom. I had the privilege and curse of having my mom as a district substitute teacher. I never knew when she would walk the halls of my school, or become my cousin Dena’s problem at her school for the day, or thankfully get assigned to another school in the district.
After school I waited in my room for the fallout. Time moved slowly as I listened to my 45s stacked upon my player, dropping down one at a time in the order I wanted to hear them while working on a rug kit. The gold shag carpet enveloped me and also seemed to get caught in my turnable tooth comb that I carried in my back pocket of my jeans.
Then finally I hear my dad call me down to the kitchen. As I walk down the dark green shag carpeted stairs I can see the scene below me in the kitchen: my dad sitting alone at our little kitchen table with no TV on, smoking a cigarette. In my memory there is only one light on directly above him like in a police interrogation room. He asks me to sit down across from him. No one else is in the kitchen or anywhere that I can see. As he begins to awkwardly and reluctantly tell me how disappointed he is in me, my mom’s yelling voice comes from another room. *Apparently my dad was not reprimanding me properly especially considering that this was his first time ever parenting or reprimanding. The entire situation was so odd!
I, of course, was mortified! The secret was out – my parents now knew that I knew about sex. So gross. If they even tried to talk about it with me, I was going to vomit.
When Mom was done yelling, I was allowed to say a few words. I took this opportunity to innocently point out that Mom had recommended “Are You There God It’s Me Margaret” and “Deanie” for me to read. Reading “Forever” was only natural because I was just reading another one of Judy Blume’s books. I didn’t know (ha!) what it was about.
Another cigarette later, they decided that this entire ordeal was Angela’s fault for reading the book in school when she should not have been. And we never spoke of the incident again — thank goodness!
But even though we never discussed the book or the incident again, there was definitely a shift that changed our little family forever.
I never did get my highlighted copy of the book returned to me. We moved the next year so I lost touch with Angela. Looking back, my 12 year old self could not imagine all of the changes that would take place over the next five years. Changes that would allow for me to lie in a new room with no shag carpeting listening to “Darling Nikki” on my record player and no one blinked an eye.
Growing Up 80s 
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