The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.
--William Faulkner
“Science” says that your cerebral cortex, the frontal lobes of your brain don’t begin to develop until a person’s mid to late teenage years and then they continue to develop and change often into your late 20s. The cerebral cortex plays a key role in things like attention, perceptual awareness, consciousness and good judgment. All tools I could have used one disastrous night in 1976.
Sometimes I think that every important event that ever happened in my life happened in 1976. I was 13 and in the 7th grade. I had a handful of socially awkward, girlfriends. We played chess, rode our skateboards to the candy store and thought Carl Sagan was totally hot. Big changes came that year though. Popularity was in, beating up the boys at recess was out.
One person who seemed to have all the answers was Julianna Jameson. The first time I met Julianna Jameson was in the second grade. She was a beautiful 7 year old child with bouncy golden hair, spunky blue eyes and tons of pep. Julianna Jamison and I had never particularly been friends, mostly because we never had much to say to each other. However, I was smitten just by the sound of her name, how it rolled, melodiously off your tongue. Oh, how I coveted the name. I pretended that I was Julianna Jameson – Special Agent Julianna Jameson, FBI.
By seventh grade, Julianna Jamison had skyrocketed to the top of the junior high popularity chain. She was a super nova.
When Julianna turned 13, she had a birthday party. I think I got invited because her mom said she either had to invite all the girls in the ward or none of them. But it was something to be invited. I got new jeans. It was a big deal.
I arrived judiciously late to the party. Julie’s house was one of those split-level types with a stairway going up to the living room. From above, I could hear the palaver, of many girls. I had a pink present with a white bow—a Dr. Pepper flavored lip-gloss and a special edition of Tiger Beat Magazine featuring Sean Cassidy. I bestowed the gift on top of a small mountain of birthday gifts.
It was a swimming party. So, I also had my swimming bag containing a swimming suit, towel, blow dryer, hairbrush, lotion, perfume and every hair product that existed in the 70s. After all, you could not just go back to the house for cake and presents looking like a drowned rat.
At the top of the stairs, I despaired to find that the living room was an ocean of thirteen-year-old girls. And, like when you are standing there in the lunchroom, holding your of tray of food looking for a place to sit you don’t want to…no, can’t be…standing there too long. You have seven to fifteen seconds—tops, to find a place, lest you become the object of pointing and ridicule. You become that wretched girl standing in the center of the room, turning in circles with your tray of food, really working on not looking desperate.
In Julianna Jameson’s tiny living room, girls were everywhere. There was nowhere to sit. No friendly face. No wave from friends. Seconds were ticking by. I felt myself getting red and flushed. I leaned on the banister and pretended to be interested in the pile of presents. I leaned against the wall feigning fascination at her mother’s macramé wall hanging. And then I spied it: Along the brick fireplace hearth that was otherwise crowded with blathering girls, right at the epicenter of the party was one open spot. It was even next to my friend, Jodi—one of my besties from all the way back in pre-school. Julianna Jameson was sitting in the chair across from her.
My cerebral cortex concluded that it must be a miracle. How could I be so lucky?
I moved past the girls perched on the arms of the sofa, and draped across the Barca Lounger and sitting on the naugahyde chairs pulled in from the kitchen. I wondered briefly why they were happy there when such a much better spot existed, so much nearer to Julianna Jameson. Maybe someone had gotten up to go to the bathroom or into the kitchen for something. Not my concern. All’s fair in love and birthday party seating arrangements. Let some other girl be that sad spectacle in the center of the room, the unfortunate mousy girl who filled the room with her fear. The one who didn’t fit.
Quickly, I strode over to the fireplace hearth. Jodi looked up at me and smiled.
“Hi.” I said, giving her my very best party smile.
For the record, I deny that I “plopped” onto the fireplace hearth. I may have sat down with some gusto, but I never plopped. Nevertheless… I sat down with a final sigh of relief. Then as if I had pulled some invisible string connected to the back of Jodi’s head she turned all the way around to stare at me. Her eyes were wide and her mouth gaped open.
“What?” I said.
At first she just stared saying nothing. She had a look in her eye that I couldn’t read. It seemed to be shock or confusion. Was Jodi having a bad night? Then I noticed that the room had gone silent. Jodi was looking down now, at my lap. I followed her gaze. Oozing up between my legs and over my thighs was what appeared to be red, white and blue frosting. Jodi spoke, slowly and calmly, eyes terrified.
“Lisa,” she said, “I think you should know you just sat in the birthday cake.”
Lisa W. Nagel is a writer and a family law attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. She has previously had essays published in Herstryblg.com: Dear Lisa, August 2019, and The X-Ray Specs, August 2020.
Comments