Stuck On Stupid By Desiree Smith
It’s hard to believe that when I was a teen and a young adult, I thought I knew everything about life. Hell, I hardly know anything now as a mature adult. But I thought I did then. One story in particular comes to mind when I think about how little I knew about life and its strange, winding roads.
Toni and I were both juniors at two different high schools when we met while working summer jobs together. We soon became best friends. In our senior year, she transferred to the high school I was attending. I didn’t understand why Toni wanted to attend school in the ghetto when she was a beautiful, popular student and cheerleader with good grades at a good school. Either way, I was happy we would be going to school together.
Being a self-proclaimed fashion guru, I got another bright idea.
Back then, there was a new fashion trend that helped showcase the “glamour” of smoking. It was a small leather pouch that held a cigarette lighter and a couple of cigarettes. The pouch had a long string attached so you could wear it around your neck like a necklace. Now your cancer sticks could be prominently and fashionably displayed. Not to mention it was your constant reminder to puff up, being only a chest-reach away. And although I did not smoke, I sported one anyway. I thought it was so cool to have someone come up to me and ask for a cigarette and be able to oblige them. Instant cool points.
My idea consisted of replacing the string of the lighter pouch with one of Toni’s mom’s necklaces. The necklace I chose was a long gold chain that had tiny white pearls linked throughout the chain at about two-inch intervals.
It was so shiny and beautiful and unique. My teen mind estimated the value at over a thousand dollars, maybe two or three! Toni loved the idea and agreed to let me borrow the necklace, but insisted that I bring it
The following day I was the sh-t—sporting my shiny, expensive new lighter pouch and hanging out with several friends at Betty Bippins’ house. Toni did not drink or smoke and would not be caught dead in Betty’s house, so she went home. Betty was a large, no-nonsense woman in her late twenties. Her motto was “Don’t start nothin, won’t be nothin!” and she meant it, too. Betty was known for letting the neighborhood kids hang out at her crib. She made her living selling candy, potato chips and sodas to us. However, she made most of her money selling cigarettes for a nickel a piece and cheap wine and beer for 50 cents a cup—but you had to drink it there.
Betty always entertained her guests in her large family room, complete with a television, stereo, black-light posters, even a disco ball and plenty of room to sit around. She was always bumpin’ George Clinton, Parliament and the Funkadelics, the Isley Brothers and, of course, Earth, Wind and Fire jams. Sometimes there would be twenty or more of us kids sitting around trippin’ out on Richard Pryor comedy albums. Betty also had an exotic bird which had the free will to fly around as it pleased. She called it Mighty Bird because, although it was small, it was known to suddenly swoop down and just graze the top of your “do.” But aside from the bird, which I was desperately afraid of, it was the place to hang out. You could get that club vibe, even if you weren’t old enough to get in one. Or, if you just wanted to congregate with other weed and cigarette smoking, soon-to-be alcoholics in the making, this was the spot.
This day was no different. I bought a cup of Mad Dog 20/20 wine and quickly drank it. By the second cup, my buzz had definitely kicked in and now I needed to use the bathroom. As I started for the bathroom, I scanned the room for the whereabouts of Mighty Bird. I wasn’t in the mood and was not about to be caught off guard. The coast was clear.
As I took my third step, I suddenly felt the claws of the bird on the back of my shoulder. Horrified, I began screaming and hollering. I tried shrugging the bird off of me, but it hung on. I twisted from left to right, and right to left, shaking and screaming, anything to get the deranged bird off me. I pulled and tore my blouse and sweater, but it was obvious the bird had an appetite for blood—mine. I thought to myself, of all the people here, why attack me? I’m a vegetarian for God’s sake! I’m not your enemy!
I called out for help from the nine or ten people sitting around, but they just sat staring at me in utter amazement and shock. I presumed they were in disbelief as they watched this violent bird attacking and clawing me to death, right before their very eyes! I was in disbelief that all these people, including Betty, only sat and watched my demise. No one would help me.
In a frantic and desperate attempt to save myself from this vicious attack, I decided I would have to grab Mighty Bird by its creepy, little bony legs, and pry its claws out of my back—if I wanted to live. I reached back over my right shoulder with both hands and grabbed the little beady-eyed monster and body-slammed it right there in the middle of the floor. There, I did it!
I had just killed my new lighter and cigarette pouch. Somehow, while I was chillin’ I had inadvertently slung the pouch around, and it was hanging on my back
instead of the front of my chest. The weight of the pouch felt like a small bird on my back. The claws I felt was actually the abrasion from the chain links that were caught in my sweater. Now, the necklace was broken in pieces and strewn about the floor.
“Why didn’t you tell me it was my lighter? Why didn’t you guys help me?” I was crying.
“We thought you were having a fit or something! We didn’t know what was wrong with you!” Betty replied.
The entire group laughed and laughed at me until the next drunken idiot did something to out-do me. Sadly, I held the record for a long time.
After calming down a bit from this traumatic ordeal, it occurred to me that I had just destroyed the necklace. How could I explain this to Toni? She would never
understand and neither would her mom. Where would I get $2,000 or $3,000 to pay her back? I would have to do hard labor for the next ten years! So instead of telling her what happened, I came up with yet another bright idea. I would just avoid her. In fact, I would even pick a fight with her, and then I wouldn’t have to explain at all. I think they call it collateral damage. All I had to do now was find a way to start a fight with Toni.
This would be hard for me. I was always pretty passive and hated confrontations of any kind. In fact, I was a longtime victim of a vicious bully when I was younger. Now, I was about to perpetrate the same horrid act against my best friend. Since I knew it all, I figured this was the only way.
Within a day, I had single handedly waged an all-out, mean-girl propaganda war. I told anyone that would listen to my lying rhetoric about how Toni “thought she was cuter than us” and how “she thought she
was better than everyone.” It wasn’t hard to get “haters” on the bandwagon. After all, the mud-ducks, a term we used for hateful, unattractive, ghetto girls, were thrilled at the chance to pick on this outsider.
I abruptly stopped speaking to Toni after that fateful day. After the constant taunting and antagonism from the mud-ducks, me included, Toni transferred back to her old high school. I was ashamed of myself then, as I am now. Somehow my brilliant young mind told me that harassing and bullying a good friend to transfer to another school was easier than acknowledging I had accidentally broke her mom’s necklace and would pay for it—even if it took years.
Make no mistake: I knew my actions were wrong and despicable. However, I chose not to think—I took the easy way out. The guilt ate at me for nearly five years until I saw Toni at a local flea market one day.
Although I tried to pretend I didn’t see her, Toni came right over to me and gave me a big hug. I was stunned. She asked me how I was doing and about some of our old classmates, as if there had never been beef between us, not to mention the $2,000 dollars I still owed her mom.
Still consumed by guilt and shame, I abruptly cut Toni’s chit-chat short and said,
“Toni, I am so sorry I treated you the way I did. I was so wrong and I still feel horrible about everything. Also, I want to pay your mom. I can give you a check right now for $500 dollars and make $100 dollar payments each month until I’m paid up.”
We immediately embraced and began to cry. We couldn’t let go. Finally, we both wiped the tears and mascara from our eyes. She had forgiven me.
But Toni seemed puzzled when I spoke about my proposed payment plan to her mom. She said,
“What money do you owe my mom?”
I explained to her about how I had broken her mom’s expensive necklace during a drunken fight with a crazed bird. She laughed so hard, she cried again. She told me that after confessing to her mom about the necklace she loaned me, her mom was not thrilled. However, as it turned out, the necklace was worth all of $5 dollars—at best. We laughed and cried all over again.
My mama used to sometimes tell me I had “S.O.S.” syndrome. Most of the time she was right—I was “stuck on stupid.”
