Try to follow me here:
First, I was wiping my bathroom sink thinking about how long it’s been since I’ve written a proper movie review for my review page. I’ve seen some awesome movies: Ratatouille, Once, Knocked Up, Ocean’s 13, Transformers, and we’ve got tix for Harry Potter tomorrow. There are a lot of movies that need to be addressed and tagged with my “yup” or “nope” (or the new-ish-ly added “m’eh”). But I am so far behind now… so I decided to start with the blockbuster “Transformers” because it has my cute non-crush Shia LaBeouf starring. I love this boy, in a non-icky way. So I’m scrubbing my sink and I’m thinking about the movie and what I will say about it after I’ve finished gushing on and on about how cute and funny Shia is. Yeah, there was one inappropriate part that parents might want to know about (think: parent/teen discussion about self-pleasure…yeah, ick). And there was one really annoying part where Shia is fighting for the honor of the hot chick (whom is not worthy of his affection, by the way. Step off, little girl) and Shia is demanding that his pretty young thing’s “juvie” record be wiped clean or he won’t help save the planet from imminent destruction. Umm, okay. I think pretty young girl will turn 18 in a month or so and it would be all well and gone anyway—or the earth will be destroyed… juvie record and all—but it’s sweet of him to think of her and her juvie record during all of the fire and shooting and earth-ending-ness. It earns him some make-out points at the end.
So then my ADD mind wanders from the movie to “juvie records” and how they work and although I’d never done (read: gotten caught doing) anything bad enough for a record, I’ve done some funny things. One was very funny, just because I was an idiot at 12. So for the moment, I will nix the formal Transformer review and tell you about the time I was kicked out of F.S.K. mall in Frederick,
(The following is a picture of me at my 11th birthday party. We were too poor to have two “1″ candles, so we used the 9 and two little single ones…whatever. The candles were the least of my worries…)
At 12, I was a follower, through and through. Especially when it came to my one friend, Cris, whom I was in complete awe of. She was a mere three months older than me, but the girl looked 16. And she was beautiful. She went to Barbizon modeling school and everything. She knew how to strut. She had “Head Shots”, people! And not the video game kind of head shots where you are shot in the head…with a gun. Modeling head shots… she had pretty pictures of her pretty head. So she was 12 and looked 16 and I was 12 and looked 9. It was awesome. I’m not actually sure why she hung out with me. Probably because it’s cool (for a while at least) to have someone follow you around and call you pretty and do whatever you want them to do.
*Please do not feel too bad for me, or think me too much of a loser. I eventually came into my own and stepped from her shadow (because she moved out of state) and I got some other friends who looked more 12-ish, like me. Except by the time I looked 12, I was actually 15.
But at 12 I pretty much hung out with Cris everyday, especially in the summer months. One day her mom took us to Francis Scott Key mall to hang out while her mom went to work, down the street. There was also another girl with us named Laura. So we hung out in the mall and Cris picked up guys and Laura and I stood a little bit away from her so that guys wouldn’t know that she was with us. It was fun! After an hour or so, we all went into the bathroom so we could check our makeup. My makeup collection was comprised entirely of various flavors of chapstick. Laura wasn’t even allowed to wear chapstick. Cris fixed her eyeliner, lipstick, mascara, and sprayed some AquaNet on her perfect bangs. She also adjusted her boobs. Yeah, she had boobs. I adjusted my tank top that I was allowed to wear under my other clothes to keep the not-yet-really-there girls under wraps. I adjusted the area where my boobs would have been, had they actually been there. Laura wasn’t even allowed to wear a tank top under her shirt. As we were about to leave, a cleaning lady came in and saw that there was a huge mess over by the toilet stalls. Toilet paper everywhere. We didn’t do it. I tell you that in all honesty. Cris, Laura, and I were vain, mousy, and followish (respectively), but none of us were destructive. The cleaning lady yelled at us. “If you girls are going to make a mess, you can at least clean it up!” I opened my mouth to tell her nicely that we had done no such thing. We’d been in front of the mirrors the whole time! But before I could say anything civil or nice, Cris flung open the door and yelled “We didn’t do it, b*tch!” and stormed out. I, of course, followed.
Five minutes later a young security guard caught up with us. No doubt he had been looking for three girls described as “pretty blonde 16 year old, brunette 12 year old, and a 9 year old with blue head gear and knobby knees”. He found us quickly. He told us that we had to leave the mall for verbally assaulting the cleaning lady. I told him nicely that we hadn’t made the mess. It was the truth. He didn’t care. We had to go. I’m pretty sure Cris told him to go screw himself. He took a picture of us (I was so glad I’d just fixed my chapstick and the area where my boobs are now!) to post in the security office so that “other guards would be on the lookout for us” that day and they’d know if we tried to come back in. I’m 99% sure that Laura and I were cropped from the picture and it ended up being taped to his bedroom wall.
So we left the mall. We were scared to walk over to Cris’s mom’s office because she would know something was up. Three 12 year old girls sick of the mall after an hour and a half? Yeah, right. So we went into Lowes. Yes, an odd choice. But Cris thought it would be an air-conditioned place to pass the time. After some time, people started noticing (or we imagined that they noticed) that we were just sitting in the hardware section, not buying or even pretending to buy anything. One of us (I’m not sure which) came up with the plan to act like we were looking for nails to fix up our new apartment. Yes, three 12 year old girls just browsing the drywall nails at Lowes. Nothing to see here. We had dialog to go with it. “Do these look long enough to hold up that wall?” “The wall by the fireplace? I think so.” “We are so lucky to have found a three bedroom apartment with a fireplace!” Okay. If people weren’t looking at us before, they were looking at us now. I’m surprised no one called Children’s Services to report two little girls with their 16 year old sister buying supplies at Lowes to fix up their first apartment. Or perhaps they just thought we were nuts, like all 12 year old girls are. But I was scared that people were looking at us… we had to actually buy some nails now, or the jig would be up!
An hour or so later we bought a box of nails and walked out. We finally went to Cris’s mom’s office because we were out of money and it was over 100 degrees outside. I think we ended up just telling her that we were kicked out, but it wasn’t our fault and blah, blah, blah. We didn’t get into any trouble. But what an unfun day! I was not used to being yelled at by security guards and being stared at by adults while I talked about getting a new bench for the porch at my new apartment. My nerves were frazzled!
Maybe next I’ll write about the time I snuck out of the house and locked myself out and had to break my bedroom window to get back in, almost slicing open my chest. I’m an idiot and I probably shouldn’t be alive.
Or maybe I’ll actually write that Transformers review.
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12. Ugh! I hated being 12. I would never want to be 12 again. It was tortuous.
I love the shades in your picture. Cool.
Comment by Leslie — July 13, 2007 @ 2:11 pm