Okay, so in a little bit, I’m going to post a video — but first: some totally tedious explanation! The video in question stars my redheaded right-hand ma’am, Jamie Mae Lawrence (also some dudes I don’t know but wish I did because they’re fun-to-the-nay). Jamie and I met when we were twelve, at the Oakwood Upper School’s seventh grade orientation pool party (f.y.i. I modeled Winston Prep, the too-too private school in POSEUR, on Oakwood). The party was hosted by this girl I didn’t know, Laurie Rubin, and I carpooled there with another girl I didn’t know, Justine Something, who wore her stick-straight wheat-blonde hair in a très sophisticated Louise Brooks bob. Louise Brooks, for those of you not in the know, looked like this:

Rachel Maude in seventh grade? Kinda looked like this:

As you can imagine, Justine and I hit it off SWIMMINGLY. Which is to say, as soon as our car pulled into the Laurie Rubin’s driveway, she, like, ejected from the back seat. I seriously don’t even recall her opening the door. It was like she just vacuum-sucked her escape through the barely-cracked back window.

Moving. On.

In keeping with my individualist aesthetic, I wore a lime-green and neon-pink hibiscus-print bathing suit from the Broadway girls’ department. Totally hot, right? Yeah, well… to my bewilderment, Laurie’s pool was packed with girls wearing not FUN AND FABULOUS suits, like mine, but classic black one-pieces and daring red bikinis, like, um, supermodels. Oh, and they had cleavage. And smooth, glowing tans. And long, lustrous hair. And they all seemed to know each other. How was that possible? Wasn’t this an orientation party?!?

I tried to make myself invisible, wrapping myself in a Little Mermaid towel the size of a car-tarp, and huddling at the pool’s edge. See? I thought, dipping my feet in the water. I’m doing something. I have purpose. I’M TOTALLY ENTERTAINED.

(God, had I only been there two minutes?)

At the other end of the pool, the Bikini Brigade arranged themselves into a row along the deep end. At the diving board, terrifyingly popular-looking boys sprung into the air, balled up like flying, tongue-lolling fetuses, and plunged explosively into the water. If the dive impressed them (i.e. if the boy was cute), the bikini brigade shrieked in delight, kicking the water into a froth at their feet. If the dive failed to impress (i.e. if the boy was less cute–none of the boys involved were totally un-cute, by the way; totally un-cute boys weren’t invited to participate), the bikini brigade looked at each other in disappointment and half-heartedly whirled the water with their manicured toes. They looked like a league of sexy orphans stirring their chlorinated gruel.

Then, just as I considered folding my Little Mermaid towel into an origami towel-plane and taking off for the hills, this redheaded girl smiled at me. She was bouncing around and wearing a seriously butt-ugly tankini. Best of all, she looked nice (i.e. she looked like a dork), so it didn’t take us long to introduce ourselves. Now, eighteen years later, we’re still friends! And still HUGE DORKS!

Aren’t you inspired?

Okay, okay. All of which brings me back to her video. Check it out, bébés! It’s actually (gasp) kind of cool.

JAMIE’S VIDEO!!!

xo

Okay, so… now that my sty is gone and I’m back to my modelly self (I graduated from Barbizon, okay? STEP OFF) I can concentrate on the task at hand: picking my cellphone zit, rattling my antipsychotic medication like a maraca to scare my cat, and recommending a book to my razzle-dazzle readerazzi: which (duh!) means you.

And the faun who lives in my closet.

Book Recommendation Number One:

STARRING SALLY J. FREEDMAN AS HERSELF, by Judy Blume

I seriously must have read this book eight billion times. I’d always pick it up and reread some random part while eating my after-school snack (that’s right; despite evidence to the contrary, my adolescence positively brimmed with such Norman Rockwellesque activity as after-school snacks, walking the dog, sharing a bunk with my little brother, and pacing the living room floor in hysterics begging my parents to please stopfighting!!! PLEASE!!!)

Anyway.

Because I always read SALLY J. while snacking, and because I’m a total pig, the pages were invariably encrusted with dried mustard, splatters of Progresso minestrone soup, and (on occasion) an entire hamburger. Toward the end of the book’s life I seriously had to pry the thing open with a chisel.

Why did I read the book SO many times you ask? Too many reasons to count (I guess it doesn’t help that I only know how to count to twelve). The book starts toward the end of World War 2 with Sally’s brother getting sick forcing the whole family to move to Florida so he can get some sun. See? Already awesome. Once there, Sally has tons of adventures. Like she tries out for a movie. She meets a sophisticated friend with braces. The war ends. She frets about her flat chest. She gets stung by a jelly fish. Her cousin Lila may or may not have died in a concentration camp. Her parents go on vacation to Cuba. An old man doling out candy in the neighborhood park may or may not be Hitler in disguise. And she lives next door to a glamorous teenage girl named Bubbles (I know!) whose parents pretend she’s dead (Bubbles!)

As you can see, STARRING SALLY J. FREEDMAN AS HERSELF combines two of my all timebiggest obsesh’s: tween angst and Hitler. Only the most classic combo since peanut-butter and cheese. Which, f.y.i., I spent an entire hour chiseling off pages 138 to 141.

And it was sooooo worth it.

xoRachel