45 Days: Most Embarrassing Memory

High school: a jar of hormones, acne, and self-consciousness. It's only natural that my most embarrassing memory would take place here. It seems an institution built for the containment of the awkwardness of teenage-dom. But my memory takes us beyond the classrooms and hallways to what may be the most unpleasant experience of any high schooler's life:

Driver's Ed.

It was autumn. I was fifteen years old, with my fake-blonde hair and mouthful of braces. And after waking up at five in the morning for a month, I had finally made it to the final days. I had to turn in my packet of assignments, and then all I had to do was take the written exam, and I'd be done for good.

The night before my most epic-fail day, I was putting together my packet. I was supposed to read 25 newspaper articles about driving and write a summary about each one. Ten had to come from real newspapers, but the rest could be found online. In my sweatpants and an old t-shirt, I sat on the floor of my bedroom and pasted the newspaper clippings to notebook paper. I didn't have any summaries yet, and I only had these ten articles, but the online ones would surely be easy. I decided to stay up and work on it through the night.

So when I woke up on my bedroom floor the next morning, my face in a pile of newspaper clippings, I knew already that things were not going according to plan.

"Come on, Jess!" my mom chided, standing over me. "It's 6:15. You're late for Driver's Ed."

I gasped, looking out over my not-even half-finished project. If I didn't turn in the packet, I'd automatically fail Driver's Ed. That would mean another month of misery and endless woe. But we were taking the first half of the test today! I looked up at my mother in a panic, and my desperation must have shown on my face. "What's wrong?" she asked.

I quickly explained my awful situation, tearing at my bedhead hair. She caught on at once and took charge. In a few moments, we were upstairs. My mom was looking up articles as fast as she could, printing them out for me while I scribbled bogus summaries for the ten I already had. My wrists ached as I reached for the printed articles, skimming them even as I wrote. Finding articles about driving was not as easy as I'd thought, but my mom had fifteen printed in about forty minutes. When she finished, she looked over at my frantically flying fingers, and started writing summaries on her own, calling "You have to at least read these when you get home." I nodded.

With both our hands at work, we managed to finish putting the packet together by about 7:10am. Driver's Ed would end in about twenty minutes. If the packet didn't get in today . . .

"Hop in the car, we'll run over to the school and you can drop it off," my mom said.

I ran to the bathroom in a burst of cleanliness and started brushing my hair. Expediency quickly overshadowed social appropriateness, however, and I sprinted out to the car in my pajamas, without even pausing to grab shoes.

My mom parked outside the far wing of the school, shouting to me that she'd keep the car running and wait for me to come back. I jumped out of the car the moment it was at a stop, and ran into the building. In moments, I was bursting into the classroom, gasping and unkempt. I slammed the teacher's desk and flung my binder into his hands, ignoring the confused look on his face. "There!" I wheezed. "My packet. There it is. I got it in."

He looked at me warily, then checked out the binder. "Well, yes. That's alright; that's fine." I slumped over, relieved. His next words caught me off-guard. "So would you like to start the test? Everyone else is halfway done, but you can at least get a start on it before tomorrow."

I froze. Slowly, I looked out over the rest of the room, which had suddenly popped into existence for me. The room was filled with my classmates, of course. All of them staring at me. Including my high school crush.

I was suddenly very aware of the fact that I hadn't showered or brushed my teeth, that I was in pajamas and had no shoes. Blushing violently, I stammered for a minute. "Uh, uh, um . . ." I looked between the teacher and the students for a second, trying to think of a way out of it. But I had to take this test. "Yeah. Yeah, that'd be good."

I sat down with my test, trying to ignore the people around me. After a few minutes, Driver's Ed officially got out, and half of the kids came to talk to me and ask what the heck was going on. I kept my eyes on my test, my face burning. I finally got them to leave, but not before asking someone to tell my mom she didn't have to wait for me.

The room emptied. I finish three of the ten sections on the test before I heard laughter behind me. I turned around and saw that the normal students were coming in for history class, looking at me in confusion. I jumped out of my seat, dropping my test on the teacher's desk, and fled from the room. I shoved my way through the hall, into the bathroom, and locked myself in a stall. I had to call my mom to get a ride home, but I didn't have a cell phone and I didn't want to go through the crowded hallways to the front office looking like this.

I waited until the bell rang, then a few minutes after, giving time for students who might be tardy. When I was finally convinced that everyone would be in class, that the halls would be empty, I unlocked my stall and walked out of the bathroom . . .

Right into my crush. Again. He was coming out of the boy's locker room with a friend, dressed for his jogging class, and he looked at me in surprise. I just stood there, ten feet from him, praying that I would wake up and this would all be a nightmare, a terrible nightmare.

"Jessica?" he said, raising an eyebrow.

My brain gave a half-hearted twitch. I turned around and ran for my life, shouting, "I've got to find a phone!"

To get to the front office, I had to run through the parking lot and back into the main building. My bare feet slapped the cold pavement as I tried to ignore the fact that there were an awful lot of students still milling around outside. I pushed through the front doors and sprinted through a hallway, past a teacher who called after me, "Where are your shoes?"

I got to the office and begged the receptionist to let me use the phone. She took pity on my radish face and filthy hair, and let me call my mom. When I finished, I ran back outside and hid in a corner by the door, curled up in a ball with my arms around my knees. Every time someone walked past me they glanced over, but no one talked to me. When my mom finally pulled up, I flew to the car and clambered inside, slamming the door shut on the miserable morning behind me.

I just sat there breathing, trying to calm myself down. My mom drove me home and I skipped my first class. I was miserable, humiliated, and never wanted to go back to school again.

And yet, somewhere in my brain, even then I was thinking, "This will make a GREAT story someday."

Today's Movie: "Rear Window" and "The Pit and the Pendulum"