Singled Out: Chronicles of a Nobody Out and About in Los Angeles!

There’s a good reason why in France we do not observe the torturing ritual of high school reunions -- because whatever happens in the past definitely needs to stay in the past.

It then becomes somewhat of an understood silent pact that upon graduation every one of us would go our merry way and start the rest of our lives as far away from each other as possible. I guess it is not necessary to be brutally reminded how through the years we have all physically deteriorated -- and some of us for the absolute worst. Mind you in my case, and to most definitely brag about it, the aging process has served me well.

Back in high school, although popular for my social butterfly skills and my semi-professional DJ career, I was known as the “nice” kid, which in teenage lingo was a euphemism for “not particularly attractive but cool,” which I translated to mean, “the fat ass.” Admittedly, I was rather overweight, had low self-esteem, no sex appeal and evidently no sex at all, PERIOD. Yes, there is a certain satisfaction in seeing that the popular kids who rose to fame solely on the merits of their good looks, have all in the blink of twenty-something years, completely lost their groove -- featuring special appearances from baldness, love handles, double chins, wrinkles and kids.

Nevertheless, growing up in France guaranteed you immunity against the unnecessary trips back down memory lane. Truly, what could possibly be accomplished by reuniting a bunch of old boring adults to reminisce about the “the way we were” era? Because you know that it’s always the kids who made your life miserable back then who will find the time to show up at these sentimental gatherings just so they can twist that knife a little deeper into your wound.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that my high school years totally sucked. As I said before, I was one of those unusual kids who absolutely loved going to school. I loved it so much that I was not only eager every morning to get to school but was abnormally obsessed with being there on time. Personally, my issue with the high school reunion concept has nothing to do with avoiding a reality check of the passing of time. Not only would I love to see my school and the majority of my classmates again but I would love as well the opportunity to flaunt the new, improved, and upgraded version of me -- not to mention, I could use a little trip to Paris, France.

My main issue has everything to do with avoiding that one memorable kid -- my arch nemesis -- who was the catalyst for the biggest trauma of my adolescence. And just when I thought I had been spared, modern technology, courtesy of a little ingenious cyberspace invention called Facebook. slapped me in the face last week with a name I had been trying to forget for the past 26 years -- I will refer to him by the pseudonym Jack Black simply because he looked like the actor. What Jack Black did to me was unforgivable!

Once upon a time when I was 12, my life was just better than great, it was perfect. I was a carefree tomboy who couldn’t care less about what people thought because I just didn’t think about other people. I was the chief of the boys’ gang we dubbed “The Eagles” and I successfully imposed my borderline tyrannizing authority upon my fellow schoolmates. Girls wanted nothing to do with me and stayed as far away as humanly possible because, let’s face it, I did not particularly match their precious girlie girl fashion.

Of course, boys flocked like bees to honey towards me because I was one of them. I was as much a little terror on the playground as I was in class, which secured me, much to my mother’s despair, weekly visits to the principal’s office -- all of course ending with the same rhetorical question: “When is your daughter going to act like a girl?”

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As for my academic status, I was what I called a seasonal studious kid, which meant that I arduously studied only around the time the dreaded “Parent / Teacher” meeting would arrive. I just didn’t want to go through the usual patronizing speech so eloquently and convincingly delivered by my mom, which consisted of the same repetitive threat:

“You want to be sweeping the streets for the rest of your life? Go ahead keep getting those marvelous grades; you’ll be picking up dog shit as a professional career.” Nothing against street cleaners, but you have to admit that it is not the most prestigiously glamorous vocational skills to hone -- I mean for lack of a better word it is literally a shitty job!

Awww, the fond memories of childhood. Good times! Well, almost! I should have been smoothly cruising through high school at that comfortable pace. After all, I managed to fabulously escape the dreaded effects of puberty -- acne and pimple free -- never went through the “I hate the world and my parents” phase, and unexplainably never got the memo about the drug and nicotine MUST EXPERIENCE fashion statement. Yet despite not meeting one qualification requirements of the “teenage guide for dummies,” I failed to escape the Jack Black curse.

It all started with the bible. One day during a break, Jack Black and I got into a benign argument. As the anger mounted and the exchange of curse words proliferated, he found it necessary to throw the bible at my face. The fact that in its flight the holy projectile had missed my right eye by an inch immensely infuriated me. Angry and aggravated, I retaliated by chasing him around the classroom. When I finally nailed his ass down, he was lying on his stomach on the floor with me sitting on his back to immobilizing him.

I pulled his head back with both of my hands kindly advising him to apologize or else. When he stubbornly refused to oblige I decided to give up and let go of his head. The problem was that he was not expecting to get away with it so easily and as I set him free, his unsupported head brutally hit the concrete floor and upon impact knocked him out.

I, of course, was immediately kicked out of school for a week after a brief detour into the principal’s office for the final guillotine verdict. I could have lived with a simple seven-day suspension, but what this seemingly innocent incident cost me was beyond the acceptable -- I became a girl!

I was sentenced to spend the rest of my school years in an all-girl classroom -- the French have a different system -- and unable to stand up to the hordes of viciously mean teen bitches, I abdicated, resigning myself to becoming one of them. No more soccer, no more hanging out with my boys. My reign of terror was over and a new regime known as the Fat Mona years commenced.

And while Jack Black was left with a minor head concussion, I was left with the life-long emotional scar of having to become someone else than who I was. But eventually you have to reconcile with your past. And with a little help from Facebook facing it at face value makes those high school reunions priceless! Because when Jack Black apparently only remembers me as being “pretty cool and super nice back then”, I learn to see that in the end the only person I need to forgive after all these years is myself.

Miss the last "Singled Out"? Read it here.