“WHETHER I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.”
David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
* * *
It’s Saturday morning at 8:45 AM and I am already fully dressed, sitting in a classroom and sweating bullets.
The high school students are on their way.
It’s a practice SAT morning, and for the first time in my life, I’m not taking the test. I’m proctoring, another one of the many benefits that comes from working for a test prep tutoring company.
I can’t remember being more scared of anyone in a really long time. In my mind it doesn’t feel like so long ago at all that I was at Taft, but scanning the room, I don’t recognize these people. They terrify me. They almost look like adults but they’re not. I am sure that given the incentive, they would eat me alive. How is it that anyone actually teaches difficult subjects? All I have to do is watch a clock (I forgot my stopwatch at home, of course), and even so I’m at the brink of a nervous breakdown. I’m sure they could mutiny at any moment, and there would be absolutely nothing I could do.
23 has never felt older. A couple of days ago I learned that Heidi Montag is 22—a year younger than me! I felt stunned but silly at the same time, aghast that I’m starting to overtake celebrities and that shows and movies and popular narratives are no longer centered around my age group. Superficial for knowing let alone caring who Heidi Montag is.
Even worse, I’ve turned into the kind of person who willingly gets up early on Saturday morning, puts on a company t-shirt, and sits through a 4 hour exam because her day job pays so lamely that she simply needs the money. I’m pretty sure my 16 year-old self would emphatically not approve (especially with regards to the t-shirt). She would have never made these choices. Or would she?
There was so much I didn’t like about that person when I was her—her awkwardness, her inability to talk to boys, her incredibly harsh treatment of certain friends—that I have a hard time separating all that embittering and clouding insecurity from what she actually must have been like. I am sure she was quiet and smart and inept. I suspect she seemed promising to her teachers and parents. I wonder how much of her is still here, in whatever it is that I’ve become, and honestly, what she would make of me.
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