Do you know what waffles are? The word are went up an octave as she tilted her head and chomped her gum.  You’ve got to be kidding me, this is what I have to deal with for four years? Four of the most important years of my adolescence would be spent with clowns like this?  In my mind i screamed at the top of my lungs.

It was the summer of ’95 and we had just moved from a tiny town nestled in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains to the flat humid suburbs of Ft. Lauderdale. If I hadn’t spent every summer of my life in South Beach I would have been reeling from culture shock and begged to deaf ears to go home even more so than my heart was already doing.

My parents thought, it a good idea to enroll in summer school at the high school (which would become my alma mater) before the academic year started in order to “make friends”. So far the prospects were slim.

When my alarm went off the first morning of summer school I lay in bed hitting snooze until I eventually just turned it off. It was gym class after all, how prepared did I really have to be.

After a shower, I threw my hair in a low ponytail, pulled a t-shirt over my head, slipped on boxer shorts and sneakers, done. That was our gym uniform back in Lyons so I should be set.

My mom dropped us off at the school which looked more like college campus than the small schools I was used to.

I opened the door to the gym and immediately felt like an outsider. Girls with frosted blond hair that had just been flat ironed stared at me through eyes heavily lined with makeup. Wait, this is gym class right? My boxers and T-Shirt were over shadowed by denim belted cut off shorts with tank tops neatly and tightly tucked in.  My sports bra was doing its job while their padded push up bras were doing theirs.

What middle school did you go to? None, I just moved here. Really??? From where? Colorado. Their eyes lit up. They’d never met someone from Colorado. Did you have school there? Yes. Did you ever see snow? Yes, all the time. Did you ski? Yes, occasionally.  Did you ever have a fire? Yes. Did you have a fire place?  Yes. They were on the edge of their bleacher seats. Do you know what waffles are?  They were being serious. To them I might as well had been from another planet.

I hated my first day.