The year is 1993. I have just moved back to southern California after a two year stint in Georgia (Divorced parents + job transfers + custody battle = Georgia. Maladjustment & general unhappiness = return to Cali). I have just started the 6th grade and I am walking alone in the hallway of Joshua Elementary in Lancaster. Seemingly everyone else already knows each other and have siphoned themselves off into their cliques for the school year. I feel completely awkward and out of place with my dorky-ass Igloo lunch box and god-awful perm that my step-mom made me get. I am questioning my decision to move back to Cali when I hear a voice behind me. "Hey, you're new here, right?" I turn around, half expecting to be ridiculed by some mean kid, except the voice is too sweet. "Yeah" I say cautiously. "My name is Christina. Do you have any friends yet?" "Uhh, nooo..." I admit, slightly embarrassed. "Well, do you want to be my friend?" "Um, ok." And so it began.
Christina was angelic looking with her long, straight, pale blonde hair. She accepted me, dorky lunch box, bad perm, stirrup pants and all. We became instant best friends. Fast forward six months - Christina cut her hair shoulder length and dyed it reddish-purple. She started wearing doc martins, flannel shirts and her brother's ripped jeans. Mind you, I still had Boys II Men and Janet Jackson on heavy rotation on my Walkman, so I wasn't quite sure what to make of this change. Then I heard this song on the radio one day... and something changed inside me. "Todaaaay is the greaaaatest, day I've ever known..." Whoa. What is this glorious sound and where has it been all my life? The heavy guitars and iconic whining voice of Billy Corgan resonated with me and provided the perfect soundtrack for all the pent up emotions I had bottled up inside. I got it now. And I wanted the purple hair and doc martins to go along with it.
Too bad for me, my Cali parents were avid Church of Christ members, so nothing of that sort was going to happen under their roof. I wasn't even allowed to watch MTV. Maybe Georgia wasn't so bad after all? At least I could get around the MTV thing by going over to Christina's house and watching 120 Minutes and Alternative Nation 'till my 11-year-old heart's content, but the hair color and doc's were out of the question. I got grounded for trying to dye my hair with grape Kool-Aid, so blonde afro and white high-top Reeboks it was. Christina still accepted me.
That was one of the most formative years of my life, and I still remember fondly many of the times Christina and I spent together... singing along to music videos in her living room, piling on loads of black eyeliner (that I had to wash off before going home), and of course trying to impress her older brother Nick who I was absolutely in love with (I don't think he ever knew I existed). Christina was the one who introduced me to The Doors (on vinyl!) and accidently introduced me to porn when the video in the VCR was not what she expected.
In junior high we grew apart a bit, but still considered each other friends. I continued to look up to her as a fashion icon, and she would smuggle me her brother's jeans that I would change into in the school bathroom (the Arizona Jean Co. slim fits I was forced to rock by the 'rents were not awesome in '95). She moved away very early on during high school, and I had no idea where she moved to or how to get in touch with her. I thought she was destined to remain a fond memory, but shiver me timbers, last week I got a friend request from her on Facebook (thank you Mark Zuckerberg for ripping off that business idea from your Harvard dorm room so I could reconnect with a long lost friend). She now lives in Kansas, and has gone back to the long, straight blonde hair, just as beautiful as the day I met her. I do believe a trip to middle america is in my future...
Long live '93
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