Words Unspoken: First Day of High School Memoir

At five in the morning my alarm clock began to buzz and I awoke in a daze, slightly nervous and extremely excited for the day ahead. With breakfast on the mind I flicked my lamp on and stumbled downstairs in search of food. I found some cereal and figured that would be as good as anything else; the cereal, loud against the walls of a glass bowl, and the milk looked rather smooth, flowing over cereal like a shallow stream over pebbles. When finished with breakfast, I headed back upstairs, brushed my teeth and stressed out because on my first day of high school I didn’t have a clue what to wear.
Not knowing what I’d wear on the first day of school was a first for me. I have always, always known what I was going to wear at least a week before school had even started! But now I wasn’t sure at all. I was going to HIGH SCHOOL and I wanted to make a good first impression. Many times I feel that a person’s clothes can say a lot of unspoken words about someone’s personality and I sometimes think of them as a projection of who they are inside. If someone is wearing smelly, wrinkled clothes, to everyone around this person their outfit is screaming words such as careless, messy and unorganized, and even though this may not be the case for this person (I mean, who doesn’t have a bad hair day once in while?) it is what people will think about them without getting to know them, especially if it’s the first time they see you. Personally, I don’t want people thinking the wrong things about me because of what I was wearing the first time they saw me.
Do I wear jeans? Probably, I hope it’s not too hot in school…it’s supposed to rain, I thought to myself, jeans are definitely a go. Now for a top; tank tops are definitely out of question, (Who owns a tank top with three-inch straps?) so I’d better go for short sleeves. Which actually worked out perfectly because I had just gotten a white, v-neck t-shirt. With coral, orange and light yellow “paint” strokes printed on it. My outfit was beginning to say everything I wanted it to about myself; art has a lot to do with who I am, making this shirt absolutely perfect for my first day. There was just one small problem: jeans and a tee seemed too plain for a first day of anything. So, I threw on a thick, brown, braided belt with a large buckle around my hips to complete the ensemble.
The next step in my morning routine was by far the easiest: hair and make up. I’d pin up some of my hair using bobby pins and let the rest of my spiraling chestnut waves fall freely in front of my shoulders and down my back. Make up was a piece of cake and as soon as l was finished with it, I quickly made my lunch (peanut butter and jelly), grabbed a folder, my purse, cross country bag, slid flip flops on and walked out the door in just enough time to be driven by my mother to the bus stop and not miss the bus (being late can say quite a bit about someone as well).
After only a few moments the darkness was broken by the bright lights of a yellow school bus coming from the left.
“Have a good day! Love you!” my mom called as I hopped out of the car and approached the bus. The doors to the bus opened and a familiar breeze blew hair away from my face. As I walked up the bus’s steep steps, I searched for a familiar face to sit by. Thinking that one of my two best friends would have already been on, I was disappointed to find that she had not yet been picked up. I plopped down in an empty seat behind a couple of boys about a year older than me and waited, staring out the window and watching as the morning light grew brighter with every minute that passed. Turn, stop, pick up a group of kids and keep going was the bus routine, one which I have become much too familiar with throughout the years. I hadn’t been waiting that long, maybe a stop or two when the bus got to my friend’s stop. As she entered the bus we immediately saw each other and smiled. Sitting next to me, we talked of our hectic mornings and the unknown territories of high school we were about to enter.
Arriving at school with at least twenty-five minutes to kill, I made my way to B hall in search of my locker. Now I was walking amongst guys, four years older, who towered above me like giants. And at that point, I wasn’t about to walk anywhere alone and soon found a friend whose locker was in B hall as well. The difference between the halls here and the hallways I’d grown comfortable with at Holmes Middle School is huge; so many more people and the age difference seems so big. This is place is crazy and confusing! I thought to myself, although I knew I was more than ready and extremely excited for the four years ahead.
While searching for my locker, I passed it and turned around to realize it wasn’t as deep down the hall as I had thought. I was a little worried that I had forgotten my combination, but surprised myself in having memorized it after looking at only once or twice during my last week of summer. I struggled for a moment, jamming my cross country bag into the sliver of a locker and was off again in search of friends whom I hadn’t seen over the summer; luckily a few of them were right down the hall. I also passed a bunch of friends (upperclassmen!!) that I had made over summer conditioning for cross country.
Twenty minutes has never gone by so fast! Suddenly I was in first hour seated next to the few people that I knew in the class. Now that the day had officially started, excitement overtook any nervousness I had left and the rest of the day flew by like a breeze, even cross country practice had been easy, although that may have been because our first meet was the following day. I never worried about not knowing people in classes or getting lost and at the end of the day, my thoughts traveled back the strategic outfit I had chosen to wear that morning and what unspoken words it had whispered to the people surrounding me throughout the day.