memoir.

this is a memoir that i wrote for my advanced comp class. i left the last "when i was twelve" part out of the memoir i turned in because it doesn't flow well and i know that, but that section probably conveys my feelings toward england the best. so i'm leaving it for my own sake.

When I was twelve, I started Mrs. Liss’s seventh-grade English class. When I was twelve, I started a lot of new things that I don’t remember, but I will never be able to forget Mrs. Liss.

We called her the Grammar Nazi, a nickname we later stopped when we found out she was Jewish. She was the typical old English teacher – she wore big rings on her fingers that seemed to weigh her hands down as the rings always tapped the desk in front of her. She wore pink lipstick that she sometimes got on her teeth, and her hair was so thick that when she scratched her head, three imprints were left from her fingers.

That first day of English was awful. I didn’t know anyone in the school, let alone her classroom, and I was twelve, and I wanted to fit in with everyone but I didn’t because I had big glasses and an English accent.

That first day of seventh-grade English class, Mrs. Liss had her class do two things. In case we missed a day of school, she told us, we would have to call a friend to find out what we missed in English class. So she made us find a friend to exchange phone numbers with. I didn’t have any friends, so I asked the only girl who seemed nerdier than I was to be my homework buddy. She was my first friend.

Then Mrs. Liss had us take a test about subjects and verbs. I knew what a verb was, but I had never heard of a subject, and so when she gave us the phrase “We won!” I figured that it was missing a subject since we didn’t know what they won.

Mrs. Liss talked about a lot of new things I had never heard of before, and that first marking period, I failed seventh-grade English class. My mom went in to talk to her about how I always got good grades and was really good at English, but I had never been taught any of this grammar stuff in England.

I had always thought that I was good at English, and then I failed seventh-grade English class. What a surprise for me to learn that I had grown up in England and hadn’t been taught English!

And everyone knew me as the English girl, and I didn’t want to be known as the English girl, I wanted to be known as Andrea.

And as for my friends, I had my homework buddy and a girl who let me sit with her at lunch. And the girl who let me sit with her at lunch thought that English people drove around in horses and carriages on cobblestone streets, which I assured her we did not.

But all of my anxieties were taken care of. I made friends, and Mrs. Liss eventually gave me an A in English class (because I was from England, and I also won a writing award). Time always takes care of us in one way or another.

When I was twelve, I sat on my mom’s lap on a plane and cried a couple tears as we flew over the country I was born in. But that was it – a couple tears. For the rest of the flight, the daydreamer inside of me took over, answering all of my family’s unanswered questions – where would we live? My daydreams were so vivid, and I knew that if it was up to me, we would move to where it snowed heavily during the winter, and I would have a big bay window in my bedroom overlooking our horse stables.

In hindsight, there are too many things wrong with this picture. My family had no experience farming horses, and I didn’t even really like horses. And the fact that we were a poor missionary family who had been living off of what others gave us for seven years didn’t delude the ideal of the bay window.

This was what I wanted, though I knew I wouldn’t get it – and what I did get was another bunk bed shared with my sister. But there were other dreams of mine that I knew would be attainable. I mean, how many kids got the chance to completely start over?

I would be a free spirit – my own person. I would wear big flowing shirts, and everyone would wonder about me. And I would also be a better Christian, and maybe I could even have Christian friends because in England I didn’t know any Christians my age.

Oh yes, I would have lots of friends who were Christians, and they would help me to actually be a Christian, because something that England had not given me was understanding and love for others, and the one thing I understood about Jesus was that He loved people, and I didn’t know how to love people. I knew that my mom loved it when I helped in the kitchen, but I only did it because I liked cooking. And me and my best friend, Jenny, didn’t like anyone. We even tried to make a potion to get rid of people we didn’t like. I always felt bad for making fun of other people with Jenny, just like I felt bad deep down inside when I was embarrassed that my dad would come into my school and talk about Jesus. I knew that I wasn’t a good Christian, but I also knew things wouldn’t change. And that’s why I was so excited to start over in the land of what many call opportunity.

But things don’t always turn out the way you want them to, like how I didn’t get a bay window, and I also didn’t make many Christian friends, and I didn’t really enjoy youth group so I tried not to go as often as I could.

So you just kind of exist and in the back of your head you kind of just hope that things go the way they were supposed to. And maybe my daydreams aren’t how it’s supposed to be, and you learn to be OK with that, and you also learn that that doesn’t mean you stop daydreaming.

When I was twelve, I very willingly packed up my small amount of belongings and left the place where I had grown up, and the place that I honestly loved. And I moved to a place that I honestly loved, and I forgot about my English home.

When I was twelve, we lived with my grandparents, and I cut corn, canned peaches, and made applesauce with my grandma. I always ate Honeycomb or Applejacks for breakfast, and my Grandma also stuffed an egg and piece of toast down my throat. That first day of seventh-grade we still lived with Grandma, and I could hardly eat a bowl of cereal I was so nervous. And a teacher yelled at me that first morning because I walked in the wrong door and didn’t know where I was going.

But when I came home from school, Grandma was working outside in the garden with her bonnet on, and so it was all OK. And that first evening, my cousins came up and we caught fireflies, and fireflies are what I think of when I think of our visits to America. There are no fireflies in England.

We looked at houses to buy and I chose the one with the coolest refrigerator, but my parents chose the one with the biggest yard. And lots of people gave us free furniture that didn’t match, and we even got two free cars, and it was then that I realized for the first time how poor we were.

One time in England during a flute lesson, my atheist teacher asked me how much my dad made, and I didn’t know, but one time I had seen a check from our church for £100, and I knew that they paid for our water and electricity, and so I told him that and he laughed, and I was mad at him because I didn’t realize what a small amount that was, but I knew that Mr. Ayers was somehow mocking him for it. I didn’t like Mr. Ayers and I wasn’t good at flute so I didn’t care, because I was happy as long as I could go home and eat crackers and cheese and watch TV.

And when we came to America I realized we didn’t have much money for clothes and I didn’t know that in England because I wore a uniform to school everyday, and unlike most girls, I enjoyed getting hand-me-downs because that meant my cool older sister had worn it.

So maybe ignorance really is bliss, or maybe it just didn’t matter how poor we were because we all loved each other, and maybe it’s true, maybe all a person really does need is love.

When I was twelve, after I got to know some girls, I went to a friend’s sleepover, and they started playing with a Ouija board. I knew that Ouija boards were bad, so I pretended to be asleep in the other room where they were watching a Stephen King movie. And I knew that I didn’t want to be there because I didn’t like horror movies or Ouija boards, but they were my friends. And one of my greatest faults is that I want everyone to like me, and I wanted them to like me, so I let it go and didn’t tell my mom.

When I was twelve, I found out that a lot less kids smoke in America than England – none of my friends had even tried a cigarette! I also realized that there weren’t many “scrubs” – our nickname we got from the song “No Scrub” by TLC which perfectly described the losers who would drive around looking at girls as we walked home from school.

And not that I didn’t observe smoking and scrubs in America, I just observed them a lot less. The worst thing that I witnessed was an older boy flicking a booger at me on the bus.

And now that I look back on it, I wonder what I would have been like had my parents not sat us down and told us we were moving to America. Maybe I wouldn’t have played Ouija, but maybe I would be sitting in the passenger seat of a scrub while smoking a cigarette.

I am not twelve now, and England is not a part of my life anymore. My time in England does not define me; it is just a cool fact about me. No, my past is behind me and there it belongs, and it slowly becomes less and less visible to me until it almost doesn’t exist.