New Blog Series: Memories Monday

I’m cringing right now at what I’m about to tell you. Seriously. But first, I have to precursor it by telling you why I’m about to tell you what I’m going to tell you.

I’ve started this fabulous new blog series called Memories Monday. Authors like Tera Lynn Childs, our first blogger, Melissa Walker, Neesha Meminger, Jon Skavon, Amanda Ashby, and many more YA authors are going to be guest blogging!



Let me explain what’s going on. Almost every Monday from next week until the end of the year, I’ll have fabulous authors discussing crushes, embarrassing moments, life lessons, and whatever else from the days they cruised down the high school halls. Although the series doesn’t start until next week…if I’m going to make guest bloggers go through the process of pulling out dusty memories from the file cabinet, I should probably do it, too. Unfortunate for me, high school wasn’t all cheerleading and hot jock boyfriends.



*gulp.* Oh, this totally sucks. Okay, here we go. Maybe I’m making it worse than it really is….probably not.



I grew up in a really, really small town. I was always chubby, and awkward, and had the strangest sense of humor and personality. Most of the kids I went to elementary and grade school with were ignorant asses that had never seen a Hindu before, let alone someone with brown skin. Seriously. My background made me stick out all the more.



For that reason, I left many bad memories behind and went to a high school preparatory academy 45 minutes away from my house. In Scranton, PA. No joke. And yes, I’ve watched the Office. Anyway.



I only knew one other person from my elementary/middle school which was awesome. I made friends, weeded out the ones who weren’t cool, found some that were. The first two years were horrific because I was still shedding my tackless, awkward, quirky personality for something a bit more refined. I hit my stride in junior year and never looked back.



Okay, so now the embarrassing moment. When I started my freshman year, I had some serious issues getting used to going from class to class. Remember I said that I was awkward? Well, I was clumsy, too. REALLY clumsy.



At Prep, getting from class to class in three minutes between bells meant that I had to weave through a swarm of other people, most of them taller than me (as I was and still am 5’1″ tall). The staircases were the worst. The high school was four floors and sometimes I would have to travel from floor three to the basement then back up to the fourth floor. They were wide, slippery marble steps (yeah, you totally know where I’m going now, don’t you?) Anywho.



It was only the second week of classes (yeah, I know) and I had to go from English on the fourth floor to Algerbra on the second floor. There were a lot of kids flooding down the stairs. I always tried to grab the banister so I didn’t fall, but for some reason, on that day, there was no way I could grab the banister because of the amount of people in the way. I started freaking out. Hyperventilating. A chant started to drum through my brain: I’m going to fall, I’m going to fall, I’m going to fall.
Just as I got to the last thirteen or so steps that lead to the 2nd floor, my clunky black mary janes got stuck on something. Maybe I tripped over my own two feet. I couldn’t really tell. I ended up tripping and literally rolling down the rest of the stairs. Funny how the way is cleared for you when you fall, eh?



So you’d think that people would laugh, right? Well, at the moment, I had no idea if they were or not because I cracked my head on the edge of a bench at the bottom of the stairs. I was knocked out for like, 5 minutes. When I opened my eyes, two teachers were leaning over me, the nurse, and the one girl I knew from elementary school. She stayed with me the whole time. I didn’t know if it was to get out of Algerbra, or if she actually cared because we never ran in the same circles. Either way, she made sure that my skirt wasn’t exposing stuff. My uniform, yes I wore a catholic girl uniform, was totally ruined because of all the blood stains. I had to get 45 stitches on my head because the skin split straight to the skull.



It sucked. Seriously. Everyone knew me after that point as the girl who fell down the stairs. Because I had a concussion, I had to stay home for two days (no hardship because of the amount of embarrassment I suffered). When I went back, everyone was like, dude, what happened? I made up some lame excuse about me fainting. Of course, they still laughed, and teased. Especially since after I fell, the rumor mill was that I was near death because my head exploded all over the second floor landing. By junior year I was laughing with them, but it was still ridiculously embarrassing to fall down the stairs the SECOND WEEK OF SCHOOL.



So there you have it! One of many embarrassing high school moments. I am locking the vault on those memories now, and you shall not hear another one unless I’m under duress.



Thanks for tuning in! Stay tuned for next week when YA author Tera Lynn Childs talks about her high school memory. Happy Monday!