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the everyman memoirs

The official blog of author Tali Nay.


So, I chaperoned the prom last night, and I was struck by two things. First of all, this prom was like nothing else I'd ever seen or even imagined. It's not so much that it made me remember once more what a simple, shall we say not financially fortunate district I grew up in. It's more that it made me wonder just how much money was being spent on last night's party, and how much the idea of "prom" has morphed over the years. Because what I witnessed was not prom as I remembered it (i.e. teenagers dancing in a large, decorated assembly space). This was pretty much a carnival, the building full of various lounges and rooms the kids could go to and find various activities, elaborate food spreads, and painstakingly detailed decorations. I was shocked.

Outside in the parking lot, lest the kids get too warm in the buiding or dance hall, a number of other activities were made available, including a big-screen movie showing complete with all the candy and popcorn you could want, and In 'n Out Burger catering. I heard last year they even brought in a Ferris Wheel. I'm sorry, what? It was just so impressive that I found it challenging not to gawk. Or to be jealous of these hours they got to spend circulating in their fancy dresses among such stellar options. I was stuck manning the photo booth and only managed to grab a lunch-size bag of potato chips. I found myself sort of wanting to go to the prom.

Because the other thing that struck me about the evening was that it's been almost 20 years since my own prom. And isn't that kind of a long time? We spend the first half of our lives so unconcerned with our own mortality. I know I've never really concerned myself that much with age, because I know I'm still relatively young. That there are more people on this planet who are older than me than there are people who are younger than me. No matter how old I am, I'm still young. Except there's going to be a point where that's no longer true. And when you realize that your own age doubled is a number many people do not live to, it kind of makes you yearn for, well, the prom. Oh to be young.


Adolescence and Memory

As a writer of memoirs, I mention a lof of people in the course of my writing. As a no-name author, I've been able to do this with very few of these people even knowing they are mentioned. I have a very small readership, see. And while nothing I write is vindictive and most of the interactions I mention in my books are positive (I remember my dad saying after my first book came out that he wished he were mentioned more), I do have a relatively constant worry that people I have mentioned will discover they are mentioned and be upset with me for mentioning them. 

Recently a girl I went to high school with contacted me to say she was reading my first book and loving it. I reveled in the compliment, but only for a moment, because this girl is mentioned in that book. She's mentioned most notably for hurting my tender adolescent feelings in a rather humiliating way as we began our sophomore year. I waited rather tortuously for her to get to that part in the book and scold me for outing her cruel slight, but the scolding never came. Instead I got a long and heartfelt apology from this girl for putting herself and her budding popularity ahead of loyalty and friendship. 

Of course, then I felt bad for making her feel bad about this silly thing that happened twenty years ago. I'd included it because the whole point of my first book was to make it a study of the things we learn from our school years that have nothing to do with textbooks. And being an adolescent girl is a study in itself. Her slight only affected me so much because I was fifteen, acutely aware of my own lack of popularity, and vastly influenced by the overamplication of any shred of it I gained or lost. So here was this girl, my friend, apologizing for this thing that had meant so much to me then, but now hardly seemed worth mentioning. I mean, what's the protocol for that?

I told her it was ok, because it was, and that it had been a long time ago, because it had. I'd made it through high school just fine, and my life had unfolded quite nicely despite her decades-old diss. So the only thing that really mattered now was that we were back in touch, bonded not at all by circumstance--our lives could not be more different--but by the shared memories of where we were raised, the people we had known during this time, and the uncharted paths by which we each navigated our adolescent selves, hoping for acceptance. 

The simple answer here is I really should be writing fiction. And believe me, if I could, I would. 







On Waxing Pensive at Year End

I remember in high school being asked by an English teacher to make a list of things I wanted to do before I was 30. It was an interesting exercise for a class of teenagers from a very small town, where dreaming big wasn't something that always came naturally, but I took it very seriously. I was one of those who could always be counted on to dream big.

Some things on the list I accomplished in time (publish a book), others I did not (have a baby), but I'm a firm believer that showing up late to the party is better than never showing up at all. Besides, on this New Years Eve of goal-setting and course-correction, aren't we always sort of working on becoming who we want to be, regardless of when we thought we'd get there?

The thing I remember most vividly about that high school list is the following item: "Fly over the ocean." I put this down because it was a big deal to me. Something, again, being a from a small town, that seemed epic. I also put it down because it scared me. And giving myself until I was 30 to do it felt like a nice far-away cushion. Probably the easiest on my list to actually accomplish (one need only buy a ticket), I didn't get there before I was 30. I'm embarrassed to admit I've been avoiding it. The long plane ride, the jet lag, the language barriers, the world being so messed up. It was easier to just stay home.

While 2016 was a year of many epic things--Cleveland won the NBA Championship, for crying out loud--I'll remember it most for being the year I finally got my sweet and sour off this continent and flew over the ocean. It probably doesn't mean anything to anyone else, this single stamp in my passport, these photos of cathedrals, the leftover foreign coins in my pocket. But to me it means a great deal. It means that the items on our lists are more important than our timelines for them. It means that whenever we're ready, even if it's not this year, the world is waiting for us. Whether you're ahead of schedule or years behind, the view is equally spectacular. 








Kristen's School Story

calculus.pngMy high school calculus teacher nicknamed me “Bonehead”. Consider it a term of endearment. I never liked math, and over the course of my pre-collegiate life it was simply effort, if not dumb luck, that I did my homework and managed to do better than many of my fellow students. But calculus. In calculus I’d met my match. I spent many class periods looking at the tabletop and thinking it would be more productive to bang my head against it.

The day of the AP exam, I was nauseous. Boneheaded me was certain I would fail miserably, but my teacher had great faith. He’d taken me to a math competition at Stanford earlier in the year, he’d organized ‘Calculus Camp’ for those of us taking the exam, and he’d generously spent hours with me after school running through problems again and again. Sometimes until after 8:00pm. No teacher before or since had ever invested so much time into truly helping me learn.

He phoned me on the day my results should have arrived, stayed on the phone as I walked out to the mailbox to discover the results letter waiting, and patiently waited as I opened it and found I’d scored a single point lower than hoped. I have had many great teachers, but the one who sat with me through hours of frustration to guide me and help me understand taught me much more than how to solve an equation. For that I’m grateful to be a Bonehead.


Popularity Rehash

I had a dream about high school last night, that I was back in it. The reason, no doubt, is a review of Schooled that popped up this week, one that was quite critical of my story. I'm a big girl and can handle it just fine, and really the part of her review that I should focus on is the part that said she thoroughly enjoyed my writing and would buy any book I wrote (hard to imagine asking more from a reader), and I must further state here that I am so grateful for book reviewers in general; that they are willing to read the copies I send out and post their thoughtful and honest reactions. As an author, I truly appreciate the feedback.

The writer of this review said it was hard to hear me complain about being unpopular when it seemed like I had it all. And I've been thinking about this, because she isn't the first person to throw me a "You weren't popular? It sounds like you were" kind of comment. While I might argue that valedictorian and leads in the school musicals do nothing whatsoever to make a person popular, I do see her point. I had so many advantages and opportunities in those years that I suppose I shouldn't have complained about anything, ever. But as I tried to point out in the "On Popularity" section of the book, there is a difference between being successful and being popular. Advantages and opportunities aside, I was lonely. I remember begging the front office staff to let me have my own locker in high school because I had no one to share with. So the point of the book is not to pass myself off as a tragic figure (because I never was one), but rather to examine how even in the midst of academic success, all the average girl really cares about while in school is fitting in, having friends, and being perceived as worthy of the hallways' elite.

Bottom line: I get this reviewer's beef, I do. It could be easy to read my book and end up feeling frustrated that I still had the nerve to complain about anything, given my academic success and the admittedly charmed life I led. And had I not been inflicted with a warped adolescent brain back then, I might have been able to see that at the time and just appreciated this success instead of wish for the one thing I didn't have, which was acceptance by the popular kids. Because in the end popularity makes no difference. Although if that's the case, I wonder why I had my own locker even in my dream last night. Maybe it's a sign. Maybe I haven't come very far after all. Maybe I still crave that acceptance. Maybe I always will.