Mom Crush

To say that I was a morose teenager would be an understatement. I did the typical morose teenager things. I mastered sarcasm. I wrote bad poetry, comparing my soul to a corpse at least one time too many. (For aspiring poets out there--one time is one time too many.) I spent a lot of time alone in my bedroom playing in the hot wax dripping off the tapered candles I purchased at the local Hot Topic while listening to Bush's "Alien" over and over and over again. Other than my tortured (dare I say corpse-like) soul, I still have no fucking idea what that song is about. Since it was track 11 on the Sixteen Stone album and never released as a single, I allowed myself to feel particularly isolated and angsty since, obviously, I was the only person in the world who'd ever taken the time to listen to it. The only person, that is, other than all the people at the concert in the below clip who are singing along to it. Whatever. No one feels emotional pain like a 13-year-old.

     For those people not hanging out with me in my bedroom, by which I mean everyone, I made sure my pain was clear by basically being an incommunicative, manipulative bitch. The real key was to be happy enough of the time for people to notice when I wasn't. I'd be fine on Friday afternoon, then come back to school on Monday refusing to smile. Teachers would ask me if everything was okay, and I would say, "I'm fine," as if the words were being pushed out of my lungs with my dying breath, which is exactly what it felt like on account of the fact that I was dead on the inside. God help the teacher who took the time to ask. Probably showing an interest in a 13-year-old-potentially-suicidal girl is the right thing to do morally, but boy was it asking for trouble. The second anyone gave me the time of day, I elevated them to JD Salinger status (oh, the other thing I did that you're required to do when you're a morose teenager is read The Catcher in the Rye--several times). And this brings us to the real point of today's post. THE MOM CRUSH.

The only thing standing between me and Maria is that damn whistle.

     I had a lot of mom crushes in my day. With the exception of the fictional characters (Fraulein Maria from The Sound of Music, Reggie Love from The Client, Miss Honey from Matilda) all the mom crushes were platonic mom crushes as opposed to oedipal mom crushes. An oedipal mom crush is when you want to stab Christopher Plummer, er I mean Captain von Trapp to death with his bosun's whistle and have sex with your not-quite-a-nun-yet nanny. In addition to all the objects of my real person mom crushes being platonic they were also all teachers. I suppose this makes sense. The only grown-ups most adolescents hang out with are their parents and their teachers. 

Fairly certain she's thinking "I really wish someone would stab the captain with that whistle."

     When my parents were getting divorced, I was in the sixth grade. I don't know for sure what prompted my chorus director to offer to listen should I ever want to talk. It could have had something to do with the fact that when she wanted to give my class a lesson in movie musicals and showed us Grease, I spent the entire class period lying on the floor under my chair making sarcastic remarks about every stupid thing John Travolta did. The incident still embarrasses me, but I maintain that that movie is freaking horrible. As for whether or not it was a cry for help, I'm not sure. It may have been more like a cry of, "You're the one that I want [to be my mom] ooh ooh ooh, honey." Whatever it was, I trolled past that poor woman's classroom twenty times a day everyday for the rest of the school year in the hopes that she would acknowledge me. To her credit, she often did. We had lots of long talks and she never made fun of me (to my face) for being the most melodramatic preteen ever to grace her alto section. Now that I'm an adult not too many years younger than she was when all of this was going on, I can imagine the conversations she might have had with the other teachers in their lounge, and thinking about it makes me squirm...ooh ooh ooh.

Obviously the kid's seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show

     After sixth grade, I moved to the junior high school. Well, not just me. Everyone moved. That's where they kept the 7th grade. According to informal surveys that I've taken, I understand that grades 7 through 9 are universally wonderful for everyone, so I won't give some sort of, my-parents-were-getting-divorced excuse. Life sucked. I sucked. Everyone sucked. Pass the razor blades. At this point, the care-and-maintenance baton was passed to my basketball coach. In addition to firmly grasping how a 2-3 zone defense works, she was also a Social Studies teacher, and her classroom was close to the library. I had to (chose to) walk right past her first thing every morning on my way to my locker. If I didn't say hello as I walked by or I purposefully avoided eye contact, she'd pull me aside and ask me if everything was okay. Looking back, I can't think of a single thing that was ever wrong--you know, except my inner decomposing soul. Sometimes I think that I must have been at least a little more miserable than everyone else, but then I remember the thousands of people that were at my first Tori Amos concert and I realize I wasn't as alone I liked to think I was. 

I think Matilda and Miss Honey are watching Tori Amos on Letterman here. 

    Things got a little better but not great once I made it to my freshman year. I was still in the junior high, but I wasn't alone. I had a good group of friends who were as depressed as I was, which is to say they were exactly the right amount of depressed, which is to say they were paying attention. That's not fair. I don't mean to say that I didn't have any friends in the 7th grade. I did. It's just that instead of shutting myself in my bedroom and being sad while really only talking to my friends while I was at school, I switched to occasionally going to my friends' houses to be sad, sometimes while wearing fishnets, watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show and making instant pudding. It was my first attempt at ironic depression and it was mostly delicious. Still, there were times when I needed to know that there was an adult out in the world who gave a shit, so I was pleased as punch when the varsity softball coach came and sat next to me on the bench during practice one day (sad people are really really good at finding benches out in the middle of fields to sit on alone) and told me that he was there for me if I ever needed anything. I did say he. Mom crushes know no gender.

I know Rocky. I know.

     I could dedicate volumes to the relationships that I formed with some of my teachers when I was a kid, but, meh--I'm lazy and it's not that interesting. I will say that I might not have survived my teen years without these people. And, you know, without the shelter, clothing, food, and unconditional love that I was getting from my real mother at home. What 13-year-old is crazy about her actual parents?

    All any of the aforementioned people had to do to earn my unconditional admiration was show me that they cared about me, and I do still admire these people, even if I haven't talked to any of them in fifteen years. I don't know why none of my mom crushes lasted. All the real people I mentioned, and lots more who I didn't, got me through some pretty rough times, but eventually things just fizzled. As for the fictional mom crushes, I still think it would be just about the coolest thing in the world if Fraulein Maria (or Mary Poppins or even whatsherface from The Princess Diaries) was my mom. Come to think of it, it's probably best for your mom crushes to be fictional characters. I mean, eventually you'll figure out that your chorus director's shitty taste in men won't stop her from saying, "I do," to her third husband. You'll be out of town watching a professional women's basketball game with your 7th grade basketball coach, and she'll accuse Ohio State's women's basketball coach, who was Nancy Darsch at the time, of "dyking up the program," as if that's a bad thing. Or your varsity softball crush (male mom crush) will get fired and go to jail for sleeping with a 14-year-old student (okay, maybe I do know why none of the real people crushes lasted). On the other hand, Fraulein Maria will always help you escape the Nazis through the power of song, Reggie love will always get you into witness protection through the power of blackmail, and Miss Honey will always offer to adopt you and raise you as her own through the power of the fear of dying alone. These realities can be counted on no matter how many times you start the movie over. 

     Now excuse me while I go stare symbolically out a window in the hopes that Susan Sarandon will happen by in her underwear to ask me what I'm thinking. 

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Just for fun, I created a Spotify playlist for this post. If you've got an account, check it out: Songs for 90s-Era Teenagers to Hang Themselves By