Miss 104

When we were in fourth grade, our physical stats (height, weight, general flexibility) were recorded in gym class. These stats were logged into a tiny book filled with graph paper, so we could easily be compared to each other, to ourselves in past (and future) years, and to other kids across the nation.

Fine. That was fine. I was tall, I was chubby, and I wasn't very flexible. That was common knowledge. You could tell all those things just by looking at me. But that wasn't the problem. The problem was that our gym teacher measured and recorded these statistics in front of the boys.

In our school district, there is a collapsible wall that separates the girl side of the gym from the boy side of the gym. We have separate locker rooms, separate bleachers, separate basketball courts and play areas. There is a shared equipment room and a tiny door in the collapsible wall that allowed anyone who needed to pass between sides to get there without walking around.

On the day they recorded our stats in fourth grade, the gym teachers kept this door open. The boys stayed on their side, neatly lined up next to their padded wall, and us girls stayed on our side, neatly lined up next to our padded wall. The gym teachers wheeled out two monstrous scales—the kind with that claw that lifts out to press down on the crown of your head and measure your height—and put them next to the padded walls.

The gym teachers elected helpers who would stand next to them and write down the measurements in the appropriate space each time a girl or boy came up to be assessed. The teachers handed these helpers the graph paper books and a pencil. Then they called up the first student.

They should have shut the door. They should have known better.

After the girls were done getting measured, they sat quietly in their small friend groups. They talked about boys they liked, about their least favorite teacher, about what they were going to have for lunch. After the boys were done getting measured, they horsed around, ran races to see who could get to the bleachers first, and play fought each other. They also left the safety of the padded wall. They threw jabs at each other near the center line that separated the girl side from the boy side of the gym. They were close to us.

And because I was near the end of the alphabet, many of the boys were already done with their measurements when it was time for me to go up for mine. The boys were still hanging around the middle of the gym when I stepped up onto the clanking scales. The gym teacher reached up and adjusted the weight. Still not right. More adjustment. Still not right. More adjustment. Finally, she got it right.

"One hundred and four pounds!" she called to her helper, who dutifully scribbled that information in under the appropriate column.

"WOAH!" someone yelled.

I looked over my shoulder to see a group of boys staring at me. They'd noticed the difference, obviously. For most of the period there had been the low drone of our gym teacher calling out the fourth grade girl weights. Ninety. Eighty-five. Ninety-two. Eighty-seven. Ninety-four. Nothing that crested over that one hundred pound mark. Until me.

One boy stepped out of the group. This boy's name was Joey. He was one of my arch nemeses. He pulled my hair and stole my erasers and called me names. He did this all the time. The name calling and hair pulling I could take, but the eraser-stealing I could not. I loved my erasers. I had erasers cut in the shape of rainbows and unicorns and moons. I absolutely could not handle having them stolen. Repeatedly.

"One hundred and four pounds?!" Joey called. "Nice going, Miss 104!"

My gym teacher whirled around and pointed her crooked, knobby finger at Joey. "Go back to your side," she yelled, and he went. Of course he went. What else did he need? Now he had ammunition—new ammunition he could use to torment me, something that would supplement his stealing of my erasers and the pulling of my hair.

Later, after the bell rang and we—now changed back into our normal clothes—shuffled out of the gym and into the halls, heading toward our next class, Joey came up behind me. "104!" he chanted. "104! 104! 104!"

I glared at him. "Shut up," I said.

He kept chanting.

"I'm tall!" I said. "It's not that big of a deal!"

He kept chanting, chanting, chanting. He chanted until I stepped into the English classroom. He picked the chanting back up after English. He chanted for days. And when he tired of chanting, he just referred to me as Miss 104.

"Hi there, Miss 104," he would say anytime we passed each other in the hall. "How's it going Miss 104?"

I hated Joey. I hated him for stealing my erasers, and now I hated him for this. I carried that hatred with me for a long time. I carried it with me until he moved away to a neighboring school district so he could play football. After that, I only saw Joey once more when he attended the homecoming dance during our sophomore year of high school. We ran into each other in the cafeteria, where the school had set up a cookie and punch station.

I was having some punch and standing in a circle with my best friends. I was wearing a slinky, stretchy, Spandexy blue dress whose fabric glittered in the light. My hair was long and curled. I looked very different from my Miss 104 days. I was still a little chubby and I still had linebacker arms, but I'd managed to come out of my most awkward phase—the years of middle school—looking like a human girl.

When my group turned to leave the punch and cookies behind because we heard AC/DC's "Shook You All Night Long" blare over the speakers in the gym and we wanted to dance, that's when Joey came through the cafeteria doors. He was with a group of friends, all these big and tough-looking boys, and every one of them breezed right by me and my group of friends. Well,
every one but Joey. He stopped for a second. A millisecond.

"Jess," he said as I passed. "Woah. Huh."

Even now I have no idea what that meant. Was he woahing a transformation he saw in me? Was he woahing the lack of change? Was he woahing the way I'd filled into myself? Or was the woah for the sheer spandexy glory of that dress, all the big glitz and glitter I was walking around in? I just didn't know, and I didn't stick around to find out. AC/DC was thumping in the gym and my friends were calling for me to hurry up.

I hadn't thought about any of that—about gym class in fourth grade or about that night in the cafeteria—for awhile. Until Saturday night. Until I walked into the restaurant where I used to work, looking for Josh. Until I looked across the bar and saw Joey leaning against a pretty blond, smiling at her, laughing at what she said.

"That," I told Josh, "is the boy who tormented me in middle school. He stole all my best erasers."

Josh, who was drunk, didn't fully appreciate the situation. He might not have even heard me. He seemed wholly unconcerned that I was staring across the bar at a boy who had fed off my worst insecurities for years.

Later, when I stepped down to the lower level of the bar to get myself some vodka, I saw Joey lean into the girl one more time then push off the bar, round its corner, and head my way. I focused my attention on the bottles of liquor behind the bar. There was a part of me that wondered if he was coming over to talk to me. That seemed highly unlikely. That seemed impossible. How would Joey remember me after ten years?

That's when I heard my first and last name being exclaimed. I turned. It was Joey.

"I've been standing over there and saying, 'I think I know that girl. I think that's Jess!'" he said.

"I thought that was you, too," I said. "My God, how are you?"

We exchanged stories. He told me where he'd been and where he was going. I couldn't believe I was talking to him, that he'd identified and remembered me. I wanted to ask if he remembered stealing my erasers and telling everyone that I weighed over one hundred pounds. I wanted to ask if he remembered sitting next to me in fifth grade, if he remembered how he used to paw through the things in my desk when I got up for a drink of water.

I didn't, of course. There are just some things that need to be left unsaid. There are just some things that need to be left in the past. But still, there are some days when I wake up in this house, in this town, shocked at how much hasn't changed, at how things can keep going, going, going forever.

And I guess I can't forget to mention that after we both expressed how happy we were that the other was doing good things, I drank a big drink of my vodka and went to the bathroom so I could lean in to the mirror and wonder what Joey saw when he looked at me. Did he think, She's come a long way or did he think She's still so much the same? Then I wondered what it mattered. Outside the door there was a whole new world, a world I'd made for myself long after the days when Joey stole my erasers and called me name, and I knew that was what was important, even if I did smile at my reflection and think, Just look at how I have changed.