This Just In

I was just washing my (orange) hair when a memory launched itself into whatever part of your body it is that controls feeling like throwing up:

In high school, I used a pay phone to call the home of some girl named Theresa--I don't remember much about her other than she was pretty, friendly, and (detestably) popular among the grungy-scuzzy crowd that the mean girls from my old junior high tended to hang around with--and leave a message with her mother to the effect that her pregnancy test had come back positive. Why I had done this, I can't recall. I just remember doing it. I remember the girls tittering, a little amazed that I had dared to do what they had dared me to do. I remember the smell of the music room just behind me: musty, tinny, and redolent of the hair oil most favored by the music teacher, a Handel maniac. I remember the shoes I was wearing: cheap ox-blood maryjanes that made my heels bleed.

If you're out there, Theresa and her mother, I'm super sorry for all that. If it's any consolation, I now have orange hair. Have I mentioned that?