(21) Naming Mames

I stare at the blank screen in front of me, searching and prodding my mind for something, someone to write about for this week. The cursor blinks, daring me to start, begging me to dive into another world where all I can think about is the characters I am creating, and the sentences pouring out of my hands into the keyboard, but my mind is as empty as my heart after Edward betrayed me. I can hear Olivia’s footsteps rushing up the stairs and down the hall. Then it comes, a brilliant idea, a plot better than any Dawson’s Creek episode!

“Olivia!” She enters my room, gasping for breath. “For this week would it be better to write about a romance that occurs over a boy helping a girl with a math problem, or a couple being divided on partisan issues? Like Dash could be more of a Gore guy while Candy is more of a Bush kind of woman.”

“Daria, I have something to show you!” Olivia jumps up and down like a five year old.

“Not now Olivia, I have to finish this article! I definitely think the relationship being divided because of politics is so much better.” I stretch out my fingers, preparing to start. Olivia reaches in front of me and pushes the button on the side of the computer. Anger rises in my face, even if it is just the monitor, the audacity to do that is shocking.

“For once stop worrying about your stupid articles Daria and look at reality!” She smacks this week’s Darien News Review on
my lap. “Look at this! Look at what they wrote!” Her eyes are bulging with anticipation and she is watching my every move. “Go to page A 18, Daria, just go to it!” I flip to my page with “A Fresh Look” at the top and look at her. She’s grinning like a proud puppy.

“Newsflash, Olivia, I wrote it.”

“No, no, no.” She grabs the newspaper and flips back a page. “Here.” I take it and glance at it. I see my pen name written in large, bold black letters. I scan a few lines on the page in amazement. I am not prepared for what I am about to read. Harsh words regarding past articles spin around in my head, long columns of contradictions and challenges for who I am and how I am trying to bring negativity to the school flash at me. It takes me several minutes to carefully study each letter to the editor and then I scan through them again in disbelief of what I am actually looking at. I look up at my sister hovering over me, wondering why the smile on her face is getting larger by the minute.

“Ok, you read all of those right? Now go to the next page!” She claps her hands together and her golden pony tail bounces up and then down.

“There’s another page?” I flip to the next section where three more letters are clumped together, and then I see it. Olivia Knight, typed neatly on the page. My own sister had betrayed me.

“You’re not the only one who has had their writing published in the newspaper now, Daria. Now the whole town will know what I have to say about Daria Knight and her terrible articles. What I absolutely love though, is that now no one believes you’re real, Daria. For all anyone knows, you could be some forty-nine year old man! Some think your a sophomore and some think you’re just plain sophomoric!” Olivia, pleased with this play on words, starts to laugh.

I get up, so full of hatred towards my sister, I have to control myself not to reach out and slap her. “I can’t believe you did this to me, Olivia. I can’t believe that my own sister is trying to bring me down!”

“Face it, Daria, you know, I know, and the whole school knows that what you write about is not reality and you’re making the high school and the students look like a bunch of shallow, materialistic bimbos and jocks as if that’s all there is to DHS.

“How can you say that! You gave me some of the ideas for those articles! You were there with me when I went through those experiences! You told me about experiences you had had with the same things! Sure maybe I exaggerated some things and changed the names and places, but it’s all based on fact, on our lives Olivia and those of our friends, and you know it! Face it, Olivia, you are as much a part of this column as I am!”

“Who do you think you are, Daria? You do not have the authority to represent the entire high school and hardly the talent in my opinion. This is about truth, Daria, and what you write is not true about our high school.”

I clench my fists and bite my lip fiercely. “This isn’t about truth, Olivia, oh no, this about a lot more than truth. You cannot stand the fact that you aren’t in the spotlight in this family anymore. You’ve just begun to realize that maybe being on the varsity soccer and lacrosse team isn’t going to do as much for your future as scholastic achievement will. You hate the fact that finally I am succeeding in something in my life, and you will do anything to stop it, including publishing insults to me and the paper. Why don’t you just announce to the whole high school who I am? Why don’t you just call all of your friends and tell them that Daria Knight is your sister?” I sit back down at my desk angrily and push the monitor’s button with a lot of force to turn it back on. The tiny light beside it turns a light green, and slowly the word processing program comes back into focus.

“I was thinking about that actually, Daria. Maybe I will.” She screams. I know she doesn’t have the guts to actually reveal who I am, not to mention that my parents would give her a severe punishment for taking that upon herself instead of letting me do that when I and the paper are good and ready. I can’t let her think I understand this though, she needs to think that that wouldn’t bring me pain.

“Good, and leave my room while you‘re at it!” I shout at her, typing random words angrily. She turns around and walks out, leaving the copy of the newspaper staring at me on my desk. I grab it with deep frustration and jump on the comfortable softness of my bed. I lie down and begin to read over the letters to the editor a third time. I am lost in thought as I recall first writing for the paper in the beginning of the summer.

At first, being able to write and seeing my column published each week was pure bliss. All though the capacity to be able to write for the town‘s newspaper was incredible, the feeling was bittersweet because of the fact that the column was new and I felt like not a lot of people were reading it, especially teenagers who were still sun tanning on beaches along the coast. I dreamed of the time when students from the middle school and the high school would actually know about my articles and read them with suspense and appreciation each week.

Now that teenagers actually do know about my articles, it has brought mostly anger and resentment. A feeling of deep sadness overwhelms me, as I lean my head against the head of my bed with this week’s newspaper in my left hand. I stare down at the blur of words, yearning for students to start looking at the story line of the column instead of the so called “stereotypes” they continually denigrate me for. I can’t believe that everyone is throwing everything I write about so out of proportion! My articles are supposed to be fun. Do the people of Seattle want to lynch Frasier? Do all the young professionals of the Upper West Side live as depicted on Friends? Of course not. But at the same time, how can anyone deny that a lot of the students at the high school, including my friends and even myself, are blonde, well dressed, socially active girls. (It’s not like my Mom has never stepped foot at Palmers in a tennis skirt) And If I have chosen this particular facet of the student body to poke fun at in my articles, what is the harm in that? I certainly never intended to say that was an accurate total picture of DHS. Please!

A scene comes to mind that I had seen in books, movies, and television sitcoms. It’s that tense moment when one friend confronts the other friend about their obvious drinking problem that they can see clearly has gotten way out of hand. Of course the friend, Coors Light in hand, adamantly denies the fact that they have a problem, because who wants to openly admit to something like that? It isn’t until a day or year later, when they are plastered and have passed out on the bare floor at a party, rushed to the hospital to get their stomach pumped will they actually get the nerve to stomach the stale coffee of an AA step meeting. And that’s us -- Town of Darien, State of Denial. I say to myself laughing at my little joke.

Finally I begin to understand the whole turmoil that’s been created over what I write. I realize that no one would easily own up to their faults, or point out Darien’s collective weaknesses. Through my articles I have gently reminded my readers that like it or not, deny it or not, our little town lives up to a preppy stereotype that is as old as Auntie Mame. Maybe we all need to fess up here. We are a lot alike in Darien, heck our parents wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m not saying even in our alikeness there isn’t diversity but what my weekly articles are about is the silliness of our sameness. Nothing less would be true, nothing more needs to be said. And so I begin to type furiously.