“Kids say ‘wicked’ here but it doesn’t mean anything bad. It’s more like ‘cool.’”
I nodded solemnly in the back seat of my mom’s blue Buick, as my stepsister went on, describing the merits and demerits of the cafeteria food at our new elementary school, where she had been enrolled since January: milk came in plastic bags from Crowley Foods, and needed to be poked just so with a straw (“remember to put your thumb over the top, otherwise it will squirt out everywhere”), but the pizza was better than our previous school district in Texas.
June 1992
From Texas to New York, my brand new Brady Bunch family had stayed split along gender lines, with my stepfather leading the way in an Astro van containing my three brothers (1 blood, 2 step). Now, we were rolling down the narrow, pothole-riddled main street through the town I would be from.
Out of the thousands of conversations I had with my sister over the years, this is the one I remember like it was yesterday: Jaime gently parsing the social aspect of a new school, knowing I couldn’t navigate it on my own. (Upon her high school graduation 8 years from now, Jaime would be voted “class flirt.”)
Each new slang word and turn of phrase offered on a silver platter, the words I gathered would become both my weapon and my armor.
“Kids say ‘wicked’ here but it doesn’t mean anything bad. It’s more like ‘cool.’” — and now I know you moved to New England! 😉