Reprint – Lost Girls

by joell on January 6, 2010

Lost Girls

first published by joell on November 5, 2007

This is a story about my school-age friend we will call “Randi.”

I’ve thought a lot about Randi in the 30+ years since we were best friends. Thought about what motivated her, about what drove her to do the things she did and why we were friends. She was the only girl in my class with horses at her house and that certainly made a huge difference for me, horses are what connected us. But today on FuglyBlog.com, the discussion was about whether horses can save bad kids. Hmmmmm. What do you think?

Maybe Randi was lashing out because her parents were really hard on her and the nuns blamed her (usually correctly) for any misbehavior. Nonetheless, Randi beat the heck out of me regularly. She pulled my hair, punched me in the shoulder, she knuckled me in the thigh to give me a charley-horse. Her favorite trick was to grab my wrist during the quiet part of mass and start pulling. As soon as I tugged back she let go causing my pointy little elbow to hit the wood pews and make a terrible loud BANG. I was mortified every time.

Randi was literally, a red-headed stepchild. She was big and clumsy and had zits. Her body matured too soon. She had “female issues” before the rest of us knew what they were. She was a maverick and spoke her mind to the nuns at school, to the boys in the class and to me.

I adored her. I followed her everywhere, stayed at her house, found some way to get the nuns to let us sit together; the bad girl with the quiet, studious one. I was small, skinny, boyish and awkward. I never spoke my mind and I almost always did what I was told.

I was Randi’s constant companion for three years. From age 9 to about 11 we were inseparable. Other girls would ask me why I put up with her being so mean to me and I didn’t know how to answer. Finally, about age 11 I’d had enough and started to hang around another crowd. She befriended the new girl in school who was even smaller and sweeter than I was and we drifted apart.

I remember when we were 13 years old and everybody knew that Randi was into all kinds of trouble. We were all stretching our limits, but as usual, Randi was audacious. Everybody knew that Randi’s parents were strict and that there were all kinds of terrible consequences to her actions. Her house was right across the street from the school. When the nuns would call her mom we winced to see her angry face as she strode across the street, over the playground and up to the office where Randi was waiting in Sr. Dorothea’s cold office.

I can’t remember if Randi and I went to the same high school. I think we did. We had grown completely apart by then. I didn’t think about her, except fleetingly for a long time. I saw her parents around town from time to time and when I would ask her mother would just roll her eyes and say “you know Randi”  and leave it at that.

Probably five years after high school, I got a letter, sent to my parents’ house from Randi. She wrote me from the women’s penitentiary. She was doing time for passing bad checks. She was passing bad checks to fund her heroin addiction. She was humble and sweet and her handwriting still looked like I remembered it in grade school. I was shaken and shocked. We were girls in a white, California suburb in Catholic School. I wasn’t supposed to know anyone in prison!

Three weeks after getting the letter, I made arrangements to go and visit . She made no attempt to hide the tracks on her arms and I couldn’t help but stare at them. She didn’t make any excuses about what she had made with her life nor did she seem very surprised. She was resigned, tired (at 23) and hardened. We chatted, we giggled. We talked about our shared passion for horses. We had nothing else in common. We hugged, I left and drove silently the two hours home.

I never heard from her again. No letters, no more invites to visit her in prison. She’s not the kind of old acquaintance that you can Google and find out what Alumni Association she’s part of or what PTA’s she might be running. You can’t expect to find her on Facebook.

I, like anyone at the battered end of an abusive relationship, remember Randi as generous, funny and bold. I remember how badly I felt about the way her parents treated her compared to her younger brother and sister. I remember thinking that the nuns blamed her for all kinds of things until she just didn’t care anymore.

I don’t remember Randi being good at anything. She wasn’t a good student or a good athlete or talented at sewing or art. She was good at shocking people and that’s how she drew the attention she must have needed. Randi’s way of having some control over her life was to shock people into paying attention. That was how she got her feeling of accomplishment.

What could have helped? What kind of adult mentor would have helped flesh out Randi’s talents and given her something to be proud of? Who made Randi feel special? Who loved her?

Would Square Pegs have been able to help ? Or would her behaviors frustrated the instructors, her weight make us unlikely to put her on a horse? I’d like to think that we could have given her a space to be helpful, to reward her generosity and her outspokenness.

It’s important to note that, even by today’s standards, Randi wouldn’t have qualified for any special classes except some counseling – maybe. She didn’t have a learning disability, she wasn’t poor, wouldn’t have been considered at risk until after her second arrest. Nobody would write us a grant to help the Randi’s of the world. But she had a heart that was unloved and unappreciated. And society got what it had coming from her.

Today, Square Pegs is loving our way toward changing the way people see themselves.

This one’s for you Randi, where ever you are.

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Square Peg Foundation has teamed up with the
Horse Park Polo Club and the Polo Training Foundation and the Stanford Polo Club
to bring you an opportunity that can’t be missed!

Intro to Polo Clinic
October, 17 & 18, 2009

COST: This is a fundraiser for Square Peg Foundation
a $250 donation is suggested (discounts for Pony Club and 4H)

WHEN: Saturday and Sunday October 17 and 18, 2009. Classes will run from 9am until approximately 5pm

WHERE: The Horse Park Polo Arena, The HorsePark at Woodside
3674 Sand Hill Road, Woodside, CA

KIDS ( AGE 10 AND OLDER) AND ADULTS ARE BOTH WELCOME

SPACE IS LIMITED REGISTER EARLY VIA EMAIL  joell@squarepegfoundation.org
TO RESERVE YOUR SPOT

Bring your horse or learn on ours

** A LIMITED NUMBER OF HORSES WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR USE. CONTACT SQUARE PEG FOUNDATION FOR AVAILABILITY AND COSTS.

DSCN1647

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Stella Update

August 12, 2009

Stella continues to eat and thrive.  She’s made close friends with Fran who never leaves her side.  Friends, students and volunteers are amazed at how she is improving in her skin tone, her attitude and her weight.
Standing with a friend looking at her yesterday, we started to chat about the funny way that she is [...]

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Meet Stella

July 30, 2009

Stella arrived yesterday at Square Peg Ranch in a gold colored trailer.
The barn was buzzing with activity. Dr. Kari DeLeeuw was treating Super Bob the Wonder Pony with acupuncture, there was a lesson going on and two hardy volunteers were tacking up to take a couple horses out for some exercise. Greg was [...]

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The Search for Meaning

June 22, 2009

Arianna Huffington was the morning Keynote Speaker at the Craigslist Foundation Boot Camp for Non-Profit, Saturday in Berkeley, CA. I was looking forward to her speech. I enjoy Arianna on KCRW’s Left, Right, and Center and usually agree with her editorials in The Huffington Post. I knew it would be a good speech – an [...]

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Thought for the day

June 20, 2009

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
I awoke and saw that life was service.
I acted and behold, service was joy.”
- Rabindranath Tagore

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Nature’s Nurturing

June 4, 2009

I got a call this morning that our neighbor’s horse died.  I see this horse every day, all day as he lived in the pasture adjoining ours.  I do recall seeing him yesterday, belly deep in grass while his longtime companion horse flirted over the fence with our geldings.  So I was in a funk [...]

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Poetic Justice?

June 3, 2009

With Square Peg’s first Day at the Races fundraiser coming up this weekend at Golden Gate Fields, I’ve had some strange and conflicting emotions floating around my head.
Namely:
1. You can’t go back.  I worked in racing for many years.  Essentially, I raised my son at the track.  I worked in the marketing department of Golden [...]

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“Is this the mountain you want to die on?”

May 29, 2009

“Is this the mountain you want to die on?”

Wow.

Hmmmm.

Uh, actually; yes.

At 40, I’m where I want and need to be. Each day, I wrestle out how to continue my tiny little life’s work. Sure, there are days when I phone it in, I whine or snivel about how hard it is, how many hours I put in. Or I pine about our familie’s financial implications as a result of me not bringing home any bacon and even investing more time and money into what it is we do. Truth is, I don’t bring home a paycheck. I’m a full time plus volunteer. Right now, I have no health insurance. Yeah, I know, that’s insane. My friend Jim is rolling in his grave at the notion. And yet, it’s honestly the mountain I want to die on. Shuffling up rocky slopes with an unreachable peak, clawing my way hand over hand not to teach horsemanship, but teaching joy and trust. Yup, that’s what we do.

There is an article in Teacher Magazine (here) about whether or not teachers are empowered. It poses the question that children can’t learn empowerment from people who are so badly paid and who are in the school system where they are repeatedly stripped of power.

Bullshit. And several teachers in the article call it. One of the teachers, the mentor of the article’s author, points out that the students watch everything you do, a very small portion of which happens to be your subject matter. They watch who you are and how you react. When you take up the teaching mantle, you are on the stage, stripped of a persona and your students see you for exactly who you are. Get over it and start modeling the best of what you’ve got.

So who says that teaching can’t change the world? Who thinks that showing a kid how to clean a horse’s hoof doesn’t make a bit of difference in the suffering of the world? Oh yeah, that’s me, late at night when I’m trying to figure out how to pay the ranch lease or the horse shoer. That’s me when I’m honored by a volunteer’s gift of her time and her heart.

It’s time to re-define teaching. More important, it’s time to re-define learning. Each day, I talk to parents who are battling school systems and IEP’s. They are wrestling with big decisions about where their child goes to school and what services they need. The schools are all under budget fire. I hate to tell you but it’s going to get worse. We will have to do more with less. Teachers will have less resources and more demands. That means each teacher and each parent will have to learn to entrust the students to own and care for their own education. And to value what and how they learn. Folks, here’s the kicker, the academic part is only a small portion of what they learn in school. It’s an important part to be sure, but smaller than you think.

I had breakfast with a young volunteer and her mom last weekend. She’s 13 and hates school. Well, she likes the kids, but refuses to turn in work. The school is at the end of their rope. They suggest upping the ante and forcing this young woman to start producing work. She’s made it clear to everyone that forcing her is going to create mayhem. Serious mayhem. The school tells her parents that it’s a life lesson that she needs to learn. That life is not all about doing whatever you want all the time. That she needs to learn this now, or it will be even harder the older she gets.

Stop.

Rewind.

So what the school is trying to get across is that work needs to get done, on time and with best effort. What the student is learning is the bigger lesson: That if someone doens’t do what you want them to do, you just up the ante until you force them to. Gosh guys, I think she already knows that lesson and it’s not such a good one.

It seems to me that what this very bright young woman is desperately trying to establish is a sense of self. She’s refusing to turn in work not because of laziness or impudence but she’s desperately trying to set boundries of who she is and how amenable she is going to be about who forces her to do what and when. For her, caving in and turning in work is giving up and of being less of her own person as a result. Of course I’m not advocating that all teachers or schools do away with assignments, deadlines and grades. It’s been tried, with varying results. But it’s clear that what’s going on here has a lot less to do with book reports than it does with a developing human’s struggle for selfhood.

Profound? Maybe. But this is a typical week at Square Pegs. For each of these stories, there are scores of others. Kids who don’t fit in, or perhaps even more scary, kids who manage to fit in and fade away. These are opportunities to make a real difference. To teach compassion and joy. To let the world experience what’s special and beautiful about a person.

Yup, this is the mountain I’m willing to die on.

Peace out.
But this is a typical week at Square Pegs. For each of these stories, there are scores of others. Kids who don’t fit in, or perhaps even more scary, kids who manage to fit in and fade away. These are opportunities to make a real difference. To teach compassion and joy. To let the world experience what’s special and beautiful about a person.

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Powerful Choices

May 21, 2009

Yesterday, we got news that Mary Hobbs, friend and volunteer extraordinaire, had lost her 12 year battle with cancer. Her husband told me that he had designated Square Pegs as the charity of choice for loved ones to donate to in lieu of flowers. Not cancer research, not the Sierra Club, who Mary [...]

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