  I got my hair trimmed this morning. My mom insists on going to this overpriced salon, where they charge upwards of forty dollars a cut. I hate it. They play the worst, sickest music there ("Candy", Mandy Moore) and use about ninety different products on my hair. I feel like screaming "It's only hair, okay?!? I do not need wax and moose and shimmer-spray and hairspray and after-shampoo-conditioner! Leave it alone! " But I am far too unconfrontational to actually do it. Instead I smile blankly and say things like, "Oh, a new gel? Neat! " Later, I went to Costco with my dad. To him, the grocery store is a microcosm of the world.
He shops for frozen novelties like he maneuvers in the courtroom. If he wants to speed down the center or a crowded aisle, he will, never matter how many small children and elderly women are in his way. If he can't find something on his list, he will demand a employee direct him both apologetically and promptly to the item. He is a lawyer, dammit, and he never got anywhere by playing nice. I could never live like that.
And whilst I was muttering "'s'cuse us... sorry..." to shopper among shopper; I saw them. The whole damn Brown family. There, browsing innocently at the wine selection, were the very people who cut the deepest in my nightmare of middle school. Mrs. Brown was my seventh grade Literature teacher, who ignored me at most costs other than to berate me for my apathetic attitude towards The Pearl ("Don't you see the deeper meaning here, Anna? The Pearl is a more than that; it's humanity! ") Mr. Brown was my Grammar teacher, who also held a law degree, though he no longer practiced.
His class is now a blur of verb conjugation and sentence diagramming. He was the strictest, strangest teacher I ever had. Yet I secretly believed he was fantastic. He used to tell us stories about growing up in the South and the nuns who used to teacher him. When I was suspended, I had to go around to all my teachers and request work to do during my disclusion from the rest of the school. I remember exactly what he said, because it was the first time I let myself cry about what was happening.
After giving me several pages of work, he looked at me firmly. “Anna, I want you to know that the Anna who did those things is not the girl I have seen in this classroom.” “Yes, sir.” I thought I might actually faint, my head was swimming for hard. “I am disappointed in you. I don’t know what else to say.” Those words stung so deeply. My parents didn’t even say that. They were just mad. But he, he was actually upset for me, not just about me. And this man with such a grasp of the English word, my Grammar teacher for God’s sake, was at a loss for words. And then there was Asa. I had known him before Cataldo, at summer camp. We danced together and he mad me laugh. He was full of life and kindness and humor. When some Saint Al’s boys wouldn’t leave Megan T. and I alone at a interschool mixer, he told them to leave me alone.
At our final eighth grade retreat, which I helped plan, we found this big huge rock—a boulder. It was moss-covered and damp; it overlooked the lake the retreat center was on. We sat there and just… talked. A nice talk and honest one. Tonight was strange. I hadn’t seen them in a long time. What are you suppose to say? So I just looked. I smiled, nodded, and then moved on. Affectionately… Anna 
