Chicken Gristle Girl

One may never feel more vulnerable and untethered as your first day of high school. 

Maybe your first night in prison comes close.

First day of freshman year, at the teacher's instruction, the class drew our chairs into a great big circle, all of us facing inward. Some 20-30 of us all around, looking at one another, with the "get to know you" assignment of telling the class our name, our favorite school subject, and one story about ourselves. 

"It can be a funny story," the teacher advised, "Or, if you're brave, it can even be a sad story. It's up to you."

One by one, we each had our turn. Of course, new incoming high school students on their first days of their freshmen years, in a room full of their peers-- most of us strangers, still trying to establish where we would fit in the hierarchy of popularity-- would never dare to share a sad story about ourselves. 

Like almost everyone else in class that morning, I must've told a "funny" story about myself. 

I wonder what it was. Whatever it may have been, it was safe-- and, therefore, forgettable. 

To be fair to me, I wasn't the only one who'd played it safe. There's only one story from that morning I remember. A "sad" story, told by one of the girls in class you would never have guessed it to come from. 

She had shoulder length brown hair-- pretty, and ordinary-- in a pink top and the kind of jeans that were fashionable and trendy in the early 00's-- glittery silver sequins blazoned along the edges of her pockets. I don't remember her real name, but I'll never forget her story, which burned into my imagination.

She was almost the last one in class to introduce herself. I don't recall her story word-for-word, but her introduction couldn't be too far removed from something like this:

"Um, so. My name is [name], and my favorite subject is [subject]-- and, I think I'm going to tell a sad story," she said, mock-frowning in a way that was still kind of smiling, but there was a soberness to the expression. As if perhaps she'd been going back-and-forth in her mind, deliberating whether or not to dare tell her sad story, before finally taking one last breath before speaking and-- risking it. 

Why would you tell a sad story, I thought to myself. I didn't yet know, back then, why someone would dare. 

But I listened. It wouldn't be until years later before I realized how much her story captivated me, because it lingers with me even now.

"Well. So. We were having dinner one night... my family. My dad, my mom, my sister and me. We were having chicken wings, which I don't really like much, but my dad likes. Um. We were all sat at the dining table, like usual-- and I was eating some of my chicken wings off the bone and leaving the eaten ones on my plate, when my dad notices and says,  'You're leaving so much meat on the bones,' he said. He told me I had to eat all the meat off them. I said I ate most of it but I couldn't get all of it, and he picked up one of my bones and was like, 'Look at this.'"

A stern seriousness, edged with fear and panic, entered her voice as she assumed the character of her father, domineering for the purposes of her tale. 

"'Look at all this!' So I tried eating some of what was left, like, on the ends of the bones? But most of it was, like, just the gross, hard gristle part, you know? And so I was like, 'That's all I can eat,' and--"

This was when the tears began. She took a moment, but it was brief, before resuming. 

"And my dad was like, 'What are you doing? Look at all this left on here!' And he pointed to, like, all the gristle part. I told him, I didn't want to eat that part and he got... so mad about it..."

More tears. It took her a little longer to get it together this time. Other kids may have chuckled awkwardly in the beginning, because of the vulnerability and emotion on display in such an unlikely arena-- but the classroom was quiet now. 

"He showed me his bones, and was like, 'You see these?! I eat everything!' And, like, his chicken bones were like, totally clean. When he eats chicken wings you can hear his teeth crunching all that gristle. And I just-- can't!"

Full sobs, now. This time her friend, the girl next to her, put a comforting hand on her shoulder, but looked noticeably upset, herself.

"Then he was like, 'You're not leaving this table until you eat all of it! It's a waste!' And I was crying... my sister was crying, and my mom was-- she just didn't do anything, so, I tried. I tried to eat it but it was so tough and, like, just gross and hard..."

She hid her face in her hands and might well have stopped there-- because that's all I remember about her story.

It's actually all I remember about that first day of high school.

To this day I cannot eat a chicken wing without thinking about her. I can't remember her name but I always just think of her, with tenderness, as 'Chicken Gristle Girl'.

And because of her dad, I try really hard to eat as much of the gristle off of chicken bones as I can manage. 

She's right, though-- sometimes it's just gross and hard. 

But what sticks with me most isn't her trauma over chicken gristle, or even the palpable tension she had with her father. 

She was obviously going through something and dropped it, like a bomb, on a room full of teenage strangers who had been content to share harmless, yet benign, anecdotes for an hour.  

Chicken gristle. An angry father. Sitting at the family dining room table in tears. A mother looking on in hopeless resignation. 

I wonder what hollow, forgettable, "funny" story I attempted to tell that day.