Weird but Normal

by Mia Mercado

  One by one, my classmates were called into the conference room to confess their sin(s) to Father Mike, our church’s priest.* When it got to my turn, I walked silently into the room and took my seat at the table. Father Mike greeted me, after a quick glance to the name tag we’d been asked to wear. He asked what I wanted to confess and I sat there silent. In the way teachers prep their students to come up with questions to ask a guest speaker, our CCD teachers had asked that we come prepped with some ideas for sins we’d done. I was nine. The worst thing I’d done was get bangs.

  “You have siblings, don’t you?” Father Mike said as I tried to rack my brain for any confession-worthy sin I’d done. I’m not sure if he knew I was one of four because our church was relatively small or because our church was Catholic, but Father Mike was pretty comfortable functioning under the assumption that I was not an only child. I nodded.

  “Do you ever fight with your siblings?” he asked, trying to get me to say something, anything remotely sinful. I nodded again, a half-truth. My siblings and I bickered as you’d expect four kids each two years apart to do, but we never really fought. At least, not in a way that I thought was necessary of holy forgiveness.

  After some convincing on his part, we decided that would be my “confession.” I don’t remember if he had me recite any prayers or ask for forgiveness. I only remember thinking, “I just lied during my First Reconciliation. Maybe I can ask for forgiveness for that next time.”

  As far as I recall, I got no post-confession gifts. I received no cake decorated to say, “Good job on telling that adult male stranger your deepest, darkest secrets, Mia!” It was a significantly more somber experience than drinking Jesus’s blood for the first time.

  Recently, my parents gave me a box of things I still had at their house: pictures from a disposable camera I’d taken one summer in high school, old diaries, a collection of CDs that included Michelle Branch and a bootleg version of Simple Plan’s debut album, and various certificates for my Catholic sacraments.

  Despite going through almost every one of the sacraments, attending church weekly from birth until I was eighteen, and going to weekly religion classes since I’d gone to school, I never really thought about being Catholic. It was just part of my identity in the way my hair is dark brown and one of my feet is slightly bigger than the other.

  The first time I really thought about religion was during a conversation with my first serious boyfriend. He asked if I thought of myself as Christian, and I said “yeah” reflexively, matter-of-factly, even. As if he’d just asked if we lived in the United States or whether I wanted pizza. “So, you believe Jesus is your lord and savior and died for your sins?” he said, not condescendingly or antagonistically. He was genuinely curious. Out of context, it seems like a wild statement—that someone lived thousands of years ago just to die for your inevitable nature of fucking up. I thought Jesus seemed cool and smart, but I didn’t know if I like liked him, you know?

  From that point, I started realizing pretty quickly that I really didn’t know much about Catholicism besides its rules and regulations. (No sex unless you’re married, no abortion for anyone ever, divorce is pretty bad but ugh okay fine you can be forgiven for it.) I never thought about being Catholic in terms of what I believed to be true about myself or others or humanity as a whole. It took such a simple question for me to undo a lifetime of I believes and I dos. It took someone asking me the question point-blank to realize I knew almost nothing about this religion I’d spent twenty-two years “practicing,” let alone anything about any religion outside of Christianity.

  My religious reckoning was pretty undramatic. I didn’t go talk to a priest or seek out religious counsel. I didn’t panic-google “what religion even am I.” I didn’t feel like I needed to reevaluate all my core beliefs because I didn’t really believe anything. And the very basic things I did believe (e.g., be good; don’t, like, kill anyone) felt separate from my religion.

  I still go to church when I’m home for the holidays because I like being there with my family. I still get comfort from saying prayers my parents would recite to us every night as kids. They’re rhythmic and soothing and familiar. Some people can still recite stats from baseball cards or facts about horses they learned as children. I still have all the words to the rosary memorized.

  Sometimes my head still bows reflexively to say grace before eating, as if I need to bless the box of Goldfish crackers I’m about to do something completely unholy to. This is the body and blood of Growing Up and Out of the Catholic Church, I suppose. To which I will say, Amen.

  Can I Be a Good Girl While Still Getting Fucked Up?

  I didn’t drink in high school. I didn’t do drugs in college. I can count the number of times I’ve smoked a cigarette on one finger. If you’re wondering whether I’d be chill on anything harder than alcohol or pot, the answer is one time, in elementary school, I ate a mint leaf and thought I was going to die.

  In first or second grade, our class took a field trip to a local nature center. We were led on a tour through a wooded trail, our guide pointing out certain plants for us to take note of and which animals lived where. I was toward the back of the line, partially paying attention to our tour guide, mostly paying attention to Michael A., who was walking a few paces in front of me and happened to be my second biggest crush at the time. (Matt B. was number one, but he wasn’t on the field trip. So Michael A. had to do.) We stopped for a second as the guide gestured to a tree and relayed, I’m assuming, some tree facts. Again, I was very preoccupied with the back of Michael A.’s head.

  The girl I was standing next to nudged me, pointed down to a plant growing from the ground, and said, “You should eat that.”

  I distinctly remember her pointing at a mint plant. I knew mint was a food flavor, but I’d never seen it in leaf form. I also knew it probably wasn’t the best idea to eat strange plants on a field trip or perhaps ever. Still, the girl just kept staring at me like, “I’m only going to ask you once.” So I did what she said. I ate a leaf from the plant.

  No less than thirty seconds later, our tour guide gave us a friendly reminder to “please don’t touch or eat the plants! Hands to ourselves! Thank you!” I immediately froze. I still don’t know if she saw me eat the plant or just had a prescient enthusiasm, but I felt like I’d been caught.

  I’ve always been scared of getting in trouble. When encountering anyone with any form of authority (teachers, parents, crossing guards, Walgreens employees rearranging the discounted lube), I still hear both my parents angry-whispering, “Behave!” In school, I did what teachers asked when they asked me to do it. I turned in homework assignments on time. I wrote essays with thesis statements I thought my teacher would agree with rather than my personal interpretation of Great Expectations. “Dickens’s novel is important and good and I definitely read it and did not just rewatch the episode of PBS’s Wishbone where they depict Miss Havisham’s wedding dress catching fire and Wishbone, the titular Jack Russell, saving her with a tablecloth. In this essay, I will . . .”

  I followed directions. I always listened. I grew up thinking that being obedient and being good were one and the same.

  I spent the rest of the nature center field trip thinking I was going to die either of plant poisoning or shame. The tour guide said not to touch or eat anything, I thought, because it could make you sick and dead and your parents will hate you and Michael A. won’t sit by you on the bus ride home because you’ll smell like death and mint leaves.

  As I got older, I knew I couldn’t handle any major intoxicant if I had that bad of a trip off a dessert garnish. I didn’t feel pressured to drink before I wanted to, probably because I made it abundantly clear that I was a “good kid” and good kids don’t drink.

  Because our town was relatively small and high schoolers can’t keep their mouths shut, word about who was throwing a party on the weekend got around quickly. There was one kid in my class who threw parties at his parents’ house a lot. If this was a coming
-of-age movie, he would be played by a store-brand Dave Franco and that casting would be generous. My classmate, who we’ll call Dave, was friendly when we crossed paths at Sunday school, though we didn’t run in the same social circle.

  Who you are in high school feels like such a big deal when you’re in high school. And at the beginning of college. And while thinking about your teen years in hindsight. Whenever people talk about how little high school matters, I think about a story my grandma once told me. At her fiftieth high school reunion, a classmate came up to her and apologized for how he’d treated her when they were teenagers. A kind and strange gesture, fifty years overdue. I asked my grandma if she remembered what he’d done or said. “Not really,” she told me, but she did remember him as “kind of mean” because of how he’d made her feel. For every “Everyone will get over it, no one will remember,” we each have one of these stories.

  Who we thought ourselves to be in high school both doesn’t matter at all while also explaining so much. I was not part of the “cool” group in high school. Being cool was reserved for hot sporty girls named Lindsay and hot party girls who got in trouble for wearing shirts that said “EAT ME” to school. I was friends with kids who were good at school, good at following directions, good at not getting in trouble. I wanted teachers and parents to like me. I was the kid who friends’ moms would call “the marrying type,” which is not much consolation when all you want is for someone to, for the love of God, make out with you already.

  While I was never invited to a party at Dave’s, I did go a few times, in a sense. I imagined these parties to be full of people drinking out of red cups and dancing in a backyard lit with Tiki torches. I assumed there was a lot of suggestive hair flipping and grinding, the latter of which our principal warned we’d be banned from doing at high school dances if we didn’t cool it. I pictured the whole scene playing out in slow motion with thumping bass, girls woo-ing, and boys jumping into an in-ground pool. I have no idea if Dave even had a pool.

  When I say I “went to these parties,” what I mean is one of my friends (who also didn’t drink) and I made a habit of driving past Dave’s house on Friday nights to see whose cars we recognized. “Nick, Matt, both Lindsays,” we’d say to each other, taking roll call of which friends we assumed were getting wasted in Dave’s parents’ basement. We’d drive slowly enough so we could make out who was there but not so slowly that someone might spot us. I was neither cool nor chill in high school.

  Though I’m sure by now you think I’m a complete narc, I never told my parents or called the cops. Our intention was not to rat anyone out to some authority figure. We were the authority figure. We got to pass all the judgment we wanted, talking about how dumb and bad everyone there was and how smart and good we were. “I can’t believe they think that’s cool,” we’d say, peering through the windows of my friend’s Toyota Corolla, leaning our seats all the way back because we thought it’d be more inconspicuous. “So lame,” we’d scoff, ducking down anytime we thought we saw a headlight.

  High school me wasn’t sober in an “I’m straight-edge and that rocks my socks off! Red Ribbon Week for life!” kind of way. It was more of an “I don’t drink so I’m a good kid. If you drink, that means you’re a bad kid, and I will think about that joyfully when I’m a successful businesswoman with lots of blazers” kind of thing. Because I based so much of who I was on not doing something, the natural next step was to make assumptions about anyone who did that thing. Not drinking = good, smart, Mom and Dad will be proud, teachers will give you awards, success, money, profit. Drinking = bad, dumb, flunk out of school, disappoint your family, destroy your future, no money or profit.

  Years later, I asked a friend who was cool enough to be invited to Dave’s parties what they’d do there. “I don’t really remember,” he said. “One time, a bunch of people made out in Dave’s little sister’s castle playhouse.” So the reality of the situation was even doper than I imagined.

  Toward the end of high school, a bunch of my friends threw a party where they were going to drink for the first time. They didn’t tell me and a handful of other people from our friend group about it because they knew we didn’t want to drink. It’s cool. Again, I did have strong narc vibes.

  Somehow though, we got unintentionally invited. When we showed up at the house, our friends started migrating to the kitchen. We realized that not only were they drinking, but they also didn’t want to tell us they were drinking. My nondrinking friends and I left in what I’m sure could be described as “a tizzy.”

  I wasn’t upset I’d accidentally gone to “a drinking party” without knowing. That was the made-for-TV teen drama of which I longed to be the star. I was upset they were doing A Thing and didn’t tell me about The Thing. Moreover, I was mad that people, who I knew to be “good,” could do things I’d been told over and over again were “bad.”

  I waited until I was pretty much the legal age to start drinking. I drank a little when I was nineteen and twenty, but it was limited to New Year’s Eve. Both times I had a total of maybe two shots over the course of the night and spent the rest of the evening going, “I don’t think I’m drunk. Do I seem drunk to you? Because I don’t really feel drunk. Do you feel drunk? I don’t feel drunk,” until I got tired and fell asleep.

  The first time I got high, I was twenty-four. Riley and I split a couple of old edibles, debating whether their oldness would make them more effective, less effective, or ruin our bodies entirely. If you’re going to get high for the first time, I would recommend doing it with someone you like, in a space you feel comfortable, and right before rewatching the Disney Channel original movie Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century.

  If you’re not familiar with Zenon, it’s the 1999 Kirsten Storms vehicle in which Storms plays a mischievous teen in space. Raven-Symoné plays her best friend. There’s a pop star named Proto Zoa. There are futuristic “video phone tablets.” It doesn’t hold up even a little bit.

  If you’re not familiar with weed edibles, they make you super high and make the plot to Zenon extremely hard to follow. Trying to remember what happened scene to scene was an impossible task. Nothing made sense. Everything was confusing, both in and out of the Zenon universe.

  I’m not sure whether the experience was good or bad or just . . . an experience. I was both convinced that everything I said was the dumbest thing any person could ever say and every line of Zenon was secretly coded poetry. Neither of those things are true.

  My rule-following instincts have stuck with me well into adulthood, though I do push boundaries more now than I did as a teen. I get a little drunk on the weekends. I’ve smoked enough weed to know what my body feels like when it’s high without having to say, “I don’t think I’m high. Do I seem high to you? Because I don’t really feel high. Do you feel high? I don’t feel high.”

  Even still, as an adult, I have this recurring chorus that plays in my head pretty much every time I’m making an even slightly controversial decision, from whether to acknowledge the offensive thing someone said to how I talk to any authority figure to whether I should eat a weed gummy. The chorus goes something like this:

  Do what you’re told

  Do what you’re told

  Follow the rules so you’re a good person

  Do what you’re fucking told

  There were “good kids” who drank in high school and guess what? Some of them became good adults and successful businesspeople with lots of blazers. I’m not immune to the strange cultural pressure to have a good story from a time you were fucked up beyond all repair. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t occasionally wonder whether I “missed out” on something by not getting slizzard in high school or college, if I’d be more chill as an adult, if I’d seem cooler or more relatable or more interesting. I’d be doubly lying if I said I didn’t have to look up “slizzard” just now.

  Ultimately, I’m glad I waited to do the things I wanted to do until I was actually ready to do them. Some rules are fine and necessary an
d keep us from doing dumb shit when we’re still kids. But some rules are made by people who are, at the end of the day, just people. You reach a point when all of a sudden you’re a grown person making grown decisions and you have to ask yourself, “What are my choices saying about me, and why am I making those choices?” I’m learning that all my actions can’t be to appease some authority figure. I am often the authority figure.

  I wish I’d realized sooner that obedience isn’t all that’s required of goodness, that casting other people as bad didn’t automatically make me good. Most importantly, I’m glad I’ve learned how fucking great Disney Channel movies are while you’re high. Better late than never.

  Can I Ask This Person About Their Race: A Guide

  Are you asking about someone running an athletic race? If YES, go to number 11

  If NO, go to number 2

  Why do you want to ask this person about their race? “Because I can’t tell what race they are and I’m curious”: go to number 5

  “For government census reasons”: go to number 3

  “Because I’m trying to flirt and this is how I try to flirt”: go to number 69 ;)

  Really? If NO, go to number 4

  Is it actually just because you can’t tell what race they are and you’re curious? If YES, go to number 5

  Do you know this person? “Yes, we know each other”: go to number 7

  “Yeah, we’re acquaintances”: go to number 6

  “Yep, I’ve been standing near them for, like, three full minutes”: go to number 6