VL

Have you guys ever heard of repressed memories? Repressed memories are memories that were so traumatic that a person subconsciously forces them to the back of their mind and often forgets they even exist. Well, I happened to uncover a repressed memory this week and I feel the need to share it since my instagram followers seemed to get a kick out of it...

I was not what you would call, “popular” or “cool” in high school. To be totally honest, I wasn’t even what you would call, “normal”. My best friends in High School had been my best friends in Junior High and Elementary. In fact, they were all girls I had met between the ages of 2 and 7 so we all grew up with a mutual weirdness. Fast forward to our senior year of High School when 4 of the 6 of us had still never even kissed a boy (shocking when you spend Friday nights creating and rehearsing dance routines to Jessica Simpson songs in your friend’s basement). I don’t remember how  or why the idea came to us, but at some point we thought it wise to start Skyline High School’s inaugural V.L. Club (Virgin Lips, for those who aren’t so sad and pathetic as I was). To be considered a club, you paid a fee and had to obtain a faculty advisor. We took our idea and with the support of Amanda’s mom, the career counselor at Skyline, we paid the fee and just like that, Skyline had a V.L. Club. Just in case you aren’t already cringing with embarrassment for 17 year old Kirsten, you should know that the club took on a life of its own. Each fall Skyline held an event called Eagle Fest where clubs could set up booths in the gym to recruit members.  We proudly manned our booth at Eagle Fest and got others in the school to sign up as either members or supporters. We held a club meeting on the track during lunch. We had a photo in the yearbook. We were a featured article in the school newspaper and we even had an interview on the school news channel. 

As I uncovered this repressed memory and took the photos of the yearbook page, I noticed my name was spelled wrong. Kirsten is my name, not Kristen. It took me nearly a decade to notice that. The kicker is that I was on the layout staff for the yearbook. I probably sat next to whoever created this page. So just to be clear: I was on the yearbook staff, I was the secretary of the VL club, and no one knew how to spell my name. It is really just a mystery how I made it to 18 without anyone kissing me. 

The saddest part of all of this is that I think we thought we were cool for doing this. Like we were being so funny and proud of the fact that no one wanted to tap this. Poor, naive Kirsten. They weren’t laughing with you, they were laughing at you!

In case you wondered, Skyline’s V.L. Club was a one year thing. For some unknown reason, the club died with our class. Weird.