My "Easy A" Film Real Teenage Experience

High school movies aren't always so endearing when they've happened to you.

Easy A is just a movie. One based on The Scarlet Letter. Or for some of you female readers, myself included, it isn’t.

I “dated” some really odd guys in high school.

The gossip math might add up, were it not for how I never, details:

• Had a senior year of high school. I graduated early.

• Set foot in the “high school” I “graduated” from. My education was online, using one way, independent study community college coursework to double graduate from high school and community college early at nearly the same time. The school district wasn’t pleased, but my only regret was not doing it sooner. One of my strangest classes was the speech class where I showed up in a room with about five community classmates in a few other cities, the teacher in Iowa, and we on prehistoric 2002 video chat gave three speeches on camera for the whole semester. Standouts were the online teachers all based in Missouri for web design, creative essays, and history. Their classes were the ballpark home runs my prior in person classes never were.

• Got involved in high school social settings. “You missed out!” Not really, watching MTV’s Laguna Beach during my university years filled me in plenty.

• Was physically in the town I “lived” in very often. I used to, and still do, call that other downstate Illinois town “my mailing address.” A P.O. Box kind of. Before grades 7-9, I largely spent time in Chicago or my great aunt and uncle’s house in Urbana, Illinois, which if you had to ask me of a childhood “home,” was mine. The rest of the time, my folks took me for patches of time where they would be, so I would for instance, spend weeks in Dallas in the springtime, or a month or more in Florida. During 7-9, I spent a fair enough amount of time in school to be a semi-resident, starting my first online classes in grade 9 and shifting into them. By grade 11, the time of me “dating” these guys, I didn’t have to be chained to the school system in person.

• Used Nicole. Ever. Not my choice initially. My family and I had arguments about it as a kid. One of the lame excuses was, “There are too many Nicole’s.” I couldn’t be at a daycare or registered at school as Nicole. “You will know who is a bad person when someone asks for ______ at the house!” Ugh. I came around my parents’ decision, largely my dad’s choice, when later on, I felt I was playing “Person X,” the quiet, agreeable young lady, and could hang up the acting job when I wasn’t there.

You can imagine my shock when two girls I didn’t talk to approached me about some guy I’ve never heard of, asking if I were “dating” him. This was the first time, and not the last, a boy used my not physically being there as a good idea to make up stories.

The plan all sounds well executed. “The girl isn’t around. She is into her studies. Her social life with kids she knows is largely kids from other high schools hours away or homeschooled kids around the state. Nobody would ever find out. No one might ask her. Why don’t I pretend we’re in a huge relationship? My friends will think I am so cool.”

One morning, I was at the high school I “attended” getting paperwork done. Sneaking out, hoping nobody would notice me. I didn’t want anyone starting a conversation with me. I couldn’t wait to change my clothes and leave to my real life.

“Person X!” these two girls I didn’t know were aware of my existence said, using the school name my night soap fan dad chose for my “school name” a full decade earlier. I looked up and forced a tired quarter smile. My energy was, as was when I zipped in and out of the mailing address locale, piles of homework to do later, dreaming of doing normal teen stuff, in the dumps.

Girls: “Is it true you’re dating ________?”

Me: “I don’t know who that is.”

Girls: “He told _______ he was dating you.” Oh, sure. The mark of someone really dating me is only knowing me as Person X, my school name alias. Makes total sense.

Me: “Uh, no. I don’t know what he looks like or anything.”

Girl #1: “I thought so.” Girl #2 stops herself from laughing and cannot.

Girl #2: “Want us to show you who it is?” I agree. A really messy, mean looking short boy walks on by.

Rinse. Repeat. I heard again from friendly kids I didn’t know the names of, who somehow knew me, how I was “dating” this guy. Remember, we’re only on the first of my high school “boyfriends.”

How did so many people know who I was as Person X, and I didn’t know them? That confuses me for a large school I never “attended.” Seems being the girl who pops in sometimes creates interest.

In the summer later, in the mailing address town’s only Walgreens, I was browsing magazines when _______, the guy I was said to be dating approached me to be, frankly, bizarre. He was staring and wouldn’t talk, a few inches from my face as I caught up with what was probably Amanda Bynes wearing Ugg boots. I was there to meet my dad at work in a few hours.

Around this time, I was already exposed to plenty of inappropriate adults who felt I was of age to be creepy around. I didn’t need weird stuff from younger guys.

Something in my head went, “That’s him.” It was.

I asked him why he pretended to date me. The answer: “I don’t know.” Pressed him on. You don’t know?! He gave me a shrug. The coward. Gave me a weird stare. Would not quit staring, frozen in the middle of the aisle in a men’s restroom logo body position. For several minutes. I thought about going to the manager until I tried him first, “I want to look at magazines now. Can you please leave me alone?” I asked my mom if we could wait for him to leave before we did.

This was my first. He wasn’t my last high school “boyfriend.”

Or guy claiming I was after him, so he rejected me.

These boys become young men and then mature men. They ought to grow out of this habit and don’t. Either you’re dating them, or you were throwing yourself at them. They are all the same. You could pull one aside, and he will be that awful boy at the Walgreens who won’t leave the aisle.

Meanwhile, as they are all doing that, you are working on your career every day. Funny how life works.

In my teens, having about a handful of these Easy A fake boyfriends without the benefits of Emma Stone’s character’s gift cards? Well, it was far from enjoyable. Another needle in the giant haystack of chaos I did not need.

To the other boy who alleged to everyone how we booked a budget motel in a rough area real me wouldn’t get near, the gentlemanly lie was very much appreciated.

Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. 😨 I’d hear how I was “dating” someone who always looked and acted like a depiction of a cinema creep. Never judge a book by its cover, I agree, in most cases. These books were the reads the covers showed me. They were who you thought they would be. The cruel, dead eyed gazes were windows to the souls I never want to know. The eyes have it. You can be a nerd or handsome, it all begins in there.

Rinse. Repeat. Lie. Tell. Fun times. My 0% interest in socialising with the high school I “attended” was proven wise. Imagine if I had given them real gossip to work with.

This was how my joking around was born.

Ever see Britney Spears’ opening to her “I Wanna Go” video? Playing ridiculous with the media? I do that with nosy people. And, unfortunately, the few times I’ve dealt with unscrupulous gossip writers.

You sort of have to.

As a teen girl, this was all I had to make fun of this. Adult me keeps this up.

As a student, I learned in my independent history class how Al Capone planted fake statements to weed out rats who repeated them. Some who couldn’t read my sarcasm repeated it as truth. Simple. RATS.

I began telling people I didn’t know well fake info on my life and who I was “dating” or my hobbies. Repeated! They didn’t need to know who I was really attracted to. My honest passions. Me. I was Emma Stone’s Olive with her invisible boyfriend at another school. Anything avoidant so I wouldn’t have to deal with this. When you’re placed in that situation, you understand Olive.

Other people writing the screenplay that is my life story has long been my fear.

Thinking about it feels scary. Every year, people publish a new tell all book about Marilyn Monroe or some star who can’t defend herself from the grave.

My family will always only be my great aunt and uncle, my other great uncle, and my parents. My friends, former may they be, will be who they are. Anyone else claiming what you were like as a kid, or they know the “truth” of what you did, said, looked like, and were like?

People run with those stories a lot.

When I had my Easy A moments, I used to tell my mom, “If ever I become like Angelina Jolie, all these people will come out doing this more.” She said I was right then; adult me disagrees because I’m not going to allow it. 38 year old me adds onto this, with the Internet now, you don’t have to be Angelina Jolie. You can be a soccer mom happily posting about her kid’s birthday cake you baked, and someone will start a Reddit thread trying to take you down with “truth” of what you were like.

Women get this more.

My purpose for maintaining this journal, when burying myself in my work and private life is preferable, is cutting this off as adult me. No one is going to erase my voice again.

Don’t believe “stories” about me. 😉 The only truth was I had such little sleep with all that homework, I never went a day without under eye concealer and brow pencil when I was around school because I looked so dull. I was obsessed with learning music and loved my flute. DIY faux ombré root to tip box dye and bleach had some gals thinking my real hair was indeed chestnut brown, my base dye over my very dark auburn, with sun highlights, cough bleach. I loved science documentaries as I did movies. Public domain books were my best friends, as was the drugstore hair/makeup section. Museums were the best when I could go.

Everything else, false.

And don’t you dare believe that gossip I would put ketchup on a hot dog! KIDDING. The #1 illegal foodie move to do in Illinois. 🌭🤣