Once I switched schools midway through 9th grade, life got better, fast. I fell in with the drama/music geeks (more of a ‘rushed headlong into their welcoming arms,’ really.) My drama clique became my D&D group (Ah, summer of ’85, how I loved wasting you in a succession of late-night basement gaming sessions!). In my gang, you could wear what you wanted, listen to whatever music you pleased, and be as conservative or wild as you felt like, as long as you had brains or talent–that was what we cared about.

As for brand name clothing, Kai and I are pretty much on the same page there. Never really saw the point, and had purple hair and wore mismatched socks and combat boots for most of high school. Before venturing into experiments in being me, though, I did have one year where I tried desperately to “fit in.” And did my best to buy the “right” clothes at consigment stores where we could almost afford them and basically borrowing stuff from “friends.” That was one year and at the end of it, I dyed my hair and started wearing what I wanted. The friends didn’t translate. I remember high school being initially lonely, but once I found the other misfits and rejects, we settled into a happy and blissful state of social anarchy.

Poor Jane, she’s getting no respect at all these days.

Anne was a delight to revisit; I’ve requested a bio of LMM from the library, too. I’ve been mulling an entry about ways our favorite childhood reads shape us, as I also re-read An Old-Fashioned Girl not too long ago, and was surprised how much of it had stuck with me.

Ramona, there was a time I thought I’d never be able to say this, but the wounds of junior high have faded sufficiently that I don’t recall much about them. Not having the right brands was never my problem: thinking differently, thinking too much, thinking at all, and not being willing to shut up and blend in: that was my problem. I don’t remember anybody picking on me for not wearing the coolest brands, although they did pick on me for ‘weird’ clothing choices. And MAN did they pick on me on Punk Day when, photographic evidence shows, I was the only one in school with the faintest notion of what punk was. (Although, truth be told, I was more of a New Romantic than a punk.) But yeah, fancypants branded clothes were the least of my worries.

But product placement in a dictionary is a wee bit beyond the pale. And I would certainly cast aside with force a novel that kept screaming ads at me–unless that was the point of the novel. Have you read William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition? The main character has an allergy to brands and goes to great lengths to scour them from her life. She uses her condition in her work as a consultant to corporations: they show her their brand concepts, she tells them (based on the strength of her revulsion to them) which one is the strongest brand. It was one of those books that when I finished it, I wanted to flip it right back open at page one and go through it again.

As for the noise…I feel like I do a pretty good job keeping it at arm’s length, but it’s definitely out there, looking for a way in. We hate to get stuck watching live tv because of sitting through the commercials; we either DVR it, or at least let it buffer for 20 minutes, so we can skip the commercials.

I’ve never liked branded clothes–I should pay you for the honor of advertising for you? I don’t think so! (One of my favorite moments in Pattern Recognition is a dissection of the howling vacuum of meaninglessness that is the Tommy Hilfiger brand, which I have always hated passionately.)