Stephanie C. Fox | An Alumni's Work

Stephanie C. Fox is a MacDuffie graduate, class of 1987. She was a six-year senior, and she had a poem in the Unicorn as an eleventh grader.

"Memorizing lines came naturally to me. This play was going to be great fun. I had tried out for play after play, but this was my first big role. That hadn’t surprised me; the other kids had to have their chance too. But maybe, after the teachers saw what I could do, I would get another big role before graduation. This was my sophomore year. I knew I didn’t fit and I didn’t care. Of course, if fitting in meant becoming adept at being mean – and being the first in an interaction to be mean – then that was just fine. Let them think I’m anti-social, even if I was merely asocial. The people who say that are really describing themselves anyway, so why should I care what they think? Such a lot of effort it was, it seemed, to expend time and energy on figuring out how to deal with people. I couldn’t expect to just copy one person’s method of handling a particular situation; it would be necessary to ask several people and then come up with my own way. And then I would have to do this over and over again for each potential situation, and file the data away for random use whenever it was needed again! What a time-suck; I could be studying, but no – I had to learn social skills by rote and store them as data. Surely most people didn’t have to spend time on this. Not me, and I wanted to study and practice the violin. Damnit. Nana understood this. She didn’t go to church anymore except for the organ recitals because her friends had either died or moved away, except for one who was Jewish and another who was Hindu, so she wouldn’t need church to see them anyway. I wished I could see Mrs. Srivashti more often, but high school and violin lessons took up most of my time. I missed going with Nana on Sunday evenings to eat her delicious, spicy food. Nana’s food was delicious – I loved French recipes – but I kept thinking that if I could get my Sundays back, I could go with her again, and Mrs. Srivashti could show me her sitar again, and play something on it. This was what I thought about as I listened to Mr. Baker talk on and on."

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