Personal Narrative: My Walk-In Closet

I opened the door to my walk-in closet today, but I couldn’t walk in. Clothes on hangers were jammed together so tightly wrinkles were being pressed into my clothes. Shoes not only hung in a bag on the back of the closet door, but cardboard and plastic boxes of shoes cluttered the floor of the closet. Bags of God only knows what littered the rest of the closet floor making it impossible for me to find spaces to place my feet. I’m a clean neat person. How did my closet get so cluttered that it appeared to belong to a well-established hoarder?

I was suddenly thrust back in time to the walk-in closet I shared with my two sisters during my high school days. It was 1963, and the least of my concerns was the overcrowding of a shared closet. I had enough clothes to be able to wear a different outfit every day, and the next week I would start all over again. Needless to say, there were no monsters or aliens hiding in that closet. There was nothing to hide behind.

Ninth grade (freshman) is considered to be the first year of high school. During my ninth grade year of school, I was in what

was referred to as Junior High. I began my freshman year in Rockford, Illinois. Half-way through, however, my father’s job relocated my family to Elgin, Illinois, which forced me into a new school with new teachers and hundreds of kids I did not know. Stranger danger suddenly took on a whole new meaning for me. I had lost my old friends, both male and female, my extended family, and was plummeting into a deep, dark state of depression. Elgin was a close knit, cliquish town that required one to be born and raised there in order to fit in. Needless to say, I was an outsider. It was a lonely time, and walking down the hall by myself while the other students, often clustered in groups, stared at me like I was an alien from another planet which only added to the pain I was already experiencing as an outsider.
Christmas came and went, and before I knew it summer was nearing its end, and my first year as a sophomore in high school was just around the corner. This was a turning point in my life when I should have been looking forward to, developing relationships, and making wonderful memories I would be able to carry with me for years to come. That didn’t work out so well. I had one good friend. I don’t think anyone else every really saw me.
I will always remember one particular girl.

She was the daughter of a doctor. She had long blonde perfect hair. She was vivacious, an excellent student, a cheerleader, and never wore the same outfit twice the entire school year. It was impossible not to notice her. She was very popular and had lived in Elgin her entire life. Everyone knew her, and if they didn’t, they wanted to. All in all, she wasn’t even really a very pretty girl, she just seemed to have everything else. At that age, I couldn’t help but be envious, jealous, if you will. I would have settled for even half of her wardrobe of pleated plaid skirts with matching angora sweaters and knee highs socks. I can honestly say that it’s her fault my closet looks like it does today, preventing me from the joy of walking into my walk-in closet. High school might have been a better memory if we had all been required to wear

uniforms.