Gus, of course you may comment. Writer! Isn't everyone in here a writer?

Like that ever stopped me.

The In Crowd #2

He’s the new kid again. Here, it’s all skateboards and baggy jeans and thrash metal.

He can do that. What he can’t do is sit in the lunchroom alone anymore. Wait for them to decide he’s too skinny, too quiet, too poor stupid homely smart rich weird.

It’s just another set of rules. They change from town to town. Last time it was pot and too many nights watching Adam Sandler movies in a basement that smelled like wet laundry.

It’s insurance. It’s not getting cuffed against a locker. One day, he figures, he’ll have to do the cuffing himself.

Jesus, Amy. Ouch.

I'm once again deeply pleased that I spent high school backstage at Fillmore East or hanging out at Ungano's with my big sister at night. It's so much easier when the not giving a shit what your contemporaries think is so obvious, they end up fearing you.

Otherwise, I suspect high school would have been sincerely shitty.

Oh, Gus, I'm so pleased for you!

Amy, wow. Both those are powerful, especially the second.

Yay, Gus! And congratulations. When does it hit the shelves, and will you come tell us so we can, as Ginger says, hit Amazon and artificially raise your numbers?

Teppy, I cannot tell you how happy seeing something you wrote in this thread made me. I've been meaning to ask if you're still in your class at the college, and how that's going? If not, have you and a handful of fellow students formed a writing group? Because that's what happened to me. Twice.

Unfortunately I think the second group has just been co-opted by one member's political aspirations. I don't wish to help her get elected, so I've stopped attending meetings.

But you enjoyed your class so much, I hope it's still there for you in some form, at least. And I'm really glad to see you're still writing.

Beverly, loved your poem.

Gus, those dollars are in fact better than other dollars.

AmyLiz, I think you just summarized your first drabble with:

I've never heard of Robert Clergerie! This is what happens when Sex and the City ends. All my fashion comes from Target lately.

Heh. If my self-proclaimed Label Whore daughter wasn't working 12-hour days, she could hook Amy up with who wears what where, and which labels. Since Amy and Jo got on like a house afire, it would be fun to watch. I'd love to be there for it.

Amy, Robert Clergeries, whom I adore; be warned, it defaults automatically to sound

The current crop of Fluevogs are probably also a bit too recherche for the women in question.

And I seriously, seriously don't see anyone in their right mind - social status and bank balance notwithstanding - wearing my beloved Jimmy Choo's to a PTA meeting.

Prada, yep. Manolo, possibly. Ferragamo, almost certainly.

Sex and the City pretty much made Jimmy Choos the go-to fancy shoe brand, at least to talk about. Ferragamos feel like my grandmother, but that could just be my grandmother.

Oh, I agree about the Ferragamos. I adore some of them, but it very much depends on the style. They tend to run hyper-narrow and anyway, they're now forever tainted for me because I associate them with Condi Rice, and Hurrican Katrina.

I'm just trying to imagine the level of idiocy it would require to try and drive an Escalade in four inch thong jeweled dinner sandals, and I'm failing miserably.

Tep, I love you with a barely speakable passion. That drabble rocked the house.

AmyLiz, woot woot. Those were splendiferous.

Gus! You exchanging-typing-for-currency fiend, you! Many congratulations; couldn't have happened to a nicer were-monkey.

Beverly, you do things to the back of my brain that should only be done in Elizabethan English.

Hi, 'Suela. Miss you, lots. Hope things are good in your life.

Thanks for liking the Gretzky line, folks; I wasn't sure if the tone made it across.

If I forgot anyone, just swat me. My brain's a sieve, these days.