Carpe Diem (Ditching Stories)

Whitney's mom, Linda, drove the carpool Monday mornings, a white Mustang with cow-print seat-covers and license plate frames. "Oh, you poor girls," she'd say in her sugary Tennessee drawl, her dark blonde curls a-bounce. "I wish I didn't have to take you to school. Someday we should go to LA instead, get lunch and go shopping - what do you say?" Yes and please and let's go, of course, but somehow we always ended up in Algebra class. Journalism, a.k.a. legalized ditching - because, let's face it, sometimes events or interviews are just conveniently during class. And our adviser would always sign the notes if we wrote them: "If possible, please excuse… from… to work on journalism." So we'd leave class and work or sleep or socialize or go eat at our favorite Johnny Rocket's (now closed) and watch our grades drop. We'd seen the consequences, so instead of Senioritis, came a vow to make our ditching worth them. First thing we did was to make a documentary on it. Walked down the hill to the local shopping center, three of us with a camcorder. Interviewed other kids smoking outside the coffee shop, the 40-something woman behind the counter of Rite Aid who proudly said she'd done her fair share of ditching, the little old man who laughed and called it a 'Rite of Passage'. Between classes one sunny spring day, we walked down to the parking lot so I could show off my new Prom shoes. But then we got in the car, started driving south, illegally crossed the border (you have to be 18). Ate elote as we walked the streets of Tijuana, and made it back safe in time for sixth period. A few days ago, I woke up at five to catch a Greyhound bus to LA. My friend Linda met me in Santa Monica. We went shopping, grabbed lunch at Johnny Rocket's, discovered an offbeat hole-in-the-wall of a coffee shop, which she now gets to frequent. Our day was minorly interrupted by a quick stop at the city college so Linda could rush through a midterm and tiptoe laughing out again. The classes, the work, the teachers rarely get a second thought. It's not disrespect or delinquency - it's a quick vivacious choice. And sometimes you just have to seize Latin clichés.

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