This weather's dry.

By Lianna Shen

This is the first week I haven’t gone into Regent Park. It’s getting cold, I’m lazy, and I let my little brother take my car back to London for a couple weeks. With only my legs and the Dundas streetcar, I have opted to do my reporting from home.

So while I haven’t been face-to-face with my subjects, I have been emailing some of them. Two girls, in particular, are my favorite email pals. Sheline and Ebony are my new friends, and they are 14.

Yup, I’m hangin’ with the cool kids. When I am around them, I am all of a sudden thrust back into the days of eye-rolling, loud gum chewing, and braces. Where I come from we call grade nine the last year of “junior high”, but here it is the first year of high school. These girls are embarking on what is in my memory the worst years of adolescence, and they’re doing it with nothing but cool.

Last week, Sheline was making invitation cards for her birthday party. But her birthday isn’t til January. Ebony was helping her. On the front of each card they would write the name of the guest in elegant “calligraphy”. Girls in red, black for boys. When I commented on this and asked if “all the boys are black?” Ebony was confused for a second and thought I was asking about her family. She is half white. She laughed when she realized I was talking markers, not race.

These girls live in Regent Park but they are like any other teenager. Ebony has an ipod, Sheline is wearing Endless Love body cream by Victoria Secret. I know this only because when I was in high school, I was obsessed with the stuff and would make my dad bring it back for me when he went on business trips in the states. Poor guy, he had to go into a lingerie store to buy stuff for his daughter. Now you can buy this stuff anywhere across Canada, at La Senza stores. When I smell Sheline I am reminded of my badly dyed hair and long trenchcoats. It smells like flowers and candy.

But these girls are no Goths. They both have glowing, smooth skin unobstructed by any traces of badly applied makeup. Their little bodies are dressed in the latest fashions – fur lined hoodie, puffy vest, baggy shirt, skinny jeans. Ebony’s hair is pulled up stylishly in a little bouffant and I can tell that she’s going to break some hearts in a few years. And the way they talk…man, I wish I could talk like them.

“That’s dry!”
“What’s dry?”
“Like…dry. Ya know.”
“Like…cool?”
“No, opposite.”
“Oh. I’m dry?”
“NO!” laughter.
“Um…”
“Nevermind.” More laughter.

So I’ve come to the conclusion, after blogging about kids for the past few weeks, that even though I may vouch to be cool now, I will still never be cool by junior high /ninth grade standards. Oh well.