MTM

When I was growing up in the fifties in Wilmette, Illinois, there were three Ellens who lived on my block.  And we were all the same age.  (To prevent total confusion at Avoca School, our teachers came up with “Ellen W.” “Ellen D.” and “Ellen R.” to tell our homework apart.)  Ellen D. lived down the street but Ellen W. lived right next door.

She was the bane of my childhood existence.  She was perfect.

I was scrawny- with straight black hair and brown eyes.  Ellen W. had long blonde ringlets, big baby blue eyes and she actually had a shape.  And she was a couple of months older than me and she was taller than me, too.  No matter how much I grew, she always grew just a little bit more.

She was smarter than me, could run faster than me, jumped rope better than I did, played jacks better than me, was a better Girl Scout, had better handwriting- her cursive was lovely- and she was nicer to her mother.

This last thing was the worst part.

My mother was a comparer.  As in “Why can’t you be like the girl next door?  The girl next door is never fresh.  The girl next door would never say that to her mother.  The girl next door would never slam her bedroom door in her mother’s face.  The girl next door wouldn’t be flunking algebra…”

This one pronouncement was true for sure.  Ellen W.’s superior academic prowess was much in evidence as far back as the first grade.  Take the workbook debacle of Mrs. Dale’s class.

We first graders were given a fun project to do.  We had to cut out little letters and paste them in the proper squares under the corresponding barnyard animal pictured in our workbooks.  Then we were supposed to Crayola the animals in.

Okay, this was going to be a snap.  I painstakingly cut out my alphabet and started gluing.  P-I-G.  Got it. C-O-W.  Ditto.  H-O-R-S-E.  One more to go.  G-O-O… uh oh.  I didn’t have any more O’s or an S or another E. And there were only four empty squares under the gosling, too.  Try as I could, I had no success with this last Old MacDonald task.  And soon we were going to have to hand in our workbooks.

I was in a panic.  I only had one option open and I took it.

I left class.  I was on my way to Mrs. Murphy’s office- the principal- to inform her that I was quitting school when Mrs. Dale cornered me outside by the water fountains.  (I can still see the week’s mimeographed lunch menu taped up on the wall between the two of them.)

“Now what’s the problem, Ellen?  You know you just can’t walk out of the classroom like that,” she asked kindly.

“I can’t get the word “goose” to fit under the picture,” I frantically explained.

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Mrs. Dale said breezily. “Ellen W. will help you right after Visual Aids.”

And she did.  And it was a duck, not a goose, and all the letters I had left over fit in perfectly.

Just like she did.

If I needed any more evidence of her perfection, all I had to do was wait until we both entered high school.  At New Trier in the sixties it was a tradition that on your birthday your best girlfriends were expected to shower you with corsages- which you immediately pinned on to your Villager sweater.

Come November fourteenth and I’d get a few ratty-looking carnations or droopy-looking mums or something.  I’d proudly pin ’em on anyway and dare anyone to say that I didn’t have any gal pals.  (These tributes had to come from the girls, remember?  If the boys had been allowed to make these public declarations of affection that would have been a different floral story.  But the rules were “Ladies Only.”)

But every September I’d see Ellen W. on her birthday.  She looked like Seabiscuit, weighed down by a chain of tributes that went across her shoulders and down to her knees.  She had a million BFF’s and each one of them tried to outdo the other with their tokens of teenage respect.  She was always president of GAA or some other important school service group.  This was the high school equivalent of being Hilary Clinton.

Or our version of Mary Tyler Moore.  When she lived in Minneapolis, and worked for the television station and adorably said “Oh. Mr. Grant,” and threw her hat up in the air.

Ellen W. was exactly like her.  Perfect hair, perfect manners, perfect grades, loved by all.

Except by me.

Left to my own devices, I would have liked her.  But it was that “Why can’t you be like the girl next door?” thing of my mother’s that drove me absolutely CRAZY.  To fight back, I started making up stories about “the girl next door’s” unseemly behavior.

“Did you hear the girl next door was arrested for shoplifting?” I’d innocently ask my mother. ”  Or “I heard the girl next door was suspended for dope peddling.”  Or setting the school on fire.  Or joined the Black Panthers.  Or is having a baby.  Or got picked up for prostitution.”

No matter that my brother always gave the game away by laughing as my lies got more and more outrageous.  My mother would pull a shocked face and be furious that I had dared to besmirch the reputation of her perfect “girl next door.”

My torment finally ended when my folks moved to California.  They bought a house there that came equipped with a pool but no girl next door.  My mother was seriously non plussed.  My behavior hadn’t improved but she had lost her golden role model to hold over my rebellious head.

After the move, we kind of  lost touch.  I haven’t seen Ellen W. in many, many years but I have heard about the “girl next door” occasionally during this time.  I heard that she got married, and had children. (Three, I think, to my measly two, of course.)

I hope she’s happy and that all is well with her and her family.  I remember her with fondness.  Even if she was a tough act to grow up next door to.

So if someone reading this happens to bump into Ellen W. would you be sure and tell her that “Rhoda” says hi?

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Author’s Postscript:  This post has been scheduled to run today for weeks.  And on May fifth, I actually ran into Ellen W.- now Ellen K.- myself.  I couldn’t have been more amazed.  I bet it has been twenty years since we last saw each other.  But with only eleven days to go, Fate intervened and there she was right in front of me.

We laughed.  She cried a little.  It was wonderful seeing her again.

And I can honestly report that, yep, she’s still perfect.

Darn it.

(Please don’t tell my mother.)