Noralei Harris
Jun 19, 2011 16:16:58 GMT -5
Post by Noralei Harris on Jun 19, 2011 16:16:58 GMT -5
The easy S T U F F . . .Name: Noralei Madison Harris
Nickname: Nora
Age: Sixteen
Member Group: Local
Power(s): Non-powered
Play By: Doriana AgacinskaLet it F L O W . . .“With a name like Noralei, you certainly end up having very few friends at any given lunch table. When I was in first grade, I sat with T.J. Frederickson and April McCray, both of whom are now very popular. The former was alone in first grade because he got held back a year, now he’s on the football team because he’s humongous. The latter had a habit of biting her nails and eating them, but she grew out of it by third grade in in sixth grade she came to school with boobs and great hair and suddenly everyone liked her.
I’m not athletic or super smart. In fact, I’m super short. I didn’t start menstruating until ninth grade. I still have the flattest chest in school. I still pack my lunch (organic peanut butter with non-processed homemade strawberry-rhubarb jam on wheat bread). I still sit with all the eccentric students, the ones who don’t quite click. We call ourselves ‘The Island of Misfit Toys’ in the lunchroom because no one sits within a table of us. We’re losers like that.”
In elementary school, Nora was the last one to be picked for kickball and the first one tagged in freeze tag. She would raise her hand in class and answer as many questions wrong as she did right and would get B’s and C’s in her classes. When she went home every night, her older sister would ask her how her day at school went, to which little Nora would always reply ‘Fine’, because her big sister had bigger problems to deal with. She’d talk to her Dad about her math and her Mom about her social studies, and then would sit down for dinner and have whatever her Mom could scrounge up for dinner that night- spaghetti, macaroni and cheese, tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. After dinner she’d go find her dogs, Paul and Ringo (her Father was a Beatles fan) and would run around the yard with them until she had to come inside. Then she would sit dutifully with her sister to watch ‘their’ favorite TV show before trundling off to bed. The next morning she would get up, make herself some toast, and go to the bus stop to wait for school. Where she would got and learn things until recess, where she would inevitably be picked last for kickball, or be the first one frozen in freeze tag.
“When you were little, your Father’s job was always important. ‘My dad works in a bank!’ ‘My dad sells cars!’ ‘My dad is a factory manager!’ It didn’t matter what your Mom did, just your Dad.
Well, my Dad was a mailman.
Every day he’d hop in his little mail truck and would deliver everyone’s mail. I thought it was a very important job! He made sure people got their bills and their magazines and letters from their grandparents. I tried to tell him all the time ‘Daddy, don’t deliver so-and-so’s mail today! They were mean to me!’ and he would chuckle and pat my head and tell me that he had to deliver their mail, but he would give their mailbox a very stern look when he did. I imagine a lot of mailboxes in town got stern looks when I was a kid.
My Mom sold jewelry at the mall. She’d come home and tell me stories about people picking out diamond rings for their fiancés or gold watches or sapphire earrings. Always sapphire- my Mother loved sapphires. My Father could never afford to buy her any of course, but it didn’t matter because they loved each other very much.”
You always have that moment that defines the rest of your life as a child. Well, maybe it isn’t always just a singular moment- maybe it’s a short series of them- but you always have those moments you promise never to forget, but you do. So you grow up and think ‘What made me this way’? And you just can’t remember what exactly gave you your little quirks.
For Noralei, it was visiting her grandparents on her Mother’s side in New Mexico when she was seven. Abuela Francesca was a very short, round, and sturdy woman, whereas Abuelo Eduardo was very tall and reedy. He had a moustache that looked like a bristle brush. They kept chickens. Nora loved their chickens; they were sweet and lovable creatures that she could coo at and feed corn to.
So when roasted chicken showed up on the table one night during their visit, Nora ran outside and counted them. All of them were there, so the incident was not some sort of traumatic incident that resulted in a large crying fit and a scar on her psyche. But she still had apprehensions about eating that chicken, or anything else that was put on the table.
“I became vegetarian at eleven. It sounds stupid, of course- no one becomes vegetarian at that age unless they don’t want to eat something on their plate! What was I thinking, giving up hotdogs and bacon?! But I began realizing that the food on the table was once alive. That beef was a COW. That ham came from a PIG. That basket of drumsticks came from more than one chicken! Where did the rest of it go?! You’re not supposed to think about these things at eleven- you’re supposed to be thinking about Pokémon cards and staying up late. But I was the odd child of the family.
My parents were not happy, of course. They told me to suck it up and eat the meat. But I would cry as I took a bite of it, imagining the poor unhappy animal that it came from, and it became a nightly occurrence for me to sob over my dinner. Literally, I probably ingested more snot than meat. My Mother finally threw her hands up in the air and sat me down, tried to talk me out of it. But by that point it was too late. My sister had been showing me all these studies about pigs and cows that got slaughtered and I wouldn’t budge.
‘Nora. You need meat. It gives you protein.’ My mother would tell me. I told her I’d drink protein shakes.
‘Nora. I can’t stop putting meat on the table. Your father wouldn’t hear of it.’ I told her that using smaller portions would save money and would keep my Father happy.
She ended up giving in, eventually. She told me later it wasn’t because of my arguing, it was because seeing me eat a glob of running-nose-snot with my pork would put off her appetite. What a great diet idea, right?”
“And then when I was twelve, I got a brother, Guylan. My parents had this thing going on about naming us these crazy mashed together names, and it wasn’t popular for a long time. Then that one Twilight book came out, the last one, and now everyone’s doing it, but oh well.
He was the sweetest baby I have ever seen, and I’m not saying that because I’m his sister. He was quiet and he had these huge eyes. He would just stare at you, unblinking. He wasn’t fond of Marilee- my older sister- but she was already in high school when he was born, and so she didn’t really have time to know him like I did. She had sports and theatre to do- I wasn’t in sports or extracurricular, so I’d come home and watch him for the hour or so time between Mom’s shift starting and Dad’s shift ending. Then I was free to wander around, do stuff. I rode my bike a lot.”
The eco-friendly stage caught on when Noralei was in middle school. Everybody was finding their stereotype- nerds, goths, punks, preps- but Nora didn’t fit into any of them. She was too lighthearted, she was too poor, she was too weird, she didn’t like the right kind of music. She was the science teacher’s pet, and the crazy old bat was always talking to her about greenhouse gases and the ozone layer- factoids that Nora would soak up and later would put to use. She got Vermont’s state senator to allocate funds to Pilot Ridge’s high school so they could put recycling containers in the lunch room and hallways. She started grocery shopping with her mom so she could find non-processed, healthy food. When they went shopping, she went to second hand clothing stores. She found a sewing machine in the attic and started making skirts out of her old clothes that didn’t fit. She put patches on her worn out jeans.
By the time she hit ninth grade, she was a certified eco-friendly teenager.
“Meta-humans? I know they exist, but I done think there’s a ton of them around. Everyone talks about them and it’s been said that they have powers that show up in puberty, and if that’s the case why doesn’t anyone ever see them in school? There must be a school somewhere that has at least one, I would think. But everyone I know has never seen or met a meta-human teenager, or an adult. I’ve never met an adult that was a meta-human before, and if I have I wouldn’t know it.
If there’s any in Pilot Ridge, then they’re hiding themselves pretty well, which I guess is a good thing. All the people around here are very uptight about meta-humans, ever since the Catholic Church finally made their opinion semi-clear about it, depending on where you go. The Lutherans are even more adamant about them being bad. Considering the community is predominantly Christian, I’d think they are better off not drawing any attention to themselves, if there really are any.
But honestly, why would they come here? This place is pretty boring.”
The Hammel Institute is the talk of Pilot Ridge. Always has been. The middle school kids watch the students from the institute come down and they talk about them all the time- rich kids, not so rich kids. The criteria to get into Hammel seemed nonexistent. Did you have to be smart? No, that goth kid certainly proved that wrong. Rich? Well, that one Asian kid was rolling in money, but the others didn’t seem to be.
No one could crack the code, not even Noralei.
But she would ask her parents if she could go, and they said they wish they could find an application form of some sort to let her in.
“You know, I’ve never actually talked to those kids. No one ever really does, we all just tend to keep our distance. Maybe I should, but I’m much too shy for that. One day, I guess.”
Behind the M A S K . . .Name: Feddeh. (:
Age: I’m a nineties kid, yo!
RP Experience: Oodles.
How did you find us?: [Insert Creative reply here]Show your S K I L L S . . .I could copy and paste one of my posts here, but that would be counter-productive. You know me well enough, I hope.
