Dress Coded

DRESS CODED: A PODCAST
EPISODE ONE

This is my first podcast and I have no idea what I’m doing. I’ve only listened to two podcasts in my life; one was about famous guitarists, and the other was about Southern cooking. Neither prepared me for what I’m about to say. But I feel like this is the best way to tell the real story about what happened to make the entire Fisher Middle School eighth grade hate Olivia Bonaventura. It’s time for the truth.

ME: My name is Molly Frost, and this is episode one of Dress Coded: A Podcast, the real story behind the dress-code disaster at Fisher Middle School. The whole incident happened in the Fisher flower garden, right next to the mountain of kindness rocks, Mrs. Tucker’s pet project. I was there. I saw the whole thing. And now I’m sitting here with Olivia. Hi, Olivia, do you want to give the background?

OLIVIA: You can give the background, Molly.

ME: Are you sure? It’s your story.

OLIVIA: You were a witness.

ME: Okay, well, it all began last Wednesday. I woke up late in a panic because I was already missing first period and my mom was at an appointment, so I had to cut through the woods to the back path of our school. When I got to the garden, which, for you non-Fisher listeners, was planted to honor the six Fisher graduates who died in wars, I stopped to tie my shoe. I looked up, and that’s when I saw you standing in front of Mr. Dern and Dr. Couchman. I still remember Dr. Couchman’s face was bright red and Mr. Dern was pointing his finger at you, and you were crying.

Silence.

OLIVIA: Molly, can you pause it for a minute?

OFF-AIR

I’m already beginning to think Dress Coded: A Podcast was a mistake. Olivia seems very uncomfortable.

“Are you okay?” I say, checking to make sure the recorder is off.

She nods. “Maybe we should just forget about this. Pearl says the story will die by high school graduation.”

“Olivia, I can’t let everyone hate you for something that wasn’t your fault. It’s just not right. People need to know what happened.”

I don’t say this to Olivia, for obvious reasons, but when Mr. Dern and Dr. Couchman were yelling at her because of a royal-blue tank top with spaghetti straps, I witnessed a piece of her soul leave her body. Until that day, I had thought souls left bodies at the time of death, all at once. But when I saw Olivia’s face, her arms crossed in front of her, the tears streaming down her cheeks, and the rose-colored hives blooming upward and outward across her chest, I knew everything I had ever believed about souls leaving bodies was wrong. Souls leave bodies in tiny gasps, like when you hold the lip of a balloon tightly and let out the air a little bit at a time.

That’s why I texted her two days later. I had planned to talk to her at school, but she refused to go.

LETTER TO FOURTH GRADERS

If I could write a letter to my fourth-grade class, I would keep it short, because we didn’t have long attention spans in fourth grade. I would say this:

Dear Fourth Graders,

I know you all think boob is a funny word, and it is. But it won’t be for long. Okay, maybe it will still be funny for the boys in eighth grade. But for eighth-grade girls, there’s nothing funny about boobs. They hurt sometimes when they’re growing, and they don’t always grow in evenly, and sometimes they grow in all at once. It is possible to go visit your grandma in Florida for spring break and come back with big lumps of flesh poking through your shirt, and before you know it, you’re standing in a garden while two grown men yell at you and make you cry because your shirt no longer fits. And if that’s not your story, you may wake up every single day, peek down your shirt, close your eyes tight, open them, and then look to see if anything has popped up overnight. And when it hasn’t, you will put on the bra you don’t need and wear a baggy shirt, because you don’t want people to notice you still look like a fourth grader (no offense). And then you and your friend with the big lumps of flesh will walk around in your ill-fitting shirts with your shoulders rounded because you have grown to hate the word you once thought was so funny. Boob. The biggest four letter word of middle school.

BACKSTORY

I used to be better friends with Olivia and Pearl.

Olivia was in my fifth-grade class, and Pearl was in my sixth-grade class. They were both lunch-table friends, as opposed to sleepover friends or the even closer double-sleepover friends. We talked about homework and sat together at assemblies and picked each other first (or at least second or third) for teams at recess. I knew Olivia had a secret crush on Rahul, and Pearl and I fake dated a few of the same boys. Fake-dating in fifth and sixth grade means telling everyone you’re dating, then making sure you don’t make eye contact with your fake boyfriend until you break up a week later.

I’ll never forget the time Nick was about to pull the chair out from under me just as I was sitting down and Olivia punched him and saved me from falling. She got sent to the office for that and I felt really bad, but she assured me it was worth it.

I lost touch with Olivia in seventh grade because I hadn’t seen much of her in sixth grade and because Olivia got into seventh-grade honors. I lost touch with Pearl because Pearl isn’t allowed to have Snapchat, which kind of makes her a social outcast (I wish it didn’t have to be that way), and because Pearl also got into honors.

I didn’t get into honors because I’m a pretty average person in every way. I wouldn’t say I try my best at school, lacrosse, clarinet, or life in general. But compared to my brother, Danny, I’m a rock star.

Pearl and Olivia are pretty good friends. If I had to guess (because I haven’t really talked much to Pearl or Olivia this year), they’re sit-on-the-bus together-on-field-trips friends and maybe sleepover friends, but probably not double-sleepover friends.

I hung out with my lacrosse team for a while in seventh grade, because it was easy to make plans after practice and half of us still weren’t allowed to use our phones unless it was for an emergency, so making plans in person was our only option.

I can assure you our forbidden phones were ringing off the hook when Fisher Middle School went into active-shooter lockdown last spring. Mrs. Pullman thought she heard Chris Reynolds say he was hiding a bomb. We’re still not sure if he actually said that, but we went on lockdown and Chris Reynolds got suspended. My mom has said “I love you, Molly” at drop-off every morning since that day, even when she’s in a miserable mood because of Danny. At least twice a month, she’ll remind me: “If there’s a shooter, don’t necessarily do what the teachers tell you to do. Listen to your gut. Run if your gut tells you to run. Hide if your gut tells you to hide.” I don’t really trust my gut, but I don’t tell her that.

Since eighth grade started, Navya, Ashley, and Bea have been my closest friends. They’re not in honors either, but Navya is the best lacrosse player on the team, Bea is so talented at art she gets fifty dollars a day face-painting at birthday parties, and Ashley has a pool and a hot tub. They like hanging out with me because I’m funny.

That’s pretty much all anyone needs to know about what my life was like before I saw Olivia getting dress coded in the Kindness Garden while Pearl stood there holding a pair of Pink sweatpants.

Oh, I did want to mention my brother, Danny, has been sucking up all my parents’ energy, because he’s addicted to vaping. In their free time, my parents enjoy searching Danny’s room and backpack, hiding their cash so Danny can’t take it to buy pods, and calling doctors to ask how long it will be before Danny gets popcorn lung and dies.

I know at least twenty kids in the eighth grade who have gotten vaping pods from Danny.
That’s how he gets his cash.
He doesn’t need Mom and Dad’s money.

LETTER TO PARENTS

Dear MS Parents:

It is with deep regret that I write to inform you our camping trip to Strawberry Hill State Park has been canceled. As you will recall, I sent out a letter on February 25 promising a wonderful trip if our eighth graders simply followed the dress code outlined in the student handbook. For the better part of the semester, your children have done a fantastic job. Recently, however, a student violated the dress code and after we gave her ample opportunity to comply, she refused. Unfortunately, rules are rules.

In an effort to provide a safe, distraction-free learning environment, we encourage your children to continue following the policy stated in our FMS hand-book. Thank you for your attention to this matter. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused your family.

Sincerely,
Tim Couchman, EdD

WILL’S TEXTS

My best friend Will texts me: I hate camping, but that was messed up. I thought Olivia was normal.

Will is my neighbor. Our backyards touch, and our dads built the tree house when we were eight and inseparable. I barely see him anymore because he’s addicted to some video game I’ve never heard of and because our parents don’t hang out as much since my mom is stressed-out about Danny.

Our moms always say, “If you two don’t manage to get prom dates, you can always go together.” They’ve been saying this since back when Will and I routinely wrestled each other to the ground over a sippy cup full of Goldfish.

“It’s not like when you went to the prom,” I tell my mom. “Nobody cares. I may go with a boy, or a girl, or a group.

That’s when she tilts her head a little and rests her hand on my leg and says, “Are you bisexual, Molly? Because that’s totally and completely fine.”

“Where did you get ‘Are you bisexual?’ from I may or may not have a date to the prom’?” I ask.

We’ve had this conversation at least five times.

I text Will back. What is that supposed to mean? How is Olivia not normal?

Will replies, If she were normal she wouldn’t be trying to get attention.

I’m too angry to reply.

DRESS CODED: A PODCAST
EPISODE ONE (TAKE TWO)

“Why don’t we try a different approach this time? I’ll give a little background, and then I’ll ask you questions and you can just answer them.”

“That works,” Olivia says, leaning back against the exposed tree trunk.

ME: Hello, Fisher Middle School and beyond. My name is Molly Frost, and this is Dress Coded: A Podcast. I’m here with Olivia. She was recently yelled at for wearing a tank top at school. As many of you know, back in February, Fisher Middle School administrators made an agreement with the eighth grade. If we could go the rest of the school year without anyone getting dress coded, Dr. Couchman would take us on a camping trip to Strawberry Hill State Park. So after he humiliated Olivia, Dr. Couchman announced that the camping trip was canceled because a young lady had decided to selfishly violate the dress code. One of our classmates (you know who you are, Jack Reese) overheard Dr. Couchman talking to Mrs. Peabody about it and told the whole school Olivia was the one who ruined our camping trip. I pause the recorder and look at Olivia. She gives me a thumbs-up.

ME: I am here to tell you there are two sides to every story, and I, as a witness to the event, believe Olivia should be able to tell hers. So I have invited her to join me here today.

We hear a creaking noise, and I pause the recorder again. It’s Pearl pushing on the hatch door of the tree house. “Where were you?” I ask.

“Tennis,” she says. She takes a seat next to Olivia and picks up a ginger cookie. I wanted to make Olivia comfortable for the second take, so I cleaned the tree house, put a few more pillows around to warm it up, and brought up some cookies and glasses of lemonade with our new stainless-steel straws. I press my finger to my lips, because I can tell Pearl is about to start talking.

ME: Olivia, welcome and thank you for agreeing to take part in Dress Coded: A Podcast. Before you tell us what happened, maybe you could give us a little background. Have you ever been dress coded before?

OLIVIA: Yes. Fingertip has given me a bunch of warnings, and Miss Wells dress coded me last year because my gym shorts were too short.

ME: Not surprising. And what happened?

OLIVIA: She pulled me over and told me to go to the office, and I asked if I could just go change into my regular shorts, and she said fine but told me not to wear those gym shorts again.

ME: And how did that make you feel?

OLIVIA: Annoyed, because it started pouring when we were running on the track and I had to walk around the rest of the day in soggy shorts.

ME: That’s the worst. I’m sorry you had to deal with that. So other than dealing with dress coding, how do you feel about school?

OLIVIA: Pretty neutral. I’m trying to focus on science, because I’m going to a STEM camp this summer.

ME: Oh, that’s cool. Okay, let’s get right to it. I’ve invited another witness to join us. Say hi, Pearl.

PEARL: Hi.

ME: Pearl will comment later in the podcast. But first, would you like to tell us what happened, Olivia?

Olivia takes a deep breath and pulls a cookie apart, dropping crumbs all over the pink plastic table my cousin Shannon gave us after Dad built the tree house.

OLIVIA: I was walking to my locker from math with a hall pass. I wasn’t even thinking about the fact that I was wearing a tank top. I needed to get my phone to call my sister and see if she could bring me something.

ME: Do you want to tell us what you needed her to bring you?

She shakes her head and mouths, No.

OLIVIA: No, that’s fine. So I was walking to the south hallway, and I saw Dr. Couchman out of the corner of my eye. He kept calling “Hey,” but I didn’t slow down. We all know Dr. Couchman only knows the names of the baseball players. He finally ran up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to step outside. I got really nervous. Mr. Dern was sitting in his classroom, and Couchman knocked on his window and waved him outside. That’s when they both started telling me I was in violation of the dress code, and asking why would I be so selfish, and did I realize everyone else had gone over eight weeks without violating the dress code and I’d ruined the chance for our grade to go on the camping trip.

ME: How did you react?

OLIVIA: I freaked out. I begged them to give me another chance. Couchman said he’d consider it if I put my sweatshirt on and promised to never do it again.

ME: So did you?

She looks down at her lap and folds her hands.

OLIVIA: No. I told them I couldn’t, that I needed to keep my sweatshirt tied around my waist. They told me I was disobeying the rules and being disrespectful, and they made me go to the office and call my parents.

ME: What did your parents say?

OLIVIA: They both work, and they couldn’t come all the way here to pick me up. So I called my sister. She left high school, picked me up, took me home, and went back out to get me Starbucks iced tea and a giant chocolate chip cookie, which was nice of her. Then she got in big trouble for leaving school.

I’m stuck on feeling jealous that Olivia’s sister was nice enough to pick her up, buy her Starbucks, and get in trouble for her. Danny would never do that for me.

ME: Olivia, now I need to ask you a question, and it’s going to be really embarrassing.

She stares at me. I wish I could say I know how she feels, but I can’t. I can only imagine how she feels because, as my mom says, I’m a late bloomer. I have the body of a nine-year-old.
Pearl stands next to Olivia and puts her hand on Olivia’s shoulder.

OLIVIA: Can we just stop now? I’d rather be hated by the whole grade than talk about this.

I don’t blame her.

ME: Yeah. We can stop.

DEFINITIONS

PULLOVER (noun)
a garment, especially a sweater or jacket, put on over the head and covering the top half of the body

PULL OVER (verb phrase)
1. to move a vehicle or its driver to the side of or off the road
2. to target a Fisher Middle School student for the purpose of calling out her manner of dress when said student is violating one or more rules on the dress code page of the Fisher Middle School handbook

Examples:
I tied my pullover around my waist.
Fingertip pulled me over because my bra strap was showing.
My teacher pulled me over because my knee was distracting him.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF FISHER MIDDLE
SCHOOL’S DRESS CODE

“I really appreciate you trying to help me, but let’s just forget it,” Olivia says. “I’m honestly thinking about begging my parents to let me be homeschooled.”

Pearl and I look at each other.

Then Pearl says, “I accidentally left the rubber bands from my braces on a paper towel in art class last year, and Nick told everyone I was nasty, and I begged my parents to homeschool me.”

“Nick is nasty,” I say.

We eat cookies and stare out the window. This is the first time I’ve used the tree house in a while.

“I have one more thought,” I say.

“Why are you trying so hard, Molly?” Olivia looks at me with dead-serious eyes. “Like, we’re barely friends anymore.”

“Because what they did to you isn’t right. And their little plot to get us to do what they want by offering a camping trip is not right either.”

We hadn’t had dress codes in elementary school, so when we got to Fisher Middle School, they gave us a student handbook outlining all the things we couldn’t wear.