I do a lot of blog post developing at night when I have insomnia. I had terrible insomnia last night. I don’t know why. Just did. I was thinking about a discussion I had with my sister about the different “houses” in the Harry Potter books. And my connection to them.
It’s not as weird as it sounds. When I was very young, I missed the age cut-off for going into kindergarten. I was one of those incredibly precocious kids who could read Shakespeare or something at 2, so my mom was eager to get me into school. Because you had to turn 5 before Dec. 1st in order to start kindergarten that fall, I missed the deadline (my birthday is, as is Jane Austen’s and Beethoven’s, Dec. 16th). Apparently, my mom couldn’t stand having such a precocious (i.e., pain in a$$) kid around, so she got me tested at a local private school to see if I tested into kindergarten. I ended up testing into 1st grade and started that the year I was 5.
Anyway, the school I went to was a well known local Catholic girls’ school. Part of the deal, for some weird reason, was that they put you into one of two houses when you enter. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a Sorting Hat, which would have made the process more fun. The houses were the Sioux or the Apache. Now, I grew up in Monterey, CA, and there were no Sioux or Apache Native Americans anywhere near us. But, these were the houses. The Sioux’s color was red and the Apaches’ color was green. The school colors were red and white. I got put in the Apache house. From then on, I had to wear green and white on house days.
The school colors, again, were red and white. And even though I was in a private school, my mom, sister and I were living in something like poverty–I think my dad, who lived in Japan at the time, paid for my schooling (he and my mom were divorced). Anyway, I had to buy green socks to wear on House days because it wasn’t acceptable to wear red if you were Apache. But, the school uniform was a red and white checkered pinafore over a white under dress–with red or white socks. I already had my allotment of red socks. We couldn’t afford green socks. But we had to buy them anyway because I was Apache.
We weren’t allowed to talk to people from the “other” house on certain days. Even as a very small child, I understood that this was just crazy and arbitrary. I wasn’t even Catholic and I didn’t understand the House system. It was stressful. I even got demerits for socializing with a Sioux girl. The demerits were quite important for something—I don’t remember what. Every week (month?) we had to stand in front of the Mother Superior (remember that I wasn’t Catholic and therefore this woman was like the Queen or something to me) and explain why we got our demerits. I don’t remember what I said (“uh, because the system is stupid and asinine, Mother”). But, I don’t think it went so well. I still hate arbitrary divisions like that. I left after 2nd grade–my mom finally couldn’t stand the weirdness. I hated green for years afterward.
