“Ms. Gold was known in most cliques as the counselor for the losers, druggies, troublemakers, kids who got suspended, kids who fought or brought knives to school, kids who flunked so much they were already too old for Nautilus, kids whose parents were drunks or junkies, or whose parents beat them, homeless kids, bullied kids, kids with eating disorders, or brain disorders, or anger problems. So naturally, when I showed up at her door, she knew exactly who I was.”
During this part of “Ordinary Girls”, Jaquira discusses her teenage life, how she always got in trouble and became a child delinquent. She was going through a hard time because her parents didn’t pay attention to her and what she did. Jaquira while growing up never really got the attention she needed or wanted, she had turned to someone else that she didn’t know to talk about her problems.
Like Jaquira, while growing up I didn’t get the attention that I needed or wanted. Most of the attention was to my brother and this caused me to act out in school. Even though I did all my work and finished everything on time, I wouldn’t listen to the teachers and would talk back. But once my teachers threatened to tell my mother about my behavior, that’s when I would stop acting out for a bit because I was terrified of my mother. If she had found out about me acting out in school, I would get screamed at and slapped. In my school, there was a counselor like Ms. Gold. I hated her because I knew she was the counselor for people that got in trouble or did bad things. It was a constant reminder that I had to go to her because my parents didn’t pay attention to me or at that time I thought they didn’t care about me. As Jaquira talks more into her teenage years, I couldn’t help but feel bad because she had to go through all this by herself, and even though she did have a few friends with her, she still had to go through these things personally.
