––––––––
The bell rang, signaling my final class of the day.
Today. May 30th. My thirtieth birthday. Thirty.
When did that happen?
I remember the years between ten and twenty going so slowly. First I couldn't wait to be thirteen, a teenager. Then, turning sixteen and driving. Eighteen meant getting ready for college. And finally twenty meant that twenty-one was just around the corner. I remember those years and the fine details of them as clearly as yesterday. I can easily recall unimportant information from those days as easily as popping in my favorite movie. These past ten years, however, from twenty to thirty, have flown by at such an alarming rate I can barely remember any of it. Time is a fickle creature and if I've gathered nothing else from my thirty years, at least I've learned that depressive fact.
I could hear the students making their way to the locker rooms to change into their uniforms and I knew I had about five minutes of good self pity time left before I had to head out of my spacious office located next to the girl's bathroom and into the gym. I guess there is a bright side to things—I really love my job. I am a Health and Physical Education teacher at Gateway Regional High School just outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Perhaps playing sports and exercising all day with my students is one of the reasons why I'm in such good shape—for someone who's thirty. Thirty is really starting to feel like a dirty word.
Gathering up my grade book and trying not to focus on my age, I walked out to the gym to greet my eleventh grade class. The students were all milling around the gym and talking to their friends when I entered. As a rule, I try to ignore the private conversations of my students, they generally revolve around who's dating whom, but when I overheard one kid say my name my ears instantly tuned in. Maybe I'm crazy, but I've always felt I've had overly sensitive senses, especially eyesight and hearing. I seem to pick up on things other people don't notice. The boy speaking didn't think I could hear him, which made his comments all the more funny.
"Hey look, here comes Miss Vaughn," Seth Dominic said to Russell Samson, "I think I'll ask her to prom."
I had to stifle a laugh and Russell just shook his head. Teenage boys are so strange. Although I did feel a miniscule surge of appreciation, even at thirty I can still turn some heads. Seth is a tall blonde boy, who I guess most people consider the class clown. Russell, on the other hand, is a very quiet and extremely polite kid who I try not to make eye contact with. Not because he was creepy or anything. Because of his interesting eyes.
Russell is an average looking kid. He's a bit too skinny and maybe about five feet ten if he's lucky. He has buzzed black hair, black eye brows and black lashes that frame the most extraordinary blue eyes. They're so amazingly pale and blue that they almost seem to glow a silver color if the light catches them just right. I try not to look at his eyes too much, because I'm afraid I might stare, and I don't want to freak him out.
I gave a quick blow on my whistle and the kids lined up so I could take roll. When I got about half way down the line of students, I saw Seth raise his hand. Oh boy, here we go.
"Yes, Seth?" I asked cautiously raising an eyebrow.
"Yeah, Miss Vaughn, I was wondering if you'd go to prom with me?" he proposed in a very boisterous fashion, and the entire class burst out laughing. I couldn't help but join in the laughter a little bit myself.
"You know, Seth, as flattered as I am," I started with a grin and an extremely sarcastic tone to my voice, "I'm gonna have to say no for two reasons. One, I'm just about twice your age. And two, I actually like my job and I think they might fire me if I start dating the students." The whole class laughed again. My students have always expressed that they really enjoy my fun sarcastic style. I am a tad bit worried my quick sarcastic, sometimes cynical, comments will get me into trouble someday.
As I got them into the activity, I heard most of the students giving Seth some poignant jabs, but he took it in true class clown fashion and turned it into a joke. The kids were playing three-on-three basketball games at four different hoops around the gym, which gave me little to do but walk around and make sure they were behaving themselves—and gripe to myself about being thirty.
Unfortunately, my thoughts drifted from my age to pretty pale blue eyes. The strange thing is that Russell's eyes aren't the first eyes to have this effect on me. I remember in the last school I worked at that there was a kid named Derrick DeFlavio who had amazing pale blue eyes. When I was in college, Chris Steelham, who was in many of my classes, had the eyes as well. And Alex Lamont in High School and Steven Curtis in Middle School... I wonder how far back this goes. I could never really look at any of those guys without risk of getting lost it the beautiful silvery-blue ocean. How strange.
Not all blue eyes have this effect on me. In fact my own eyes are blue. Although my eyes are a much darker blue, kind of like the western part of the sky just as the sun starts to peek up in the eastern horizon. No, it has only been this small handful of guys with those pale silver-blue eyes that seem to wreak havoc on my ability to concentrate.
I was still pondering the blue eye phenomenon when I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Rachel Farah one of my students, "Miss Vaughn, shouldn't we change now?" she asked, tentatively.
"Whoa you're right," I exclaimed when I glanced at my watch. I blew my whistle to signal the end of class. I was so wrapped up in trying to remember people with amazing blue eyes that I lost track of time.
With my workday over, I pondered what to do with the rest of my birthday. I drove to my small one bedroom house, weighing my options. No matter what I decided to do, I know I'll be spending the evening alone. I guess that's another reason why thirty is such a horrific number to face right now. I have no family to speak of. I'm not married, although I did get pretty close once. In fact I was engaged for a year before I called it off. The guy, Brett, was a really great guy, but something just kept nagging at me. It just didn't feel right, and my mother always told me I would know when it was right. I would feel it, and unfortunately that wasn't the case with Brett.
As for other family, I'm an only child and both of my parents died a few years back. Sure this is sad, but it wasn't unexpected. My parents were already pretty old when they had me, so they were both up there in years when they died. My father was the first to go. I was only a senior in high school when it happened. His death was really hard for me to take. I seemed to have blocked out of my memory a lot of the days encompassing his death. His funeral, for example. I know I must have been there, but I can't remember a single detail from that day. My mother passed later, about two years after I graduated from college. I miss them both dearly.
Thinking about my birthday, and my parents, naturally makes me think about my birth story. My mom always called me her miracle baby and her Immaculate Conception after the Immaculate Reception. Only true Pittsburghers would know what that means.
A person from Pittsburgh is automatically a Pittsburgh Steelers fan. Even Pittsburghers who don't care much for football can't help becoming wrapped up in Steelers-mania. In Pittsburgh, it's as contagious as the common cold. There's just no way around it.
Back on December 23, 1972 the Steelers were playing the Oakland Raiders in an AFC Divisional playoff game. This game held the most spectacular ending in football history. The Raiders were winning seven to six with only twenty-two seconds left in the game. The Steelers' quarterback, Terry Bradshaw, found himself facing a fourth down with ten yards to go from his own forty-yard line. Basically, the game was over.
Just after the snap of the football, Bradshaw was flushed from the pocket. Scrambling around, he threw the ball in a last ditch effort to John "Frenchy" Fuqua, one of the Steelers running backs. The ball and a Raiders' defensive player hit Fuqua at the same time. Fuqua fell to the ground, and the ball flew in the air backwards about fifteen yards. Then, out of nowhere, Franco Harris, another running back for the Steelers, caught the ball just off his shoelaces and raced down the field for the winning touchdown; ending the game with a Steelers victory thirteen to seven.
Pandemonium broke out in Pittsburgh and the fans at Three Rivers Stadium, where the Steelers play their games, were in complete chaos. Half the people there didn't even see Harris make the catch and it was such an amazing catch that people started calling it the "Immaculate Reception". It is still considered one of the greatest catches of all time. My parents were a part of the bedlam that took place at Three Rivers Stadium. In fact they rushed onto the field, along with thousands of other fans. That evening, they celebrated in true fashion, and I showed up five months later.
Now here's the strange thing. I know normal gestation for a baby is nine months—I am a Health teacher, after all—but not even a week before my Immaculate Conception, my parents had been to the doctors. They had been trying to have children for a long time with obviously no success. At that appointment, my mother was not pregnant, and then after that fateful Steelers game she was. The doctors all assumed I was just premature which isn't unheard of. However, I weighed just a hair under eight pounds, and I was perfectly healthy, just like any other full-term baby. This whole thing is a mystery to me, but I don't worry about it too much because I was born, I'm alive, and I'm here. At the end of the day, that's all that really matters. Who cares how it all came to be.
Of course my parents believed it was a miracle, the Immaculate Conception after the Immaculate Reception. It's hard to believe my parents would turn my birth into a Steelers reference, but that is truly how crazy Steelers fans are. I had a friend born around the same time as me who's parents named Terry Bradshaw Flynn, in honor of the famed Steelers quarterback, so I guess my parents aren't the only ones.
Thinking about that story makes me miss my parents even more. They loved me so very much, maybe because I was a miracle. But honestly I could never quite figure out how I belonged to them. There is no family resemblance what so ever. Both of my parents were fairly short. I am five-foot-nine, which is pretty tall for a girl. They were both on the stout side, carrying at least fifty extra pounds each, and I'm very slender and willowy. Neither of my parents had a speck of athletic ability, and I played many sports, and I did very well at them. They were both blonde and I have dark reddish-brown hair. My mother had brown eyes and my father had hazel and I, of course, have blue. But again, I don't worry about this too much, either, because I loved them no matter what they looked like, and just like my conception, at the end of the day that's all that really matters.
I finally made it home, and decided that in honor of my birthday I would take myself out to dinner. I'd be by myself, but if I became too lonely, I could always call up a friend. Actually, I'd grown accustomed to being alone, and don't even mind it. The only scary thing might be that I turn into some old spinster and start terrorizing the neighborhood kids when they walk in front of my house. Then again, maybe not, I already get to terrorize kids by making them run laps in P.E. every day.
I changed out of my work clothes and put on a heather grey long-sleeved t-shirt, my favorite pair of worn ripped up blue jeans, and my black Doc Marten boots. I pulled my hair out of its french braid, and let it cascade down my back. My hair is very long and very wavy. I really like the reddish brown color, which is actually more red than brown. And I especially like the redness of it in the sunlight, because it shines a fiery auburn gold that reminds me of the beautiful fall landscapes here in western Pennsylvania.
Back in my small silver Toyota, I planned on heading to Tom's Diner over in the Southside part of Pittsburgh. This restaurant is a fantastically greasy joint that I always loved going to back in college. I reached the Duquesne University parking lot, where I attended college, and decided to park there. It would be quite a long walk to go through the Armstrong Tunnel, across the 10th Street Bridge and then along Carson Street to Tom's, but it was such a pretty sunny spring day in Pittsburgh—a rarity—that I knew I would enjoy the walk. Plus I could window shop the unique variety of stores that lined Carson Street.
I reached the mouth of the Armstrong Tunnel and I glanced at the plaque gracing the grey stone façade informing me the tunnel was constructed in 1927. The tunnel was only about four-hundred yards long with two separate stone arches one for northbound traffic and one for southbound traffic. About fifteen feet up the grey stone structure, just above the two arches, engraved in the stone were the words, Armstrong Tunnel. I looked up even higher and saw that the tunnel cut through a pretty lofty hillside. On top of this hill sat many of the buildings making up Duquesne University. I found myself really appreciating the architecture of the tunnel and I especially thought the engraving of the words Armstrong Tunnel was quite pretty. Each letter was about three feet tall and so deeply grooved into the stone that they looked about two inches thick.
As I walked I pondered the day's events. Nothing really out of the ordinary, unless I counted being invited to prom, and that was pretty much how the rest of my day should have progressed.
I found my walk very pleasant. The temperature was around seventy degrees with a cool breeze. The sky was cobalt blue and spotted with a few huge puffy white clouds. The menagerie of people I passed along Carson Street made me smile. Mostly college students, the occupants of this area always tried to stand out and look as different as possible. I spotted many wannabe hippies and gothic looking young adults.
I made it to Tom's unscathed and enjoyed my dinner. I had a chicken gyro instead of lamb. I know it's weird, but I don't like to eat lamb because I don't like the idea of eating a baby. I also don't eat veal for this reason. When asked, I always tell people that if I get stranded in the Andes Mountains and had to eat people to stay alive I would steer away from eating babies in that situation, too. That's just one example of how my sarcastic cynical demeanor comes out to play, no matter what the topic.
I stopped in the bathroom on my way out of the diner, and while I was drying my hands on some of those incredibly scratchy brown paper towels, it happened. I could hear the wind rushing outside of the building, which was odd considering the nice weather. I started to wonder what could be going on and then the ground began to shake—an earthquake in Pittsburgh? What in the world? This didn't make any sense. The lights flickered, then dimmed, and dizziness slammed into me. The room spun faster and faster. I grabbed onto the sink in front of me for balance. All of the shapes and colors around me began to dissolve into nothing but a swirling mass of white porcelain and sea-foam green wallpaper. All of a sudden it felt as if I ran into a brick wall. The wind was knocked out of me, and then everything went black.