Through the gift of writing, a new perspective

Sandra Hurtes

is the author of the essay collection "On My Way to Someplace Else"

I hadn't planned on becoming a writer. When I did, there was something naive and wonderful about discovering I could put words together in a way that lit me up - and, I would discover, that others wanted to read. I was 44 then - no stranger to searching for some form of creative expression to satisfy a deep need to prove myself.

Let me take you back in time: Samuel J. Tilden High School, Brooklyn, circa 1967. I'm 16; hair in a perfect flip (picture Mary Tyler Moore), dressed in the popular-girl ensemble of navy A-line skirt, pale blue crew-neck sweater, gold circle pin (we call them virgin pins) at the throat of my pink starched collar, navy tights, cordovan loafers without the penny. I'm doing OK popularity-wise. That's because the other students don't know who I really am. And who I really am is a Commercial student who studies shorthand, typing, and accounting.

Academic students think Commercial girls are dumb, gum-popping, bleached blondes. I'm neither gum-popping, nor bleached, but I am dumb. Unlike my friends, I have no college aspirations. My parents are Holocaust survivors. They've learned in America that a girl who can type will get married; a girl with a college degree will not.

In low-income Crown Heights, where we lived until I was 14, many of my friends, too, expected to be a secretary. There were the few who wished to be teachers, but I didn't realize that meant attending college.

Just before freshman year, my family moved to a suburban Brooklyn neighborhood with girls who played squash instead of handball. On a sunny summer day, I took my racquet to the schoolyard to play with my new friend Laurie, a girl who'd skipped a grade in junior high.

As we hit the ball back and forth, I asked if she was taking a Commercial program.

"Commercial?" she asked. "I'm Academic, of course. Aren't you?"

"Yes," I stammered, as the world and all my beliefs turned upside down.

On the first day of school, I went to the guidance office to change my program. I didn't tell my parents I switched to Academic; likely they would have been as perplexed as I.

In algebra class, I felt alienated from the first 14 years of my life; my identity crisis terrified me. After one week, I switched back to Commercial, settling into who I was supposed to be. I kept my program a secret from all but my closest friends.