Tales of a Teenage Maverick

I'm the one wearing a LARGE, blue [311]  shirt.

If you look up the word 'maverick', you will find: 

1: an unbranded range animal ; especially : a motherless calf2: an independent individual who does not go along with a group or party

 

This post is dedicated to every adolescent, pre-teen, tween, youth, and teenager who might be considered a 'non-conformist, free spirit, rebel, loose cannon, dissident, or an informal cowboy'. Clearly, 'informal cowboy' is the best description one could hope for. 

I remember being interviewed for kindergarten. Ms. Maines, who I would later have as my teacher that year, sat with my father and I and asked me questions about what I like to do, if I like to read, draw, etc. I thought she was so nice and pretty that, as I stood up to leave, I turned to her and said, "I hope you are going to be my teacher!" She smiled a warm smile and said goodbye. For my first day of P.M. Kindergarten, I wore a pale pink dress with white frilly eyelit sleeves, frilly white socks, and black maryjanes. My mom put my hair in a delicate side ponytail with a slight curl to my bangs. I was so excited, (so was my 3 year old sister, Jordan) as most kids are for their first ever day of school. 

But that did not last. I started hating school in 3rd grade, really truly hating it. But just one year before that, in second grade, I began my journey as an informal cowboy. And I remember the day it started; I was V.I.P., not because I was actually a very important person, but because it was my turn alphabetically. My favorite teacher, Mrs. Gillette sat me up in front of the class on an elevated seat so everyone could see me. She asked me questions like, "When and where were you born?" "What is your favorite color, food, music?" Let me tell you really quickly, my favorite food is the same: ice cream, chicken fingers, and french fries, and my favorite music was Mariah Carey. I felt kind of vulnerable and scared up there on that stool, so I gave the teacher bunny ears. The whole class started laughing really hard, including Mrs. Gillette. After that, I couldn't take the rest of the questions seriously, and I just made up jokes. At the end of the week my dad brought in cupcakes and sat in the front of the classroom with me, as the teacher read out loud everything my classmates said about me. And they (almost all of them (how original)) said, "Whitney is funny, she will be a comedian when she grows up." Sorry to disappoint you, Mrs. Gillette's class of '92, I'm not a comedian, I'm a regular Joe hanging out with children during the day, and my dogchild at night. 

After I moved on from Mrs. G's class, I realized that not all teachers thought I was funny and charming. I quickly became the annoying little girl in the back of the class who just wanted attention. And boy was I annoying. Even my friends' mothers were hesitant about letting me come over, especially for sleepovers. It got worse as I grew into a young adult. In 7th grade, Ashley and I got countless detentions for disrespecting our tech teacher, Mr. Patterson. We called him "Mr. Spatterson". We never finished our typing assignments, instead we drew pictures in Paint and typed swear words in large font. One day, sitting in the back of the room far from the teacher, we decided to tear up tiny pieces of paper and flick them at each other. We thought that was too much, so instead, keeping a low profile, we crumbled up the tiny pieces and flicked them over our desks. We did this for the entire length of the class. When the class was over and it was time to put our folders away, a couple of kids walked in front of our seats and stopped, stared, and laughed. They looked at us and told us we were going to be busted. Ashley and I couldn't see the mess we had made because the back of the desks were elevated and each row was one long unit. We stood up to leave and saw that there were hundreds, maybe thousands of tiny balls of paper covering the floor. We grabbed our backpacks and ran. Mr. Spatterson never spoke to us about that, but on several occasions, we had to answer to him for one thing or another. 

There I am, at the tender age of 14 and the roaring height of 5'8". Please spot the tan lines.

By that year I thought I was so cool. Not only was I the loud, crazy kid, but I dressed like the biggest idiot. We all did. And by 'we' I mean my group of friends, also known as, "The Skater Kids". At 14, I wore oversized band t-shirts, Jnco's, and had dyed fuchsia hair. We wrote ANARCHY on everything, including the sidewalks and walls at the park, in coal from the public BBQ's. 

As a Frosh, I was still very sure of myself, but let me please tell you something extremely embarrassing about my little 9th grader mind. This is something that I may have only told one person about, or maybe no one at all. I wanted so badly to have a nickname and further my imaginary popularity. I thought that if I ate Skittles every day for the first month or so of high school, I would then proudly earn the nickname "Skittles". Thank the universe I didn't go through with my plan to snack on Skittles everyday. My dentist would have been pissed. And let me also mention that I had graduated from Jnco's Mammoth pants and started wearing jeans that were 70" around, EACH LEG! 

I despised school so much (or at least I thought I did). But to be perfectly honest, I hated 3rd and 5th grade more than I ever hated high school, but I still ditched as many classes as possible. Btw, my parents never found out when I had missed a class because I gave the school my personal landline number. I would often come home to a full answering machine telling my parents that I had not been in school that day. Anyway, when I was actually in class I was not learning, I was entertaining. I took it upon myself to make the class laugh. But not all the students wanted to laugh, unfortunately. One girl even took a picture of me dancing on the biology counter while a substitute was in the middle of teaching a lesson. She later turned the picture in to the principal's office. I got a referral and an in-school suspension the first time I danced on the biology counter, but not that time. 

I finally started dressing "normal" by my sophomore year, but my misbehavior (or showing off ) didn't improve. I still barked when my math teacher wrote problems on the board, answered my cell phone in class, ran marathons with Cortnie while we were supposed to be teacher's assistants, had walkie talkie's confiscated for using them on campus, and you know, the usual. 

It wasn't until I graduated, started working a shitty telemarketing job, while still living with my parents, that I realized I should have been less of a rebel and more of a formal cowboy. But I haven't fully grown out of wanting attention and feeling the need to make a fool of myself. I often see loud, obnoxious teenagers on the subway doing acrobatics on the hand rails, listening to terrible pop-punk, dancing on the poles, and I just laugh. And when I see these mild creatures at the park, with blue streaked hair, homemade piercings, and Avril Lavigne eyeliner, I always smile at them, while the parents around me give disgusted looks and pull their children closer. But I understand them and love them. I was once just like them and Sarah Palin, a maverick. I know they just want attention, they want to be hip and original. They're not bad kids, they're just freaks.

The Hipster Grifter IS REAL!

Kari with my puppy and best friend, Brutal.

Kari Ferrell became an overnight sensation when this article: The Hipster Grifter | The New York Observer,  was released just last week. Since then, people have been blogging about their unfortunate encounters with her, uploading pictures (including some naked ones), and on Ebay, someone is even selling a note from Kari written on a matchbook. Please, see for yourself:matchbook note

I decided to jump on this blogging opportunity after much hesitation. But I have been reading so many comments (on other blogs/articles) claiming Kari does not exist and that this is just some great big marketing scheme. Let me tell you naysayers something... she is very real! 

Most of my readers, being my friends, already know this story or have at least heard about Kari and her tall tales, or rather her tiny chubby tales. But I would still like to tell you the story of my short BestFriendship with Little Miss Grifter. 

I met Kari shortly after moving to NY this past fall. One lonely weekend, my internet friend, Jodi, invited me to a comedy show in Manhattan. With no friends and nothing to do, I excitedly accepted. Jodi told me that her friend, Chelsea, could not make it, but that her other friend, Kari, heard about the meet up and invited herself along. 

When Kari arrived, Jodi seemed a little annoyed, but still able to talk and laugh and have fun. I didn't think much of it at the time, Kari seemed so funny and bubbly and just really fun to hang out with. So that night, Kari and I left the bar to go get some late night dinner, and the rest is history. Well, not exactly. As we were eating, Kari and I talked about music, her amazing job, and how we both just moved to NYC. We didn't have much in common, except for the fact that we had both lived in Phoenix and one other major thing... we both LOVE to party. Dance, I mean. We finished eating (I paid for the dinner, btw), exchanged numbers, and boarded the same train to Brooklyn. 

After that night, Kari and I hung out for about two months straight. She told me all about her battle with lung cancer and how she would probably end up dying because she could not pay for some kind of procedure. At first, this was very heavy news. No one wants to deal with the possibility of losing a friend. But she continued to drink and smoke and dance every Friday and Saturday. I was pretty concerned, but she always seemed fine and promised me that she was going to be alright. Cortnie, Kari, and myself.

Just like she promised she could get me on "the list". That's right, you name the show or party, and Kari could get you in. But every time we went to one of these events, I was never on the list. There were times that her name wasn't even on the list. But we got in... every time. I never really saw the charm or even cuteness that others saw in Kari, that's why whenever we did get in to places, I thought it was legit. 

Kari seemed to know everybody. She claimed to date and be close friends with mildly famous musicians, and sometimes she would even call them while I was sitting next to her to ask if they could play at some event or show she was putting on. She also knew a lot of the same people in SLC that my friend Lindsey knows. She name dropped in such a way that it didn't sound completely fabricated or untrue. 

I still kept my guard up. Unlike most, I never let her stay at my house, and aside from paying for our first date, I never paid for or bought Kari anything. She definitely mentioned not being able to cash her checks because of this or that, or not being able to use the ATM, but she always had lots of money on her. She even offered, and quite a few times, to lend me money or to help me buy furniture for my room. No, I did not accept.

During this time, Jodi and Chelsea stopped talking to Kari because of her inconsistent stories and out-of-this-world claims. My friend Keith and I were the last of our group of friends to keep meeting up with Kari, but he was just about done with her as well. He could no longer deal with her asking to stay at his place when her apartment was being "fumigated". He was tired of late night phone calls about her thinking she needed to go to the E.R. because she felt nauseous. And honestly, there is only so much cock-teasing a guy can take. 

After about a month and a half, I was on my own. Kari and I continued to hang out, but just on weekends. No more trips to Ikea or hitting up boutiques on Atlantic. It was really weird, but I felt like our friendship was coming to an end. I was starting to think that everyone was right about her. And still, I had no real proof that her outrageous stories were false. After all, who am I to tell someone they don't have cancer?

At the end of November, with a friendship on the rocks, I get an urgent text message from Jodi telling me to check my email. I was too excited to put it off and ran straight to my room, not knowing what information awaited me. As I stared at Kari's mugshot, I got text messages from a couple of mutual friends asking me if I heard the news. Jodi's email was none other than a mass email to everyone she knew of who knew Kari. I could not believe it. So later that night when I got a text message from Kari asking me what I was doing, I ignored it. I just didn't know what to say to her. Keith felt like we should confront her via text message asking her to leave us alone. So after a couple of days of ignoring her desperate text messages, he did just that. 

Keith, Jodi, and Chelsea never spoke to Kari again. But I did. One drunken night, a couple months later, I see Kari at a bar with a friend. It was a small bar and there was really no avoiding each other. So I went up to Kari and I told her that I was sorry. I didn't say what for, I just looked at her and apologized. She knew what I was talking about, I didn't need to explain in front of her new friend. I just felt bad. I felt like I should have told her why I didn't want to speak to her anymore and why we couldn't be friends. We exchanged a couple of drunken words and parted ways after a minute or two. And I don't see her again for about another month.

So Kari Farrell, the little hipster grifter is real. I won't say that she deserves this internet dragnet, but she's hurt and pissed off a lot of people. Anybody looking for more information or gossip can check out the following link:

This site has links and links and links of more info, pictures, videos, and goodies...

Good Night!