A C H A P E L TA L K
by Layla Varkey ’15 April 7, 2015
Being Whole voces
A
s I’m looking out onto these rows of new, hopeful, maybe a little nervous faces, I can’t help but remember myself five years ago. I know this sounds a little strange, but I kind of see myself in all of you. Still, every single one of you looks much more composed and put-together than I was on my own Revisit Day in 2010. It seems like time passes differently here, and I can’t believe how quickly the years have gone by. The truth is, I really have grown up here, and this place has witnessed more change in me than I ever thought possible. I seriously wish that you all had known me when I was younger. I know I seem pretty cool now, but it hasn’t always been that way. Allow me to just paint you a little picture of the first fourteen years of my life. First off, as many of you know, yes, I was born with six extra teeth. In my nasal cavity. I’ve gone through four oral surgeries to get them all out. I wasn’t a particularly social child, so growing up, I guess the local oral surgeon’s office really was the closest thing I had to an “after school hang-out.” There’s more. I’ve only told a few of you this, but throughout middle school, I had a little condition called hyperhidrosis. For those of you who don’t know, hyperhidrosis is a condition in which a person sweats excessively, unpredictably, and unexplainably. I tried every deodorant and antiperspirant on the market, but nothing ever worked. So for years, I was condemned to the fate of being “The Sweaty Girl” of Roosevelt Intermediate School. I was also a synchronized swimmer at my local YMCA. Our team name was the Westfield Y Aquaducks. This, also, is apparently not as cool as I once thought it was. The regular swim team had a cruel habit of coming to the end of our practices to splash Gatorade at us and call us “Aquadorks.” I spent almost twenty hours every week in the pool, and one thing you should know about synchronized swimmers is that they are not actually allowed to wear goggles. This meant that the eyes behind 62
Groton School Quarterly
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Fall 2015
my glasses were constantly droopy, watery, and bloodshot. Not to mention the fact that I perpetually smelled like chlorine. If it isn’t clear, I have been very, very familiar with feelings of embarrassment while working my way through the New Jersey public school system. But on top of all of that, I had to navigate the territory of growing up Indian in an almost completely white town. I was the kid who brought chicken curry and rice to school in my little blue Thermos. After a few hours in the coat closet, my lunchbox always had a very distinctive smell. And no matter how quickly I tried to eat my food, my peers always found incisive, well-timed comments like, “Ew, that really stinks.” I was painfully envious of their sticky PB&J sandwiches and their neon orange mac and cheese. There was actually one year where at the top of my Christmas wish list, I wrote “Lunchables” because I thought it would make fifth grade a little easier. There were other times, too, when being Indian was a source of stress or embarrassment. I had one particularly awful Halloween when I tried to dress up as Princess
Layla, Lily Edwards, Kriska Desir, and Emma Zetterberg