Consequences (Prompt #12 - Phasing)

by Ami Shah

On December 5, 1980, Kathy Edgerton, Kim Thrower and I, along with an 8 month pregnant Joanie Brown, went to dinner at Darryl’s. I think it was just before the birthdays of Kathy and me, but we were still underage. We decided to order a glass of wine each! (Technically Darryl’s should have been in trouble as they are the idiots who served alcohol to a 15 year old!)

Right after the first sip, who should come around the corner but [our resident advisor] Nancy Boden! She casually looked at us... knowing she caught us... and quickly said that we would all be facing consequences when we came back to school!! -- Phase 2, as it turns out. (I thought it was going to be a Phase 3, but Johnny Adams did something worse that weekend, hence just a phase 2!)

Here's the Phase 2 letter:

Kathy and Kim’s parents let them come home for the weekend, but mine were like, “You did what? You suffer the consequences”!

Hence my 16th birthday was spent in Durham on campus with no celebration! Below is the card for my 16th birthday, from school director, Chuck Eilber. Pretty sure Kim , Kathy and I were the first to receive a Phase 2, but Johnny got the first Phase 3 by setting a record at a progression party at Duke. (Thank you Johnny!)

Summer Reading in Bombay (Prompt #5 - Pioneers)

By Ami Shah

The summer before starting at NCSSM, I went to India to visit my grandmothers. We planned the trip 6 months before I was accepted, so I did not plan on doing anything but connecting with relatives. After a month of me being there, my dad let me know of my reading assignment for the summer. Now, I am in Bombay, without the ability to look for a large bookstore, and I am told to read 2 books: The Pioneers by James Fenimore Cooper and The Americans by Daniel Boorstin. 

How in the world am I going to find these books in Bombay?! This is Bombay in 1980. There was no Barnes and Noble or Borders books! We had street vendors that placed books on a sheet and that is where I bought books. Occasionally there would be a small neighborhood book store with a limited number of books. Usually, we would find a romance novel, or an Indian epic or religious book: but there was no way I was going to find The Pioneers or The Americans! I was panicked as I was heading to this new school one week after I returned to the US! 

After my 3rd tiny book shop, I found success! The Pioneers! True luck! The book was not that bad: I read it in a week, all 132 pages! I was only worried that I had not found the other book. 

As I started on Miller’s English lit. pop quiz, on The Pioneers; I was going to nail it, as I actually read that one. Of the 6 questions, I only knew 2 of them! How could that be. Little did I realize that the book I found in Bombay was actually the Readers Digest version of all of the James Fenimore Cooper novels! Oh well, at least I tried: A for some effort! 

A visit to the guidance counselor's office (Prompt #2)

By Ami Shah

I did not know anything about the school and was never planning on applying. One day the guidance counselor called me and one other girl to the office. I was not sure what the two of us could possibly have done wrong. You never went to the office unless you did something wrong, like cheating or causing a fight or smoking weed on campus! 

She then told the two of us about the school and would we like to apply? I took home the paperwork and handed it to my parents for them to look through. There was absolutely no way that my parents were going to let their daughter go away to a boarding school and live in a school with boys and girls who were 15/16 years of age. Much to my surprise, my dad thought that education would be better than my rural high school and was all for me going, my mom needed more convincing. Thank god my dad convinced my mom to allow me to apply.

The Shah (Prompt #1)

By Ami Shah

I moved to North Carolina in 1976: the bicentennial, America was 200 years old! The country of dreams, hope. 

Moving to the south was a bit of a culture shock. 

In 7th grade I remember Ku Klux Klan rallies in my town of Salisbury. The white hoods did not seem to faze my classmates, as their dads and uncles were members of the KKK. Being naive, I never thought the KKK were targeting me, the brown kid. I was the smart kid. One of the two brown kids in my school, the other one was an Afghan boy, also very smart. 

A few years later in 1979, the unthinkable happened. Iran’s government was overthrown, and over 53 Americans were held captive in the us embassy in Tehran for over a year. The Shah (king) of Iran was exiled. Now I was not Iranian, nor had I ever been to Persia, but my surname was Shah. It was easy to interpret this last name with being Iranian. I remember students thinking I, an immature, naive 10th grader as somehow being responsible for the hostage crisis. My smart friends knew this was in no way mine or my family’s fault. Regardless, the hostage crisis was a time of stress and uncertainty, not only for all Americans, but especially brown kids.