Britty Got a Black Eye

I have Googled a lot of things.

Yesterday, I Googled "black eye" to see what surfaced from the Internet ether. I was going to write a clever little piece about how black eyes have different contexts on women and men and include pictures of different people, of different ages and genders. Below each picture I was going to write a shrewd and cutting caption that, in a nutshell, referenced the fact that a black eye on a woman always implies domestic abuse. Having now seen that in writing, I am glad to have been sidetracked. During my research I came across some interesting photos, including a photo of a dog with a black spot around his eye sitting next to a boy with a black eye. But, to me the most interesting photo was of “Britty,” a smiling blonde-haired teenager with a black eye.

“Britty got a black eye” was the caption. And, from the looks of it, she was proud of it.

I was curious to know if my split second assessment of Britty was going to hold up, so I clicked on the image source, and “stumbled upon” her online photo album. Actually, I “stumbled upon” her 20 or so online photo albums. There were over 1000 snapshots of Britty and her high school friends.

A less curious person would have looked at one or two and moved on to yahoo games or Google news. But I am Curious Carrie. Or, at least that’s what my sweetie calls me. Curious Carrie looked through 800ish of the Britty’s snapshots. Had I the time and a more comfy chair, I would have knocked them all down.

What I saw in those 800 photos of this stranger told the story of Britty’s freshman through junior years in suburban New York. From the looks of her photo albums, Britty is a popular girl with the kind of high school experience that makes marketing teams squeal with delight. Britty and her friends, all beautiful and perfectly groomed, are all poster children for the “average teen.” Or at least the “average teen” for whom they sell the luxury of the choice between 8 different “botanically inspired” versions of deodorant.

I saw gangly guys with perfectly thick and shaggy hair and tiny tan girls with blue-white teeth and black eyeliner. I saw dads with red faces from golfing with clients and moms with chunky stackable rings and nails lacquered the color of ballet slippers. I saw a blue sea of Cougar pride at the Homecoming game and cheerleading competitions. I saw kitchen islands, cluttered with snacks for an impromptu co-ed after school party. I saw plenty of messy ponytails and truckers caps. And numerous photos of piles of candy on a bedroom floor—sleepover booty—next to tired girls in 70’s style logo gym shorts and their boyfriend’s hooded sweatshirts.

Britty took hundreds of photos of her friends, her various boyfriends, her prom manicures and updos, her Herbal Essences dye jobs, her homecoming dresses, her friend’s parties and, of course, there were about 15 photos of her modeling a black eye.

It looks like Britty has had some fun. And I have to admit, after spending an hour or two with Britty’s memories, I got a little teary eyed, nostalgic for her experience.

In a general sense, I look back on my own high school experience with fond memories, although when closely examined they were awkward and filled with tremendous angst and sadness. The events of high school were filled with hope and excitement and a certain uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach that I could easily recreate were I to listen to Bad Religion’s Stranger Than Fiction CD or to whiff a waft of The Body Shop’s white musk.

I have always had this corny awareness of memories before they even happen. Even before high school started, I looked wistfully upon my upcoming years. I found myself thinking, “Wow, this is going to be a great memory one day.” The moment I arrived at my Prom, my first kiss, during sleepovers, I thought that.

Maybe I owe this to my theatrical nature. I tend to see experiences as scenes from plays or movies, complete with soundtracks. But I think I should credit the media and the way they sanctify these sorts of teenage experiences. Nowadays, all the media has to do to drum up a tear in its audiences is play a Coldplay song during a photo slideshow. There are more and more advertisements that prey on our memories of these experiences to sell products. We are a culture that lives more and more for the promises of the future than the reality of the now. Our world is increasingly disposable. We get rid of our past in hopes of building something bigger and better in the future. Trends and styles change with the wind and we’re much more likely to spend $9.99 on 3 “toilet wands” that we can throw away rather than $3.99 on a toilet brush that we keep next to our toilet. Meanwhile, the everyday American is given (through the purchase of a video camera or digital camera) the means to preserve themselves and their loved ones for eternity (or until your hard drive crashes and you lose all of your media). With everything else being tossed out, I think we’re holding on more and more to our memories as a way to preserve a piece of our past. We don’t want our legacy to pass on when we kick the bucket, so we take photos of ourselves for our survivors to remember us by.

I wonder if Britty’s high school years have been as fantastic as they seem. Or if there have been blemished by what is outside of the camera’s frame.
I wonder if she’ll go on to live a happy life, or if she hereafter will live her life through these thousands of photos. But most importantly, I wonder how “Britty got a black eye.”

After all this time, I still don’t know.