STEPH'S FIRST YEAR AT MENLO

While Matt was adjusting to his new life up North so was I. Funny how the little things that I used to take for granted were so difficult to find.
I couldn't seem to find my way in the sea of complicated "Rich Wife's" of the Silicon Valley. Now that should be a movie or a reality show because I have never seen such a bunch of uptight women in my life.
Fist of all the fact that a woman marries money does not in my opinion warrant any type of respect. I was used to hanging out in the PTA with my idol, Pat Benetar. Now that was someone I could really admire and respect.

I found that up in Northern California you seemed to be the sum and substance of you frickin zip code. Even the head master at the school looked at me funny when I told him we were living in Foster City. Ohhhhhh forgive me if it doesn't fit into the profile of the elite. I took great pleasure in NOT telling people anything about our house in Malibu. I wanted them to get to know me for me, it didn't seem important to throw that into the mix or tell them that our family owned the Sunset Gower Studios because I had a really funny experience with telling that fact to a piano salesman up there.

Our best friend Bill who was Bob's closest friend from the days they actually went to Menlo as boarding students and then off to Stanford together called Bob one day because something had come up about me in a staff meeting. Seems that one of the Spanish teacher's at the school was married to the man who came over to tune the new piano we bought for Matt.
She was sitting next to Bill at the meeting and when Matt came up, she leaned over and whispered in his ear that her husband had heard him play the piano brilliantly and it was too bad that his Mother was a Porn Producer.

Bill pulled her out of the meeting and wanted to know where she heard that one from. She told him her husband had told her.
Little did she know that we were best friends. Bill called Bob without telling me to have a meeting with the man who was spreading these rumors around.

Bob flew up and had the meeting with Bill and the guy. The objective was to have him apologize and take back the statements his wife was spreading. Being a Latin man with such a large ego, he simply refused. He felt that there was no damage caused because the story had not leaked into the school yet.
Bob was furious. He tried to reason with the man and asked him how he would feel if his wife's reputation was being ruined by a ridiculous fantasy that the piano salesman had made up.

It seems that because, not to boast, but I am quite stunning to look at for the area compared to many of the woman I've seen up there myself. The salesman had never heard of our Studio and simply assumed I had to be into the porn industry because I can be somewhat Sexy at times. But how sexy could I have been in my sweats offering the piano tuner a glass of water and asking him if he had any kids and did they play the piano?
Lecherous men would have ruined my son's reputation at school and this guy could have cared less. He refused to apologize and walked away from the meeting.
Bill went to the Head Master and told him what had been said about me. Just so it would not get around the school.
My reputation was left intake but my feelings for the place were now on high alert.
I was stunned quite frankly, I had never met this woman and she was more than willing to gossip about me and my son. How dare she.

This wasn't the first time I had dealings with a woman up at the school. When I first started I had gone to a meeting to get involved with the Fund raising committee. I had so many years of experience with that in Malibu I thought I could just walk in and get started helping. Boy was I wrong. The woman who's committee I was with only wanted the title and she delegated most of the work to me. Now I didn't have a problem helping, but I had only been in the area for four weeks and I simply could not do everything she asked me to do. I asked her why she wasn't doing any of the stuff herself. She was livid that I would question her. Seems she had more important things to do like run for some position on the city council. This title was just a feather in her cap and she didn't have time for the work involved.
She didn't know who I was or how little I was about to eat shit from her. I busted her to the Chairman of the committee and resigned. I told her she would have to do the work herself, I wasn't her personal slave.
That was the end of my formal involvement at the higher levels of school activities.

I realized that I was too blond, too hot and too popular with the kids to be accepted at this place. I was just happy to sit in the circle after school waiting to pick up my son with the top down on my car, holding court. Matt would come out of class and sometimes pick me up and twirl me around, His friends loved us. We were a breath of fresh air to that stuffy little world of the elite. Thank God we didn't fit in. No matter how much plaid I wore, I was never going to be a Prep Mom. I didn't have the pedigree or the right mailing address. So now we were both free to be ourselves. We were different and happy to be so.
We had to find a way to be happy there and NOT fit in. We didn't like what we saw up there.

I used to call the area one big makeover disaster. I never saw so many people who needed a makeover as bad as up there. I didn't even try to have any friends up there beside Bill, Nancy and Angie. It was a lot easier to hide the fact that we really were a dysfunctional family just trying to get our son a great education. I can only imagine what the talk would have been if the school community really knew the truth.