Season 1, Episode 9 - Coming of Age

Original Airdate - December 16th, 2001

This episode is so good. I am honored that it aired on my birthday. This is maybe The Episode I would tell someone to watch to get a bite of early Degrassi TNG. Let’s get into it.

It’s almost Jimmy’s birthday and he’s so excited. His mom, who doesn’t have a ton of time to cook, is making lobster and Ashley is invited. Terri assumes Ashley is thrilled, but she’s not. It’ll be her first time having dinner at his parents’ house, but he’s been at her house the past eight nights in a row. It’s getting to be too much.

She takes a quiz in a teen magazine with the girls at lunch to try to sort out her feelings, and Jimmy swoops into that too. Ashley lies about plans with Terri that night and then fully gaslights Jimmy to try to get some space. But no, he comes over anyway to help Toby play some basketball.

Ashley snaps at her mom when she says Jimmy is staying for dinner. Sidebar, Ashley’s mom is becoming more of a presence and I enjoy seeing her. I’m overdue saying her name which is Kate.

Kate says they don’t have to invite Jimmy is Ashley doesn’t want to, but she gets the impression he’s all alone at home and feels bad for him. Ashley laments and lets him stay that night, but after dinner, she tells Terrri she thinks it’s time to break up. Toby is shocked.

Happy birthday, Jimmy! Toby runs into him at his locker getting sprayed with silly string but unnamed extras. He tries to gently hint at Jimmy that he may want to give Ashley some space, but Jimmy sees through his not-so-clever ruse and asks him point blank what Ashley said. Toby caves. At lunch, Jimmy tells Ashley she doesn’t have to come to his birthday dinner, but she says she is, of course, coming. She tells Terri she doesn’t want to dump him on his birthday.

Toby is pissed at Ashley. Our annoying little child of divorce gets self-righteous about Ashley throwing someone away like garbage. Ashley says that’s an oversimplification, but his words get to her. When she and Jimmy arrive at his house, she’s shocked by how quiet and cold it is. She feels even worse when she finds out Jimmy’s parents are working late and aren’t going to make it.

Ashley suggests they head back to her house, and Jimmy can’t take it anymore. If she wants to break up, if she’s feeling smothered, they should just end it. She tries to get through the birthday, but Jimmy kicks her out and spends his night alone. The next day at school, they’re both in their feels and Ashley apologizes and says she wants to stay together. Jimmy asks if she just feels bad for him and she insists that’s not it. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that Degrassi’s perfect couple isn’t as perfect as they seem.

That story is fun, but the B story is iconic. Emma is feeling moody. She, Manny and Sean are studying for their astronomy exam in the Media Immersion Center when Sean finds a cool astrology website. Manny and Sean welcome the distraction, but Emma flips on them. She’s even more mad after the quiz, which she’s sure she failed. Manny tells her to chill.

That night, Christine, Emma’s mom, finds Emma crying at a soap opera. She suggests a shopping trip and Emma feels better after buying a new sweater. A weird mall pervert makes a comment at them and Christine snaps at him. He claims it was a joke, and she tells him that he made them uncomfortable and should go fuck himself. Emma is embarrassed and Christine tells her she shouldn’t be. “Don’t ever let a guy make you feel bad just for being female.”

The next day, at school, Emma’s got her new sweater and a white skirt and feels much better. Sean comes to apologize for distracting Emma before the quiz, and she says no big deal. She would love to go look at her chart if he wants to show her. She stands up and Manny pulls her back. She’s got a telltale red stain on her skirt — her first period.

The girls awkwardly sneak into the bathroom and Manny runs off to find Emma some alternate pants. Paige finds Emma there and, after some light teasing, realizes what’s going on. She gives Emma a pad and some encouragement, including saying that boobs are really great, which I love.

Manny brings Emma the only gym shorts she can find which are way too big. They rush into Ms. Kwan’s class to give a book report, and people snicker. JT starts making jokes and Emma shuts him down by channeling her mother. She plainly explains that she got her first period. JT is scandalized and cowed, but Sean is impressed and seemingly turned on.

The next day, Emma starts a petition to get tampon dispensers installed in the girls’ bathrooms. After signing, Paige calls Sean over, trying to pick at Emma, but he gladly adds his name. It’s so on.

I never thought Sean would be the character who gave me an excuse to talk about astrology. Not that I need much of an excuse anymore.

For years, my interest in astrology was very similar to what was presented in this episode. I too found an astrology website as a tween and got curious. I loved looking up people’s charts, reading their basic placements, casually discussing at parties. But in the last year, I have gone so deep.

My big breakthrough was sparked on by astrologer Chani Nicholas. She helped me understand what I got wrong about astrology, she helped me process the sky, and she gave me the framework to apply astrology to my life and the world in a way that helped me better better sense of it.

I’m not going to explain astrology here. I’ll let Chani do that (website linked above). For the astrology curious, and maybe the astrology skeptics, I want to share some of facets that made this all resonate for me.

The first was understanding what a birth chart really meant and how to use it. In early days of astrology curiosity, I wrote horoscopes off as silly because there are not simply twelve types of people in the world that everyone fits into neatly. And to be fair, I still think newspaper style, Sun sign horoscopes are silly.

A lot of people start to understand how much more complicated this is when they incorporate other placements beyond their Sun. With Sun, Moon and rising signs there are 1,728 types of people. That makes more sense! But even that read is missing the true wisdom of a birth chart.

What I now understand is that no single placement tells the story. A chart is more than a list of placements, it’s the way they all fit together and intersect. Plus, every placement tells so much more information than simply what sign it’s in. It’s not just that I’m a Sagittarius Sun, it’s that my Sun is in my 5th house. It’s that because I’m a Leo rising, the Sun is my chart ruler. It’s that I’ve got a conjuction with my Sun and my Mars and a square between my Sun and my Jupiter. A different person who shares my birthday could have a radically different manifestations of that one placement.

But what does that mean? Well, my second big astrology breakthrough came as I understood that interpreting that meaning was personal. The signs, planets and houses are archetypal. Like a good tarot card, the meaning is derived by our individual reactions to images that humans have been obsessed with for generations.

The Sun represents our inner life giving force and our Sun placement shows us our inner spark. It helps us learn what makes us feel alive. Sagittarius is a sign of adventure, creativity and action. The 5th House is the house of pleasure, children, creativity, and sex. You put them together, what do you see?

And the magical thing is that your answer to that questions is probably different than mine. What resonates for me in those descriptions is likely not what resonates for you. It means different things to us to be creative, to be adventurous, to find pleasure, even to feel alive.

This is why people often say astrology (or tarot or, though people say it less, religion) is a mirror. Through ancient archetypal wisdom, I am able to see myself reflected back at me. I am able to find what personally resonates in this imagery and ideas, and through that, I am able to understand myself better. As above, so below.

And just like I can understand myself through the mirror of the birth chart, I can understand my life and the world through the mirror of the current sky. We’ve just had an Aries full moon. Energetic, passionate, fiery, unafraid to piss people off. I can sit in my own feelings of reflection, based on the fact that Aries is my 9th house and my natal moon, and process what’s going through my mind that day.

Plus, I can call into question what in the world may need some fiery, passionate reflection. On the two year anniversary of the brutal attack used as an excuse for genocide, staring down fascist troop deployments against my fellow citizens, it’s nice to feel a cosmic energy boost for some bold action.

I used to tell people that I didn’t think astrology is real, but it is fun. I have changed. I now think it’s very real. Because everything you ascribe meaning to is real.

That is my most spiritual, woo woo personal belief. We find and give meaning to symbols of truths inside us and they become reality. The movement of the sun through the sky affects us. We know this. We pay attention to the seasons for a reason. So astrologers put a pattern around it, so we could all understand those changes. And they observed and meditated and explored and ascribed more ideas to more symbols, and those became real as well.

A lot of people put a lot of different frames around spiritual truth. For me, astrology is the one that makes the most sense. Astrology is part of the 9th house, which is where my moon is, so finding help in my daily life through astrological wisdom is in my birth chart too.