To paraphrase a popular rap song from the late '80s:
It's The New Style!
Tomorrow I'll be starting my 18th(!!!) First Day of School. But for the first time, I won't be starting it in some classroom with a bunch of kids. No, not this time. To paraphrase yet another song:
Okay, we’re finally looking back at my 7th
grade year, and I’m really not looking forward to this, for my 7th
grade year was the WORST out of the 3 years I spent at Judson. It’s not even
close compared to the other two years. Everything that could go wrong, did go
wrong, and at no time that year could I say, “Oh, I’m having sooo mach fun…I’m
having a ball.” Nope, it was more like a preview of hell. All it was missing
was a bunch of fire.
I knew it was going to be “a helluva year”
the very first day of school when a very brand new bus came to pick me up (it
sure wasn’t Bus 55), and it wasn’t crowded with kids and I could sit anywhere I
wanted. “This is too good to be true”, I thought, and sadly I would be right by
the end of that school day, and there was Bus frickin’ 55 waiting for us. And
it would be there waiting in the mornings and afternoons the rest of the school
year with ten times the number of kids compared to that first morning. I look
back on that now and I realize how ridiculous we were treated, putting entirely
too many kids on one ultra-raggedy bus and causing some of us (such as myself)
to have to stand up the entire trip to and from Judson. If I’d been like the
way I am now, I would’ve refused to ride the bus. My parents would’ve been
angry and threatened to punish me, but I would’ve just flat out refused to even
step foot outside. They would’ve given me a whipping I’m sure, but that just
the way it would have had to be.
Anyway, continuing the sad 7th
grade saga, I was 11 years old at the time, when many of my peers (and even
some 6th graders) were older than me, some by a couple of years at
that. Maturity-wise, I wasn’t at the level where they were. I was trying to get
there, but I just wasn’t there yet. I had my least favorite class 1st
period, which happened to be Advanced Math. Now I loved math, but I hated the
teacher, whose name I will omit for now. She and I never did see eye-to-eye,
and to me, she seemed kind of prejudiced. I’d never had a teacher who acted
like that in my entire life. (I had a coach in the 5th grade who
did, but he doesn’t count.) Anyway,during the 3rd Six Weeks of the
year we started doing Geometry. Now I love math, but Geometry makes me ill. I
hate it. This was my first experience with Geometry and I didn’t really
understand it. I didn’t really ask for help, I’ll admit, but my teacher wasn’t
exactly approachable either. So at the end of the 3rd Six Weeks that
year, in Advanced Math, I wound up with a C+ on my report card, my first C
ever. I tried hard, but my average wound up being a 79.1. (These days, they
just give you the 80 or a B-.)I still made the honor roll for the 9th
straight time since being at Judson, but when I showed my report card to my
parents, all they saw was “C+”, and they hit the roof. I’d never seen the two
of them that angry. And I really couldn’t understand it. I still made the honor
roll; I had 4 A’s and 1 B, but that C+, man, that seemed like the end of the
world to them. They punished me severely, I got a whipping and I was grounded for
the entire upcoming six-weeks, and I think, no, I’m sure that’s where my
relationship with my parents first started disintegrating.
You would think that I would have “seen
the light” and did better the 4th six weeks, but that’s not exactly
what happened. When I received my report card for the 4th six weeks,
I had actually done WORSE in Advanced Math and wound up with a “D”. To say my
parents were totally aghast would be a gross understatement. This time, I didn’t
make the honor roll even though the rest of my grades were As and Bs, because
that D knocked everything down. Why did this happen? Well, my parents had shown
me last six weeks that even though I had 4 As and a B and made the honor roll
that it didn’t really matter because I made a C+ and I had to be punished. So during
the 4th six Weeks I had a “I-don’t-care-it-doesn’t-matter” attitude
about school in general. I was going through hell riding the bus every day, I
didn’t fit in with the black or white kids at the time so I didn’t know where I
belonged, I was liking a girl seriously for the first time in my life and not
being able to deal with that, and I was still bitter about Athletics and PE. My
math teacher did not like me, I could tell; she talked to me stupid one day in
class and I wanted to tell her to go do something to herself, but instead I
just sat there and refused to do any work. In other words, I was having a
miserable time and a miserable year. And my parents were not the least bit
understanding. They had no idea what I was going through, and when I tried to
talk to them about it, all they cared about was me making good grades, not Cs
and Ds.
Fortunately, during these times I had a
few good friends I could talk to about my problems who would listen and not
berate or make fun of me. Antonio Jackson and Michael Simmons were my two best
friends that year. They knew I was going through hell and they tried to be the
friends I truly needed during those times. At church, there was Reggie Centers,
Eric McKinney, and Tammy Allen. Even though we went to different middle
schools, when we were at church, they treated me like gold. If I hadn’t had
them as sounding boards, I might have lost it totally.
Almost every day I had to stand up riding
the bus to school, and sometimes back home. The kids, usually 8th
graders, would pick on me non-stop most days. Somehow I kept my cool and tried
not to engage them, but I saw other kids who couldn’t and who wound up getting
into fights and getting kicked off the bus no matter where we were at and no
matter whose fault it was. And I knew my parents just did not want me getting
into type of trouble no matter if I were getting made fun of or not. “They made
fun of Jesus and he endured it, and you’ll have to do the same”, they would
tell me. To this day, just hearing that infuriates me- I’m not Jesus, nobody is-
we’re all human. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and kick some butts,
but the majority of us were not even teenagers yet and had no idea what they
were doing or saying, so I can forgive all that. And to be fair, the ones
picking on me were NOT my classmates, they were 8th graders. Again,
to be fair, many or most of them, after we grew up and became adults,
apologized to me for the way they treated me, and although they didn’t have to,
I truly appreciated it.
Another point of pre-teen frustration was
my going through having a crush on a girl who was older than me by almost two
years. But who I liked a whole lot. I’ve mentioned Angela before; I’d met her
last year (6th grade) and totally fell for her. It didn’t affect me
too much that 6th grade year, but during the 7th grade
year, to say that I thought about her almost every single minute would not be
nowhere near gross exaggeration. I was totally hooked on her and couldn’t and
didn’t want to get loose. I kept trying to think of what I could say to her
without sounding stupid, but that was like trying to figure out the Sphinx.
Interestingly, some days when we would sit together (like in Choir or GATE or
on the bus), I could talk to her without any trouble, but most times, I felt
like the Elephant Man. I wanted to let her know how much I liked her and wanted
us to go together, but I felt like if I did, I’d make the biggest mistake ever
and she’d let me know how much she didn’t like me. Michael kept saying I should
talk to her and let her know how I felt, and he encouraged me to write her a
note. So against my better judgment (somewhat) I wrote her a note and stuck it
in one of her books while we were on the bus. By the time she found the note, I’d
totally forgotten I had done such a thing and one of the worst days of my 7th
grade year occurred when she let me know she had found the note in a way I was
not expecting.
We were sitting together on the bus with
another one of my classmates on the way home from school. She was on the
outside, I was in the middle. She had asked to sit with me and my classmate, so
I just moved over. Of course, I was nervous and excited all at the same time,
and I tried to think of something to say to her. But I couldn’t, so I just sat
quietly while she talked to a friend on the other side of her. Suddenly I heard
her say, “I think he’s cute; he wrote me a note asking me to go with him.” Then
I remembered the note and realized she was talking about ME! Then she said, “He
knows I like him. He’s my boyfriend.” Then she turned and started hugging and
trying to kiss me. Maybe if I’d been 13 or 14 years old I would’ve been ready
for that and reacted accordingly, but I was 11, maybe 12 at the time, and I
reacted like a little boy who still didn’t like girls. “Get off me!” I yelled,
wondering if she was playing or actually serious. I was embarrassed and the
other kids were laughing. Then she pushed me away and said, “I didn’t like you
anyway! Get outta my seat!” And she knocked me to the floor. The kids laughed
hysterically; I wanted to die. Good thing I didn’t have a gun right then and
there; I would’ve shot myself in the head. Anyway, she let me back in the seat
and went to sit with her friend, who they both continued to laugh about it all
the way till it was time for me to get off the bus. When I got off the bus and
went into my home and straight to my room, I was totally confused. I liked
Angela, very, very much, but she had treated me like a fool on the bus. And it
was kind of my fault for the stupid way I reacted when she grabbed me. I should’ve
just let her kiss me and kissed her back. I should have embraced her the way
she tried to embrace me, playing or not. Instead, I went to bed very miserable
that night.
Define miserable. Miserable is your
parents not letting you play your favorite sport in the 7th grade.
Miserable is the other boys making fun of you and calling you names like
coward, punk, and WORSE words because they know you’re good but they think you’re
too scared to play. Miserable is having NO control in what you can or cannot
do. Miserable is the 7th grade and they stick you in a PE class.
Miserable is the PE class being the last meaningful period of the day, 6th
period, not counting 7th period, which was a study and special
interests period. Miserable is your 6th period PE class occurring at
the same time as 7th grade Athletics and so they decided to just
combine the two. Meaning, everything the boys in Athletics did, we did also,
except it didn’t count as Athletics, it counted as PE. They scrimmaged, we scrimmaged. They
practiced, we served as practice dummies. They ran, we ran. They lifted
weights, we lifted weights. I mean, we might as well been in Athletics, we were
doing everything they were doing! And four of us did get moved to Athletics,
because their parents changed their minds and let them participate in sports,
since they already basically were. We just didn’t get jerseys, helmets, and
pads. And my parents still wouldn’t let
me switch to Athletics even though that’s where I basically was 6th
period. And the guys kept calling me names and some tried to even take their
frustrations out on me. That was the breaking point for me. I was so frustrated
myself, I wanted to change schools, cities, states, just go anywhere where I
could do what I wanted. Of course, that wasn’t happening, so I just suffered in
silence.
One day, they gave us boxing gloves, and we were to box whoever we were matched up against. They threw the gloves to me one day and another to a classmate of mine who I didn’t know at the time, and I just tore into him like he killed my sister. The guys were impressed; I’d let out a whole year’s worth of frustration in that boxing match. It didn’t make me feel that much better, but I was satisfied. The name-calling stopped, and I was treated actually decently the last couple of six-weeks. And I brought my Advanced Math grade up to a B and an A- for the 5th and 6th Six Weeks.
