If I were to average it out, I would say that the year I attended eighth grade (1995-96) at Clifford Pierce Middle School as the worst year I have ever experienced.
That’s right, it was the worst year of my life.
I had just moved in with my father, which was a trying experience in and of itself. Before I had lived with my mother, and the two were about as opposite as could be. At my mother’s house I was never expected to do anything. I had to clean my room occasionally, but that was about it. This was very much not the case at my father’s house.
I was expected to participate in the household chores, mowing the lawn, washing dishes, cleaning the bathroom, picking up after the dog (a GREAT DANE), and even vacuming. On top of that, I was expected to take initiatve to do these chores, something I was not very good at doing. So, it was a very hard transition.
In my adult mind, I am very grateful to my father for expecting so much from me. It was not easy, and there were times then when I regretted moving in with him, but it was for the best. Thanks to him, I now have a work ethic, I now take initiative with things, if it weren’t for him, I’m sure I would be much worse off than I am.
So if you ever read this, thanks dad.
So, on top of moving in, I also had to take the bus to school for the first time, which meant I got to experience the ‘joys’ of hanging with all the schoolkids about an hour and a half earlier than normal. I’m not sure what it was, but something about my back encouraged people to spit, shoot spitwads, and throw bits of paper at it.
For the record, that ‘ignore them and they’ll go away’ nonsense that my teachers always taught me doesn’t work in the least.
During the year, I also tripped and fell down a flight of stairs, which isn’t the best thing I could have done to increase my reputation or ‘cool’ factor.
I had my nose broken by a kid in math class. He made a not-so-nice comment about my weight (I weighed nearly the same then as I do now, but was more than a foot shorter, I was… hefty), and I allowed myself to get angry at it. He responded to my angry retort by busting my nose. Noses bleed a LOT.
In the schoolyard, I was jumped by a black kid and got beat up pretty good until a teacher pulled him off of me. Thus began the largest political battle of my life, and also the reason that to this day, I have absolutely no faith in school administrators.
As I sat in the principal’s office, rubbing my aching jaw, the assistant principal came in after talking to my attacker. The AP sat down and asked why I called the boy who beat me up the ‘N’ word.
That’s right, you heard me.
I, of course, had done nothing of the sort, and protested as such. But the AP would hear none of that, and slapped down a large pink slip that said that the next four saturday’s of my life, I would spend in detention. I’m not sure how it worked in other schools, but in my school, a detention was not valid unless signed by both the teacher and the student, who then both get a carbon copy. I refused to sign it. It was the first time I ever defied authority.
Of course, he yelled at me, demanding I sign it, and I continued to refuse. He then pulled out what he THOUGHT was his secret weapon, my parents’ phone numbers. He called my mother, and told her the story. She thought the allegations were incredulous, and told him that I would not serve a detention for something I did not do.
I was sent home, and that evening I talked to my parents. They asked in kind tones whether or not I actually said that racist remark, and I assured them that I did not. The next day, they went to the school and had whatever meeting they had. Whether they met with the principal or the black boy’s parents (sorry for referring to him as ‘the black boy’ but even then I had no idea who he was), I don’t know. This continued the next few days, my parents talking with the school, arguing with them that I am being wrongfully accused.
Finally, the monday after I was supposed to have my first saturday detention, I was called into the AP’s office, where he asked me one last time to sign the detention slip. I once again refused. Then, the most surreal moment of my life happens.
A crying girl is brought into the office and says, “Yes, that’s the one who beat me!”
Ewha!?
I was utterly dumbfounded. I had never met the girl before, let alone beat her. I was floored, but I still stood up and yelled that I never saw the girl before in my life. They basically said I seem to not stand up for my actions quite a bit, and tell me I either sign this NEW slip for four saturday detentions for beating a girl up, or I am going to be expelled.
I think that if the same thing happened to me today, I would have just walked out of the office and left. But I didn’t. I signed the slip dejectedly, and committed the next month’s worth of saturday’s to detention.
As an aside, saturday detention is the most boring thing I’ve ever experienced. They take your bookbag at the door, and walk you into a white room (white walls, floors, ceiling) with a number of desks all set up against and facing the wall. You then sit there for two hours until they give you a bathroom break, then sit there for another two hours, no book to read, no homework to do, nothing.
While that was going on, my grades continued to slip, I couldn’t concentrate on anything the teachers went on about. Every time I tried to listen to the teachers, I would drift off instantly. When the tests came, they may as well have been written in Swahili, I would have had just as good a chance at getting them right.
The only class I did not fail was English, and it was only because I had a single teacher who actually attempted to teach me, I remember his name, Mr. Niksich.
Mr. Niksich replaced the regular English teach during the last quarter, Miss…. I can’t remember her name. We’ll call her Ms. B, and you can guess what that stands for.
Ms. B was, succinctly, the embodiment of everything a teacher should not be. She was sarcastic, condescending, and apathetic. She seemed to have it out for me, but maybe it was my imagination. You can be the judge:
I gave a presentation for class, it had to be a five page report on something, I picked dalmations because I had one at the time. I spent a whole weekend at the library researching (remember going to do research?! No intarnets! OMG!!!!!111one). I got a D on the paper, and at the end of the presentation, the comment, “Well that wasn’t very interesting, who wants to go next?”
I was discussing another presentation with my partner, when she announced, “Its time for your presentation, so you can stop talking about broadway musicals.” (I wasn’t talking about musicals, which made me very confused as to that statement. It was only recently looking back that I slap my head and go, “ohhhhhhh.”)
I tried my hardest to read an excruciatingly boring book entitled “Across Five Aprils,” which took place during the Civil War is memory serves. I couldn’t concentrate on it, nor could I understand the points the author was trying to make. I tried talking to the teacher regarding the book, and she simply said, “If you’re reading the book, then you should understand.” I failed the test on the book, and in big red letters on the test she wrote, “Well, its a good thing you were reading.”
Anyhow, she left (with any luck, she caught leprosy) and Mr. Niksich took over. Many times, after the lesson, he would actually sit with me and go over the finer points, and in the end, I began to pass the tests. Suddenly my grades in that class were A’s and B’s. I even got to do some much-needed extra credit. With all of that, it was enough to pull my low F in the class up to a C.
I am grateful to Mr. Niksich, but it wasn’t enough to pull up the rest of my abyssmal grades. And I’ll get deeper into what happened with all that in the next chapter.