The best of school, the worst of school

For the next two weeks, I'm participating in the DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge. See the end of this post for details!

I know, I KNOW, I missed yesterday. My work got out of control. Also a lemur attacked me. Just like that! On the streets of Park Slope! Who knew there were lemurs lurking in the trees? Or even just that one?

Lemurs, by the way, go for the face.

Today, as penance, I will cover sixth AND seventh grade. Which is just as well. Because Seventh Grade Me makes me sad, and I wouldn't want to leave her alone in a post all by herself.

First up: sixth grade.

Many teeth removed! Retainer in! Braces: coming up! Oh, mouth.

Sixth grade was my best year ever. My teacher was Mr. Reilly. I loved him. LOVED. He was kind, he was smart, he encouraged me to write and I wrote all the time. I have boxes of writing from that year. Weird-ass stories about death and drunk people (and sometimes people drinking themselves to death), and he never once asked me to rein it in.

Mr. Reilly made one mistake, which was to let me pursue independent study. (Sound familiar?) In an effort to encourage me in both art and writing, he had me embark on an ambitious project wherein I would create an animated short about a wacky character who, I don't know, did things. Fell a lot. I don't remember what the short was going to be about. Because I DIDN'T DO IT.

I don't really know how I would have done it, as I had no idea how to animate, but somehow I conned Mr. Reilly into thinking I had it all under control. He sent me to the library every day to continue my Secret Project. This might have only gone on for a few weeks but in my mind it was the whole year. After checking out some initial drawings and the basic storyline, he left me alone. Left alone, I opted to 1) read books, and 2) read more books.

When he discovered what happened, he didn't penalize me. I think he realized it was his mistake, and also I probably got more out of all the books I read than anything I could have created.

Mr. Reilly showed me that I was a writer. He will always have a special place in my heart.

And then I went to seventh grade, where my heart shriveled and died! (Only for a while.) (My heart came back to life.) (I have a zombie heart, is what I'm trying to tell you.)

Before I show you my class photo, which I guarantee you is one of the saddest sights you will ever see in your life, let me tell you a little bit about this year.

In sixth grade, I was among the oldest group of kids in a relatively small school. In seventh grade, I was at the bottom rung at a junior/senior high school that combined the school population from two different towns, so even my own grade was filled with strangers. The school I attended went from 7th grade to 12th. This covers a wide range of ages. My first day on the bus to the high school, I sat next to a guy who had a beard. He told me a story about shooting at a dog who had been rooting through his trash.

This was not a public bus, mind you. He was a fellow student. A bearded fellow student. Whose car had broken down so he was forced to take the bus. Where he claimed he owned a gun. If he was to be believed, which he probably was not, but I didn't know that, because I was fucking TWELVE.

My first day at the giant school of terror did not get any easier. Oh: my grandfather had suffered a massive heart attack the night before my first day of school. So my parents were preoccupied, and we were all sleep-deprived. And then I made a bearded friend.

We had lockers, at this school, and somehow I was overlooked when they were distributing those, so I carried around all my books on the first day. Period after period, I accrued more and more books, challenging my balancing skills well past their limits. This didn't sit well with the general school population. The next day I asked my mom for a bag, and she handed me a paper bag. I can only assume she didn't understand the request, because guess what happens when you carry a shit-ton of books in a paper bag? The bottom of my bag falling out in the hall did not make me look any cooler than the day before.

Nothing got easier in the following days and months, even after I was given a locker. I was frequently accosted by my peers who were trying to be "nice" and offer advice on how I could make my face less weird. Then there were other girls who suddenly, out of nowhere, wanted to beat me up. I don't know when they passed out the memo that seventh grade was the grade for Girl Fights, but everyone else seemed to know it. Or my face just filled with them with fury and the need to yank some hair.

(I never did get beaten up. I always talked my way out of it. The closest I got to brutality was a group of girls ganging up on me out in front of the school, grabbing my LeSportSac and mocking its contents. I had a stupid brand of light-blue eyeliner, which they smeared against the brick wall. Also: a Snoopy pencil case, which they regarded with derision, and then returned to me.)

Okay, so here's the face you get when you combine all of these things.

I look like I had just come off a three-day crying jag. I probably had.

Seriously, school photographer? Could you have tried a little bit, even a little, to help me out? Maybe encourage me to pull my shoulders back? Coax the merest hint of a smile? I look like I've just been pulled from airplane wreckage.

As hard as this picture is to look at, at least I have an accurate record of my emotional state that year. Is it any surprise this is the year my anxiety disorder showed itself? I just want to wrap this kid up in a blanket and get her out of there.

Share your true tales of awkwardness and beat-uppery. I'll be over here, drunk-dialing my therapist.

DonorsChoose.org allows donors to directly fund projects for teachers in struggling schools. Any amount you can donate will make a huge difference for these teachers! To date we've helped fund TEN classroom projects. Wonder of wonders! Donate any amount up to $100 and enter the match code FINSLIPPY at checkout, and your donation will be matched. Thank you!

In which I find my true home: the stage

For the next two weeks, I'm participating in the DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge. See the end of this post for details!

In fifth grade, we return to Good Hair. Which is all that matters, after all.

Look how happy I am! How confident! Except for the funky teeth situation, I look pretty good--as if I might just avoid those weird-looking teen years after all. I mean, how wrong can THIS go?

(Spoiler: very, very wrong.)

My fifth grade teacher was Mr. Townsend (I KNOW, I know, so many male teachers! It wasn't my doing, I swear), and he was FINE. After Mr. Klein/Klyne/Himmler, it was a relief to have a teacher who liked me. Honestly I remember very little about his teaching. What I remember from fifth grade is limited to this: my classmate Barbara getting something or other published in Kidsday--which was, OF COURSE, the kids' section of Newsday, the Long Island paper of record-- and feeling sick with envy; Mr. Townsend admonishing us, on a particularly hot day, not to fan ourselves with paper, because the act of fanning would make us even hotter (I thought this was the most insane thing I had ever heard in all my days); and performing a one-woman (one-girl?) one-act play for the entire school, in which I was a witch. (There were other acts, performed by the rest of the class, but for whatever reason I was on my own. Either I was a formidable talent, or my ego was a danger to others.) Mr. Townsend stood right in front of the stage mouthing the lines to me, so anytime I got stuck I would merely pretend to be thoughtful and look down to receive my cue. This is called acting, kids. That's a little trick used in the theater.

Next up: sixth grade. Right before the steep descent into Awkward.

How was your fifth grade year? Did you Work Well with Others?

DonorsChoose.org allows donors to directly fund projects for teachers in struggling schools. Any amount you can donate will make a huge difference for these teachers! To date we've helped fund EIGHT classroom projects. Holy cats, don't stop now! Donate any amount up to $100 and enter the match code FINSLIPPY at checkout, and your donation will be matched. Thank you!

I bet that gym teacher couldn't spell "synecdoche" if her life depended on it

For the next two weeks, I'm participating in the DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge. See the end of this post for details!

In third grade, I apparently became…soulful. Pensive. "Followed by a moonshadow," if you will.

My teacher was Miss Miranda, and she was above reproach. She was kind, encouraging, and pretty. In my memory, I was taught by Snow White.

Third grade was the year we began having Spelling Bees, and if there's one thing I was good at, it was spelling. I won every freaking Bee. That much I remember.

But what is happening in the class photo? Why was I put in the bottom row, where I towered over my shrimpy classmates? Why am I so spooked? Was I seeing a ghost? Why were the ghosts only visible to me? Were the ghosts responsible for scrawling highlighter all over this photo? Where am I?

I've always remembered myself as a genius student, so looking at my report card for the first time in many years is awfully illuminating. I might have been secretly brilliant, but in third grade I was merely competent. Miss Miranda might as well have scrawled MEH across the whole thing. (Except for Spelling (AND THE BEES!), that is. )

Then again, nothing stands out as especially negative. Nope, nothing at all! Just all the same. Nothing standing out here.

Wait, what's this?

OH YES NOW I REMEMBER. Third grade was the year I met Miss Tobin, My Gym Teacher/Nemesis. Miss Tobin, who taught me what "uncoordinated" meant, and then taught me that I was That Word. Miss Tobin, who regularly pointed out my lack of competency/coordination to the rest of the class, and then berated me for coming up with imaginary illnesses that put me in the sidelines. Miss Tobin, who would regularly ask me why I couldn't be more like Franny, or Jenny, or Allison, or hell anyone else, because I was pretty much the worst she had ever seen!

Look how angrily scrawled those Ns are. I'm picturing Miss Miranda, perched near a window, bluebirds alighting on her, as they did, and she's filling in my grades, maybe singing a little song. That's when Miss Tobin bounds through the door, hurdles all the desks, shoves Miss Miranda off her stool and grabs the report card--suddenly overcome with the knowledge that her previous assessment of "S" wasn't going to send an important message to that Alice Bradley, her EIGHT-YEAR-OLD NEMESIS. Alice needs Ns! AND A U! A U!

I really enjoyed reading about all your second grade teachers. Now it's time for third grade. Keep it up, class!

DonorsChoose.org allows donors to directly fund projects for teachers in struggling schools. Any amount you can donate will make a huge difference for these teachers! To date we've helped fund FOUR classroom projects, which is amazing. Donate any amount up to $100 and enter the match code FINSLIPPY at checkout, and your donation will be matched. Thank you!

I never did learn to play the sitar

For the next two weeks, I'm participating in the DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge. See the end of this post for details!

Second grade was the year that began with Obsession, and ended with Neurosis. I was obsessed with, among other things, astronomy, Japanese culture, and sitar music. I…I don't know, either. These were not interests that began in school, but my teacher, Mr. Barry, did try to cultivate at least one of them.

I developed this brilliant idea for a special astronomy project: somehow I was going to create a constellation projector with a refrigerator box. One of my classmates joined me for this project, and Mr. Barry got us a refrigerator box and let us plan out our brilliant scheme in the hallway, just the two of us and… the box. I felt like this went on for weeks but it was probably only a few days. All we did was sit inside the box and giggle. Mr. Barry tried to get us to organize our thoughts, but it turned out we really wanted to giggle. Our special project got scrapped, and I had to join the Regular People in the classroom. I was none too pleased about that, having quickly decided that I was special and required hallway projects.

Behold the arrogance! And the eyebrows!

I was extremely concerned about Mr. Barry. Since I was already shaping up to be something of a nervous mess, this year marks the beginning of my proud tradition of projecting my feelings onto other people. I thought Mr. Barry was under a lot of stress. He seemed really worried all the time, not that I could say how, but I knew it. I saw him pumping gas at the local station, which is when I first learned that teachers are not paid enough. My worry increased.

As for me, my grandmother died after a terrible battle with cancer, my mom (and the rest of my family) was devastated, and I was peeing myself quite a bit because, it turned out, in addition to being too shy to ask to go to the bathroom, I was getting bladder infections--which were caused by a narrow urethra, which ended up requiring surgery. Also my sister was leaving for college and I pretty much cried all the time? But oh, Mr. Barry was the one who needed my help.

In addition to my many woes, I was not getting any better at posing.

Boy, that was a shitty year. Mr. Barry was one of the bright spots in that year. He was the first teacher I had who I remember laughing at my jokes and the stuff I wrote that was trying to be funny. He was an excellent teacher and he had to pump gas. Goddammit.

I don't have a picture of Mr. Barry but in my imagination he resembled John Denver. I still can't watch "Oh, God!" without getting emotional. You'd think I wouldn't have many opportunities to watch "Oh, God!" but you would be WRONG. Or, okay, right.

What do you guys remember about second grade? Please share with the class.

DonorsChoose.org allows donors to directly fund projects for teachers in struggling schools. Any amount you can donate will make a huge difference for these teachers! To date we've already helped fund FOUR classroom projects, which is amazing. Donate any amount up to $100 and enter the match code FINSLIPPY at checkout, and your donation will be matched. Thank you!