Recently a good friend has gone to the military, finding himself in a world of guns and ammo and I can only pray for his safe return (and hope he doesn’t change too much). Thinking about him sent me reminiscing about other old friends that’s I have lost, due to moving to new school, altering my way of living and mostly because that’s how life works. Although I must say that I don’t really miss them at all but instead feel that gratifying pang when a congenial memory intoxicates my mind.
One memory has troubled me recently, revealing the innocents that I had once lost as a child but never came to thought until recently, a bruise found in the mist of many hits…
The days were long and hot, revealing that summer was coming, and all the kids where out blissfully enjoying the simplicities that children always enjoy, a game of tag, dodge ball on the black top, and the cool running of wind hitting your body as you fly into the sky, holding on only onto two heavy welded chains, the swings. Although everything seemed to be running smoothly, the glares of the fifth graders crossed into the familiar territory of the fourth graders (in which I myself was in at the time).
The school was divided easily both by the administration and by the students themselves. The biggest separation was the Fifth and Fourth graders, acting almost like small gangs that, in any instant, would strike without warning at each other, either by a the usual circling of a forth grader and taunting him until he/she cried (it worked vise versa too) or by sometimes a kick in the shin or a punch in the face. The most complicated separation was that of the “Cycles” as the teachers called it. It was actually vary simple, Cycle A students where all English speaking students (usually all the white kids), then came Cycle B students, those who knew some English but could barely speak it, Cycle C students where only Spanish speaking students (the majority of the school) and finally there was Cycle D or as we called them in school, the retards.
School went on with lessons of how great it is to read, even though I must admit the works we were reading where horrible, and learning something I saw as torture, math. It seemed that the bell would never ring when we were inside the “class rooms”- the only things dividing a class room was a short wall that didn’t even reach all the way to the top of the ceiling, so often the appealing sound of another lesson would float into the room, drifting your attention away.
Finally the bell rings and we all went running out into the-at that time was-huge grassy field, our kingdom, sanctuary to the brain racking works of teachers, freedom from the embarrassing miss pronunciations of words which we were forced to learn but never taught why. Unfortunately even in our own kingdom there were spies, lurking waiting to give those foul blue tickets (too many of those and you were taken from your class and put on solitary confinement, working on problems and work right by the principal, being stared at for hours by secretaries and adults, seen as trash or a trouble maker.
Just when the games were getting fiery and beef with the fifth graders was boiling into some action, the bell would ring. I don’t know what happed in other peoples school but the rules were firm in Hoover, the bell, being pretty much our master, ruled our actions. In any moment if the bell rings (when outside or not in direct supervision) we were forced to duck down immidietly and put out hands on top of our heads, no questions asked. Anybody caught either moving towards the lines or not ducking, like an inmate in prison, and was seen by one of the spy ladies was picked up and dragged into a box on the concrete, in which the principal or some scary person would come and scream at you, later ending his/her speech with a Blue Ticket. Finally once the crowed of children were all sitting ducks, afraid to make any move or sound, the spy ladies would blow the whistle, designating us to slowly get up and walk to the lines in which, by class and cycles, we would line up, and our teachers would pick us up.
I don’t know if this was an action of hate towards a, mostly dominant Hispanic school, or if all school had drills like those, in which the actions seem more like that of a prison than a school. I would like to think not, but remembering those terrifying moments that came everyday made me wonder. I would almost like to hear people tell me that It was like that in every school, that there was no discrimination, that Hoover, in which I had so many great memories and so many terrible was the norm for all children. There is a fine line between teaching and manipulating and in my innocence I believe I was manipulated.
