Changing Schools

I am fat. I don’t know anyone. I am smart. My thoughts as I walked into Ms. Sherman’s sixth grade classroom on the first day of school. For a myriad of reasons, it was my third school in three years and I had zero expectations for this day.

            So I walk in and the teacher asks me my name and where I am from. I say Robbie and I live right down the street (I literally did).  Everyone laughs and I begin to smile thinking it may not be that bad. So I try and find my desk and I am lost. I am wider than most of the aisles and so I have to walk sideways, I guess more like waddle, to reach my desk. I also am carrying an assortment of school supplies, which on the paper we received in the mail said we had to bring on the first day of school. Unfortunately, no one told me that no one brought the supplies the first day of school and so there I was the fat kid, wearing clothes that did not match (I had always worn a uniform and so matching was not a problem), struggling to carry everything. I sit down and after what felt like forever, we have recess. Awkwardly I walk outside and see a couple kids I recognized from little league. Step by step I walk down our hill made of concrete trying not to run so I could appear to be cool. Truth is, when you are overweight and are walking at a decline, it is incredibly difficult to slowly walk down. At any rate, I make it down the hill safely and jog out to them playing with some ball on the grass fields. It turns out there were a couple new kids who were in my class so we all got to knowing each other and what we did for fun. We then joined in on the “cool kids’” conversation where for the most part, we fit in. The bell rang over the intercom system and I remember them saying something about actually having to learn with a few expletives thrown in there (six graders did that significantly for some reason).

            I walk in and see Ms. Sherman nervously pacing around the classroom. Today it wasn’t just my first day, but hers too. We open our science textbooks and she asks us what we already know about the topic at hand. I think it was Earth science. I raise my hand because never in my life has it been a problem to participate in class. I begin talking and the rest of the class goes silent. I mean no background conversation, no pens tapping against the desks, just my voice talking about all the stuff I knew about the Earth. At that age I also enjoyed reading and so my vocabulary was quite advanced. After an hour we had lunch and I went to sit with the same kids who I hung out with at recess. As we walked towards the lunch tables, a couple kids heely’d. Being of a larger stature I never once had the thought to try those because all I could visualize was a fat kid rolling down a hill falling from his Heeleys. As I sit, I listen to their conversation for a little bit and then contribute some of my own thoughts.  Midway through my comment I am stopped and asked why I use words that no one knows what I mean. They told me it was weird and that I should really lessen the words I use so that they could understand. Trying to fit in once, I tell myself never again am I using an advanced vocabulary and I really didn’t (barring a few mistakes). I was afraid to read because I didn’t want to learn new words so I told myself I would stop doing that. Once again the bell rang but this time I sluggishly walked to class. I figured most people would not question my slow pace because they would attribute it to me being out of shape and so I stepped, one foot at a time, contemplating what I was going to do at school when I wasn’t allowed to learn.

            I walk to my desk and sit down and for the rest of the day said no words. As the final bell rang, I grabbed my Hurley backpack and without waiting for my brother I just begin to walk home. Eventually he caught up to me, he was in much better shape, but at that time we were basically I home. I go up to my room and just lay down on the floor, feeling the roughness of the carpet against my neck just thinking. Thinking about how I could fit into this school that seemed like a completely different planet.

            The rest of the year was not as bad as the first day. I eventually gave up trying to be stupid because it killed me not to be able to correct mistakes or read for that matter. I began reading A Series of Unfortunate Events and since those were cool books, it was acceptable for me to constantly read. That year I finished second in AR points to Celine, who really shouldn’t have won but I had a two-month delay which caused me the close loss. That day was rough, but without that experience, who knows when I would have learned the importance of caring about one’s education more than what others think.