The Sixth Grade

My misadventurous elementary school years led up to the three most unexpectedly trying years of my childhood. Considering my college experience to be post-childhood.

Where: Moore Math/Science/Technology Magnet School

Teachers: Mrs. Rasure: Homeroom, Math, Keyboarding

This was the best math teacher I ever had. This was also the last year that I enjoyed math.

Coach Cogburn: Science

This was the first absolutely demanding class I ever took. So, so many requirements! It was a fantastic learning experience, as in it taught me the meaning of stress and how to beg nicely for help.

Mrs. Dunlap: English

This Southern Lady’s teaching style frightened me. But the final project, on entrepreneurship, was a favorite. I created a business where I sold cookies. A lot of the cool kids liked it. *yessss*

Coach Hutton: P.E.

I cried in front of her.

Mr. Killian, Mrs. Gage, Mr. Mason, Mrs. X the pre-Mrs. Spell Home Ec (what is the ec? I have no idea.) Teacher: Elective Exploratory (a class for people that weren’t in band or orchestra or choir)

In each branch of their electives, I was made aware that art, acting, wood-shop and home ec were not my strengths.

Mrs. Morris: Reading

I remember that we had to play with grammar blocks like some of us couldn’t read yet.

Mrs. Sorensen: Social Studies

She had blond, wavy hair and was a youth pastor and a Baptist church.

Sixth grade orientation was a week or so before school started. Your parents dropped you off, and you walked your class schedule, spending about five minutes in each class where the teacher would tell you what you needed to bring on the first day and what you would learn about. I do not really remember that part of the program. What I remember is that after the grand campus tour, we were all herded into the cafeteria and given one donut and told to sit down because the principal was going to speak to us. I have always loved donuts, so the gift was well received. But what I felt in the next moment has stuck with me to this day:

I do not know anyone in this room.

If you have never felt that, 11 years old or older, it is impossible to explain. Or maybe it just was especially poignant to me because I’ve always been secretly shy and afraid of people. I was not really afraid then, at least I do not remember feeling afraid. I just felt alone. Alone with a donut is, of course, better than plain old alone. But it didn’t really get better after that.

Where will I sit? Can you just sit next to anyone? Will they think I’m weird?

That last question was going to be a big question for the rest of middle school and the first three years of high school. And then I had a grand epiphany about my life and who I was. But I can’t just skip six years in three sentences! So back to the cafeteria:

I decided to sit at an open end of one table that was close to the doors (easy exit—I can run out when it’s over!) and close to the microphone (bad kids always sit at the back of the room. Always. I cannot look like that to my principal!) When I say the table was open I mean: no one was sitting next to me, in front of be, diagonal from me—open. And I felt more comfortable being by myself than surrounded by rowdy kids about to have a sugar high or kids that were tasting their first bad words in the middle school cafeteria or kids that already knew each other from church or school or whatever and would have ignored me. But being alone, and knowing that you are alone in a veritable sea of peers, is an odd experience. I mean, of all the things I could have remembered from age 11, this is one of the most permanent sorts of memories.

And then sixth grade really started! Uniform: red, white or black polos. No insignias on the shirts larger than a quarter. If you were cool, you got mall shirts from American Eagle or Aeropostal (and in the next years, Abercrombie or Hollister). Pants, skirts and shorts: khaki, navy or black, no shorter than six inches above the knee. Somehow, those top-half-plain, bottom-half pleated short skirts were also allowed. No skorts (come on). Basically all shoes were allowed. You were required to wear socks. They literally checked for socks. And the socks had to be plain colors. Earrings had to be small. You could only wear jackets that were school colors, no insignias. And shirts were always tucked in (although some kids got away with folding their shirts under) and belts were always required. There were a few random free-dress days. I think the sixth grade began my t-shirts-from-the-men’s-section-of-Old-Navy and embroidered jeans phase, so if you thought Sam’s Club polos and Ross capris were bad, free dress days brought out a whole new kind of bad taste on my part. I had brown suede slip on shoes (which I had literally been dreaming of getting for years, ever since I first saw them in the L. L. Bean catalogue) and a pair of red bowling-style backless slip-ons, also from L. L. Bean, because they had been on sale when I got the brown shoes.

This is the best first-day memory to keep with you: I met Molly Cook. In Mrs. Rasure’s class. And it wasn’t a very verbal meeting. I remember walking in, and not knowing anyone, and thinking “I’m going to have to get used to this,” right as I made eye contact with Molly. Molly has the most beautiful blue eyes. And her smile has always made me smile. And I knew right then that I wanted to be her friend. And (I’m kind of tearing up right now!) I just can’t believe sometimes how God places people in your path that will change your life and who you are. And I did become friends with Molly and we are still friends now and I can’t even tell you how much your texts on our “crazy college nights” mean to me and how much you mean to me. We were kind of cut out of the same weirdo cloth. And I will love you forever, no matter what, for a million things—including the first day of the sixth grade!

OK, sorry to be mushy. On to other things.

In Mrs. Rasure’s class, I ended up sitting in front of a kid I did know, from church, actually: the someday-famous Sam Jameson. We weren’t really on speaking terms yet (we knew each other in the way that we had seen our moms talking to each other, and we knew each other existed and had maybe looked at each other before but never when the other person was looking) but he would always put his feet in the book basket attached to my chair and Mrs. Rasure thought that was rude. I didn’t really care, but when she suggested that he pay me every-six-weeks rent for the use of the basket, I was cool with it, namely because the rent was paid in Reeses.

Here, after a story about donuts and a story about Reeses, would be a good time to say that I recognized then and I recognize now that the sixth grade was not my best year for looks. And really, all of middle school was not. Some people get in a pre-teen/early teen rut when it comes to physique, and fashion sense, and hair styles… I was one of those people. It’s not really something I’m proud of, but my dedication to myself is something that I am proud of. What I mean by that, “dedication to myself,” is that I was not willing to let my mother’s advice that a black polo, navy capris, brown belt, and red bowling slip-ons would not match deter me from wearing all of those things because they were the most comfortable uniform clothes I owned. I also let my nappy hair nap. I also rolled my rolling backpack with only a small amount of shame.

The rolling backpack is something like unto the flesh sweat suit (see Kindergarten) in my repetoire of growing-up memorabilia. It, thankfully, was trashed in the seventh grade. I got it after being given all of my textbooks and feeling like my back would break if I really had to carry them around everyday. We didn’t find out until I was in the ninth grade that I have scoliosis, and my back probably was sensitive when I was 11, but I was also a natural whimp and thought that the rolling backpack would be more manageable. That blue, two-tone piece of hell on wheels probably did more damage to my self-esteem than a backpack could have done to my back, but it is a pretty great image: a piece of work with a piece of work book bag.

Memories of middle school come out easier when I am on the phone with Molly and we are going over every terrible thing we ever experienced—we could seriously publish a book that would cause me to pee my pants every time I opened it. What I can remember right now is: dutifully stuffing my laces into my sneakers after P.E. before putting them into the locker-basket after hearing stories about eighth graders stealing sixth-grader laces. I remember showing up to Coach Cogburn’s tutorials at dark-thirty AM when I needed to re-do all the stations to get a perfect grade. I remember realizing on a rainy day when I was wearing a white polo shirt that I had remembered to put on a camisole, but I had not remembered to put on my sports bra. I remember the day that Mrs. Rasure taught us about y=mx+b without any words—we were required to be silent, and somehow it totally worked. I remember confronting Mr. Killian about receiving a B on a still life drawing in Art and he told me “skill” was required to get A’s, and some people don’t have skill. A few weeks later, an oil pastel I made of a dancing skeleton for Día de los Muertos won a city award and was put up in the Tyler Art Museum. (HA!)

I remember meeting Kiara Starling and asking if I could call her Kiki, which turned into Kiwi, and I thought that was hilarious  I remember Alex Vorsas asking me, as we walked laps around the school for P.E., if I though Jake Lane or Sam Jameson was cuter (because they were obviously the two cutest and you had to pick one or the other). Since I was kind of friends with Sam, and I didn’t want people to think I liked him, I said I thought Jake was cuter. Honestly, neither of them (or anyone else) at Moore MST held a candle to Ryan Cabrera, so what was the point? I remember Jesse Rickman asking me, in Mrs. Rasure’s classroom, if I was an Aggie or a Longhorn. I did not know what he meant. He was incredulous that someone could not be either. He told me to pick one, just because everyone liked one or the other but not both. Knowing that he was an Aggie and terrified of confrontation, I told him I would probably pick the Aggies. How foolish I was! I remember Mrs. Dunlap instructing us, one time when Jesse had left to use the bathroom, to say, “Sit down, Jesse!” whenever she gave a 1-2-3 hand movement. Jesse didn’t like to sit down, I guess. I do remember him standing up a lot.

I went to one dance during the sixth grade. I wore my mom's bright pink and orange button down. It was Luau themed. My parents spent a lot of prep time reminding me that as an 11-year-old, I was kind of bending the rules to attend a dance (when you're an LDS kid, you're supposed to wait until you're 12 to go to dances. I have no idea how to explain that, hahaaaaa.... Go Morms!), and I told them I wasn't worried about getting asked to dance. I had no one to dance with, and fully intended to avoid all physical contact and most eye contact. Low and behold, someone asked me to dance the last dance. I do believe it was Hunter Boyd. And I told him that I couldn't, because I wasn't 12. And so he asked the girl standing next to me, who said yes. Not knowing what to do, I stood there, maybe one foot away from them, and watched them dance. It was a slow dance, which means it was a stand-and-sway. I just stood there and swayed on my own. I think I eventually walked off. Sorry, world, that that happened.

Despite the fact that I did know at least five kids in my grade (Alex Vorsas, Gerald Cofer, Thornell Lewis, Shelby Spell, Sam Jameson… Is that it? I think so. I knew five kids!), I was not automatically initiated into any of the groups of people that I wanted to be friends with. I asked to eat lunch with Molly one day, and she told me that she ate with the seventh graders because of French horn sectionals (darn band) but I should eat with her friend Kevin from church. So I became friends with Kevin Kelly and Clinton Wilbanks and their friends. These are two guys that I am still friends with. And they make me laugh, and they’re doing such cool things now, and you can revert back to the blessings paragraph if you want to feel feelings… I tried, once or twice, to merge into the cool kids table where the cool kids ate. This never went over well. I was mostly ignored (it probably didn’t help that I didn’t know them and they didn’t know me and I had a rolling backpack), but I knew they were friends with Molly, so I decided to just wait until the seventh grade to try again. Unfortunately, during my trial period at their table, Kevin got a girlfriend that took my place at their table. I have no idea how I managed for the rest of the year. I remember sometimes eating with Gerald, or Kiara Starling, or Stephanie Gurrola… By the grace of God, I was not totally shunned! I actually think that everyone who was my friend in middle school will get an extra dose of heavenly blessings in the next life. You will never know how much it meant.

Loneliness is definitely a huge part of what I remember about the sixth grade. I know that is weighted by the fact that I was “in that stage,” so willing to be loved but painfully aware that I was no skinny, blond-haired cute laugher. I was chubby. I had squinty eyes. I had no church camp or sports teams connections. I liked to read. I was one of the kids that had their name on the poster in the library and got stickers for reading all of the one-or-another-awarded book lists. I liked to sit at the front of the classroom. I hated P.E. I was always sweating, even outside of the hated P.E. I already dreamed of traveling, and I wrote a paper in Reading about how I loved airports because of their “promise of adventure,” but I had never been to Mexico or Disney World or even summer camp. I made friends that have turned out to be friends that stick (miraculous!), but unlike my final years of high school, and more like my college years, my experiences were personal and largely private on account of not feeling like I had anyone to share things with.

I remember that one day, during cheerleader try-outs, I had said something to Molly as she was getting ready with the other girls, and then they all had to go into a classroom and I was left standing there, less aware of my not-cheerleader-materialness than my not-Aeropostal-polo and rolling back-pack and being alone on the sidewalk, and I walked up the hill towards the circle drive where my mom was going to pick me up and the late-afternoon sun made everything very yellow and in my head I could see myself rolling that back-pack into the sunset, all alone, nobody watching, no cheerleaders, no mom waiting for me, just me—The Lone Rangerette. And I thought to myself that maybe that would make a good book. And then I sighed and thought Mrs. Dunlap would never think I could write a book. And I got into the car and went home and that day ended.

I never would have dreamed that I would blog about the sixth grade and smile to think of that tacky backpack rather than writhe in self-pity. Oh no.

I didn’t even know what Xanga was then. And Xanga was absolutely a required precursor to this blog.