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I remember two things about my first day of school.
The first is this cockiness I had about going to school.
I didn't start school with kindergarten, like most kids
my age. At that time, at least in Giddings, Texas, one didn't
have to start school until the first grade. I wanted to go to
kindergarten, let there be no mistake. I was anxious to start
school because I wanted to know how to read. My mother,
on the other hand, didn't believe in pushing her children into
the world any sooner than necessary. Since they didn't
teach reading until first grade anyway, kindergarten just
wasn't necessary. Also, kindergarten was only half a day, if
I recall correctly, and it would have been a hassle to drive
into town to get me at noon when the bus would take me to
and from school when I started first grade.
So, all these very sound, very pragmatic reasons kept
me out of kindergarten.
With cocky excitement, I went to school and found
where the first grade classrooms were. There were three
first grade rooms and they posted lists of students outside
the doors. I didn't know how to read, but I knew what my
name looked like, which is exactly what I told the nice lady
who stood behind me as I looked at a list.
"Here, let me help you find your room," she said
sweetly.
"I know what my name looks like," I answered, without
turning around. Obviously, I early on displayed testosterone
ownership. I was insulted that she thought I needed
directions.
Of course, knowing what my name looked like didn't
mean I knew how to scan a list. I had to look at each
indecipherable name and dismiss it as not my own, a time
consuming task. The nice lady finally helped me and
directed me to my room.
Now, I don't remember much else from that day
except this: I threw up before the end of it.
I don't know why, exactly, although I can venture a
guess or two. One is that the cockiness and excitement
quickly gave way to nervousness at the new surroundings.
Thinking about it, sitting in a cafeteria of probably around
200 other children, was quite likely the largest crowd I'd ever
been in, certainly the largest without my mother in view. I
doubt the small church we attended at the time ever had a
congregation that size on Sunday mornings. The only
exceptions might have been weddings or funerals I'd
attended by that point, but there I stayed close by my
mother.
With uncertainty firmly settled into my head, I went
home that afternoon to tell my mother that I had vomited and
that I wasn't so sure about this school thing anymore.
I also wonder about what vibes I was picking up from
the other kids. Most of them had gone to kindergarten,
including my nephew (yes, my nephew) who started first
grade with me and was the only person I really knew there.
Seeing as how I still get tense when I'm in a room of
strangers who all know each other, the first day of school
must have felt pretty awful for me at age six.
In thinking over my memories of first grade, I realize
that there was a lot of fear wrapped up in the experience. I
realize that no one intended it to be that way and I don't
know why it was so. Throughout my school years, however,
I can see a pattern of excitement followed by uncertainty. I
can't explain why that is.
Here's a memory: In my reading class, one of the
pre-literate exercises had something to do with learning to
recognize shapes of words. For example, if you drew a line
closely around the word, "cat," you'd have a different shape
than if you did the same around the word, "dog." With "cat,"
you would have a tall shape at the end of the word while
"dog" would have a tall shape at the beginning and a dip
below the line at the end.
Understand so far?
Okay, so we were given an outline of a word and
several words beside it. We were to circle the word that
would fit in the outlined shape.
This was an exercise that didn't seem to warrant
much time because it was over quickly. The reason I
remember it so well, however, is because I didn't understand
it at the time. Indeed, it was years later that I finally pieced
together what I was supposed to have been doing that day.
Everyone was circling furiously and I sat there not
understanding what to do. I glanced at my neighbor and he
was circling words like crazy. (Maybe we were given the
word and we were supposed to circle the corresponding
shape. I'm not sure.) So what was I to do? I started circling
everything on the page.
The teacher came around and looked at what I was
doing. Oh my goodness! Caught! She looked at my
circles, looked at my neighbor's, saw that he had a clue and
I had none. She asked what I was doing. I said I didn't
understand, tears welling up.
"You weren't paying attention!" she declared. Having
passed judgment and condemned me to my ignorance, she
went on to something else.
My adult self looks back on the exercise as pretty
stupid, really. The fact that the teacher went on without
explaining what I did wrong and that I also learned to read
without grasping the ambiguities of word shapes, both
corroborate my suspicions about the effectiveness and
necessity of the whole thing.
But I can still feel my first grader's stomach bunch up
just below my heart and I bet that if I tried just a little bit, I
could still shed a tear over the incident. As I've written
elsewhere, one of my great desires as a child was to be a
Good Boy. Not paying attention was Bad. Being bad could
get you all sorts of trouble that I wanted no part of.
In fact getting in trouble summed up the fear in first
grade, if not my entire primary education. The little boy who
would later become my best friend in high school (and who
will kill me when he reads this) got in trouble one day and I
remember it as well as he, maybe better.
The teacher asked who needed pencils sharpened.
We were not yet trusted with the pencil sharpener on our
own, so everyone who had a dull point got to stand in line
and have the teacher sharpen the pencil. Now, I can't
explain the feeling of not needing a pencil sharpened, but
there was something lonely about being one of those left
sitting in our seats. Maybe we liked the grinding sound.
Maybe we liked sharp objects and pencils was a good as it
got.
Whatever the motivation, across the room came the
much louder than expected, "SNAP!"
You should have seen the teacher's head likewise
snap. "I heard that!" she said. "Who broke their lead on
purpose?"
There was a dreadful silence throughout the room. I
think I blacked out because I don't recall how she uncovered
the culprit, but my friend was taken outside the room for a
minute, leaving a room of first graders to consider the
consequences of willful lead breaking. I'm not sure, but I'm
willing to bet that my friend spent some time facing the wall
that day.
That reminds me of the punishments hanging over
our heads. This was a time and place when a principal still
kept a glassy smooth wooden paddle, but I don't recall it
being used much in elementary school. (It was the
punishment of choice in junior high, however.) Facing the
wall was a fairly common punishment at that age.
Depending upon the severity of the offense, we might have
to face the wall with our arms held straight out, shoulder
height. If we were Really Bad, a book might have been
placed on each hand. If our aching arms began to droop,
we were admonished to raise them higher.
Not everything about first grade was fear and
punishment and vomiting. I have a memory of one time I got
sick and my homeroom teacher walked with me down the
hall very slowly, singing some unremembered song. Her
oldest daughter was in my class and we were close friends
throughout school, so I have many memories of this first
grade teacher, of being in her home. This one memory of
her is among the strongest.
And I did learn to read, a dream come true. Even
better, I learned to use a library. What amazing joy to read
stories on my own! No longer did I have to wait for my
mother to have time, no longer did I have to beg my brother.
It may seem redundant or even dumb to say, but whatever
educational pursuit I've attempted since, none match
learning to read as a desired goal or delighted
accomplishment. The weekly trips to the library (school
library during the school year, public library during the
summer) were highlights of my childhood.
Those earliest trips to the library also have an ache in
my memory. I have this heightened awareness of time
passing, what I've come to call my sense of "never again."
An early example of this sense is in my tears over having to
return books to the library. I just knew that if I turned in
those books, I'd never see them again and I loved every one
I ever checked out. There were even a couple that I recall
trying to copy by hand, my attempt to hang onto those
words. These tears and attempts at keeping the words are
probably seed events for my current predicament of having
shelves and shelves of books but barely any chairs for
guests in my apartment. I also have a much used discount
card for a local bookstore and a sadly neglected library
card. That aching sense of never again is costly, at least
monetarily.
I've mentioned throwing up a couple of times. I did
that a lot in elementary school. Whatever made me nervous
at that age would settle in my stomach and eventually be
ejected, so to speak. (I pause to marvel at my being a
chubby little boy.) For some reason, school parties were
excellent opportunities for this. I suppose it wasn't only
nervousness but also excitement. Whatever it was, it
certainly didn't help that the drink served at these parties
was Big Red or some variant thereof. I just remember this
incredibly sweet, syrupy red soda being served along with
cookies and cake and my inevitable rejection of their
ingestion.
It got better as I got older. For most people, this
would be a remarkably forgettable detail, but I recall the
pride I felt at the end of third grade. I publicly vomited only
once that whole year. I was growing up, indeed, becoming
quite the big boy!
I more than made up for it the following year. I had a
fourth grade teacher who made me more uncomfortable than
a good many teachers put together, even that first grade
teacher who called me inattentive and curbed our criminal
pencil point breaking.
This teacher, now that I look back, was a master of
shame. It helped not at all that she had known a long dead
cousin of mine. This would have been the '73-'74 school
year and this cousin died in World War II! I and a classmate
got silly during the singing of some patriotic song, one day,
and while we both got in trouble, I was a particular
disappointment since this cousin had died in active duty. It
also helped not at all that my brother had been a special
favorite of hers four years earlier. I always felt like I could
never measure up to the standards he had set in her eyes.
So I threw up a lot that year. I also missed more
school that year than any other year. My parents must have
been as relieved to have that year over as I was.
In Giddings, we changed campuses at fifth grade, or
at least we did in the '70s. Now they call it "middle school,"
but in those days we attended Northwest Junior High
School. I was something of a smart aleck during those
years. I suppose I should say it was during those years that
I developed my smart alecky self. I became less afraid of
the teachers and would tease certain ones to the point of
being a pest. Still, I was smart enough to be excused my
teasing, for the most part. With the possible exception of
one teacher, I don't recall any of them actively disliking me.
I remember most of them fondly, anyway.
I was also something of a geek, a nerd. I read
encyclopedias. We couldn't check them out of the library,
but one teacher had a set of the World Book in her
classroom and she'd let us check out volumes to take home.
She may have come to regret that since I sometimes
corrected her in science facts. I naturally turned to her
encyclopedias to prove myself right.
I've read of other comics fans relating similar stories,
but my love of comics helped me both in my science studies
and in my geekiness. Because I read a few stories about
science fiction hero, Adam Strange, I knew about the star
Alpha Centauri, before it came up in my science classes. I
knew it was the closest star to our own sun and while it
escapes me now, at the time I could have told you how
many light years away it is.
It is somewhat surprising, given my interests in those
years, that I didn't pursue some scientific discipline. I had a
period when I wanted to be a paleontologist when I grew up,
but I think I chose that because I enjoyed telling people I did
and then getting to explain what a paleontologist studied. It
was part of my smart alecky showing off. I could have just
as easily said, at other points, astronomer or botanist.
Junior high is the site of the inevitable onset of
adolescence and the hormones that are a part thereof. I
think I can say with some confidence that adolescence
pretty much eluded me, especially so far as the sex thing
went. I never got as excited about the girls as the other
boys did.
I do think I experienced a crush on a teacher at that
time, though. He was my biology teacher (science!) in
seventh grade. He was just under 30, I guess. Slim,
handsome, blond, and the hairs poking above his open
collar fascinated me. Because I was a science fanatic, he
seemed to like me, too. That year, he was certainly in the
running for my favorite teacher.
He was also a coach. The following year, he became
head coach at Northwest Junior High. I think it went to his
head and in a bad way. For some reason, he seemed to
think that it was important that he get 100% participation in
the sports program from all the boys. I recall a day, early in
the year, when he gave what was meant to be a motivational
speech, to get us all excited about sports. I responded, in
that classroom, in front of everyone, that not everyone liked
sports, that participation in extracurricular activities like
sports was a hardship for some of us farm boys (chores, you
know), and that I had no intention of being on any sports
team and that he couldn't make me. I'm paraphrasing, of
course. He was still a favored teacher and I wouldn't have
been so blunt then. I did, however, convey all the above
sentiments.
He, in turn, conveyed the sentiment that I would
never be a real man if I didn't get on a team.
Needless to say, he fell mightily from my pedestal.
What's interesting to me about the memory wasn't so much
that he shamed me or even embarrassed me very much. I
was silenced, but I recall sitting there and thinking, "You're
wrong."
Simple as that.
I was so certain of his wrongness that the few times
any classmate tried to tease me with any version of "Coach
sure told you," I didn't get defensive, I just said that Coach
was wrong and I wasn't going to participate in sports.
I marvel now at that confidence. It certainly wasn't a
constant attribute of mine. Still isn't.
That wasn't the only time I had my "manhood"
questioned, of course. I mean, I was a science geek who
read comics, even drew comics, and showed only obligatory
interest in girls. I did try to have a girlfriend, of course,
because that's what one did in junior high (and high school,
of course). I always had friends who were girls, I just never
managed any sense of urgency about having a girlfriend.
So I early heard the names, "fag," "queer," "homo,"
and whatever else was used at the time. The crazy thing is,
unlike what other gay men say in their memoirs, I don't recall
living in fear or even concern that it might be true. I was so
sure of my piety at that age that the thought that I, of all
people, would have any "deviant" urges (sexual or
otherwise) was just ludicrous. (I say that despite some fairly
innocent experimentation at the same time, but that's
another story for another time.)
I do have to share one last story about my junior high
years, one that exemplifies the level of my naiveté at the
time.
I was sitting in the eighth grade, earth science
classroom and one boy leaned over to me and whispered,
"Hey, Neil, I hear you give good BJs."
I made him repeat it because I didn't understand.
Once I understood the words, I didn't understand the
statement, although I had a feeling it was something nasty.
"I don't know," I said innocently. "What's a BJ?"
My classmate was getting exasperated with me. "You
know," he said, "blow jobs."
Despite having been exposed to more than one
pornographic paperback novel by this time, I still didn't know
what a blow job was. In retrospect, even I am amazed.
So I asked, "What's a blow job?" I had to find out
because I still couldn't answer his question about whether I
gave good ones or not.
He explained it to me.
Now, here's where it just gets silly. I recall entering
into a debate over the naming of the activity. I completely
ignored the original question and I recall neither disgust nor
denial at the accusation. I focused more on the
etymological oddity that something that entailed sucking
would be labeled blowing.
I don't recall him trying to engage me in that sort of
conversation again.
My naiveté wasn't a defense against the ongoing
accusations, labels, and teasing. It was all very confusing,
since I heard names that, technically speaking, apply to me
but at the time, I didn't always know what the words meant.
(See above.) For this series, I've given myself the cut-off
date of 1978 or eighth grade, but it should go without saying
that the name-calling, whispers and rumors didn't stop there
and continued into high school.
Looking over what I've written, I can't help but think of
all the things I've left out. All the same, I've conveyed some
of the important themes of my primary, public school career:
The desperate desire to read, my nervous stomach, the
interest in science, the questioning of my "manhood." I
didn't talk about the preference to playing house to playing
baseball or the teachers' (occasional) insistence that I play
with the boys. I left out the rough bus rides over gravel
roads, during which I read books and gave myself
headaches over trying to follow the jumping print. I haven't
mentioned too many classmates and my early feeling of not
having many friends. These may all come to light in future
episodes of these memoirs.
I'm left, however, with a question about my childhood,
one without answer, but it stands out all the same.
In junior high, here were all these small-town-Texas
cowboys/jocks, supposedly straight, and they had better
gaydar than I did. How did they know what I could not name
in myself?
Even more, why were they allowed the power to not
only see it and name it, but also shame me into a silent
repression?
Add it to the list of questions I have for Jesus when
he returns.
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Growing Up Gay in the South : Race, Gender, and the Journeys of the Spirit James T. Sears
Rita Reed
Other Articles In This Series By Neil Ellis Orts:
With Feeling
With Feeling Two: When I Think of Home
Also In This Issue:
The Joy of Getting Stoned:
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