Day 212: Things That Aren’t Stated in the Employment Contracts of Public Schools

English: A roll of silver, Scotch brand duct tape. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When I was in high school one of my very best friends was the head of the maintenance department. I am pretty sure that nowhere in his employment contract was there a clause stating that he would be asked to function as an impromptu wheelchair mechanic as needed but in spite of that he did so cheerfully. The repairs were never major, just replacing nuts and bolts when they fell out in the middle of the day and minor adjustments because he always had a full set of Allen wrenches handy, and if all else failed there was always the standby of duct tape to get me through the school day.

I had to catch the bus at 6:45 in the morning, breakfast was not nearly as important as sleep. I did my best to have change for the soda machine so I could stay awake during math class. If I didn’t have any Ray could usually find some. For one of my birthdays he and the ladies who worked in the cafeteria bought me a watch (so I didn’t have to keep asking for the time) and put it around a can of Dr. Pepper. I still have the watch.

When I was in school I thought graduation would never come, now it feels like I blinked and there it was. I won’t say that I was sorry to leave because I wasn’t but the intervening years have lent me some perspective and I realize that, as awful as I thought high school was, it could have been much worse. The ceremony was held on the football field and because of my chair I didn’t have to walk all the way down there from the cafeteria I just went straight there. While I was waiting for everyone to get there a man in a suit walked up. I had to look twice to recognize Ray, who I was used to seeing in jeans or overalls. Saturday was his day off but he had come to see graduate and say goodbye. That was definitely not in the employment contract.

Day 191: Letter to Myself Part One: The Things I wish I Had Known

letters (Photo credit: Muffet)

 You are probably the smartest person anyone in your school knows that probably why most of them don’t talk to you. Ignore those who call you a know it all and say mean things behind your back. I know you’re jealous that Morgans plays hockey and you can’t but Ipromise you that Chris, your sister’s teammate who also is inquirer with you will make the bullies regret picking on you, trust me. Speaking of choir eventually the school will try to tell you that you cannot stay after school to practice for the Christmas show even though it is part of your grade. They will assure you that they will not let the teacher penalize you for not being there, refused to except it. You’ll be better off if you stay after school, you might even become more than just passing acquaintances with most of your classmates. Talk to Paul Holloway more, his time is shorter than anyone thinks and not knowing him better will be one of the biggest regrets after high school. Keep in touch with Damien he has a good friend. Don’t begrudge your mom the time spread talking on the phone to Nathan about sheep, she needs the advice and he will let you be forgotten I promise. Sometimes it may seem hopeless, hang in there better days are coming.. You’ll find a man and woman who love you for your self. Write your book, it is going to take far longer than anybody including you want to think about so start now. Above all don’t give up, in the next 13 years your life will strange so drastically that you almost will recognize your self at 27 as even remotely resembling the person you are now and most of the changes will be positive.

Day 88: Sing… It’s good for you

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I’m not actually talking about the act of singing, although that is definitely good for you. I’m actually referring to the song Sing. If someone had told me when I was in high school.I would like bands like My Chemical Romance I would have probably laughed in their face, that was more my sister’s thing. It’s amazing how people can change between high school and college. In the current world where it is easy to think that one voice doesn’t matter the song reminds people that revolutions can and do start with a single voice struggling to be heard above the mass of popular opinion. One voice can change the world. When did we forget that?

Day 86: Loser Like Me

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Believe it or not this is actually a positive post so nobody need feel obligated to try and cheer me up I’m fine. Loser like me  is actually a song off of the TV show Glee (I am a choir geek remember) but it isn’t a cover of someone else’s work it’s actually an original  piece written for the show. I’m sure you could probably find it on Pandora if Glee songs regularly show up in one of your channel. The absolute highest praise I can give is that I wish this song had been around when I was in high school I would’ve been singing it every day and to heck with people who said I was off key, though back in the day that didn’t happen as much as it does now.

Day 83: prom memories, a song and tentative plans for my 10th high school reunion

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I may have mentioned (a lot) that my high school experience was not all that I wished it had been.One of the things I really liked both of my junior and senior proms I had a boyfriend who I did not deserve and it was due in large part to him that both of those events are good memories. This story is not about him though. In my senior year there was a young man who I’ve shared several classes with and who unlike everyone else usually said hi to me every morning and smiled at me. We were by no means good friends but because he was in show choir and the general chorus and show choir always did one show together at Christmas we were on friendly speaking terms. The evening, while memorable for the decorations and lights was equally memorable for its awkwardness. That night I discovered how goldfish must feel in a fishbowl. The rest of the kids there seem to think that the fact that my boyfriend and I (who was also in a wheelchair) were there was something of a novel oddity. I think I heard at least one person term the way in which we danced “cute” I had to restrain the urge to punch that person.

In one of the lulls when we decided to sit down  and snack I heard someone call my name and turned around to find the guy who I shared economics class and sometimes the stage with holding a camera, other than my boyfriend I think he was the only person who called me beautiful that night. He took our picture and even complimented me the next morning despite the fact that I was no longer wearing makeup and a gown and gloves. Several people talked to me the night of our prom and even more talked about me, but very few talked to me the next Monday when I was back in jeans and a T-shirt.

Fast-forward (almost) 10 years. Good authority has it that he has become she in the intervening years, no this does not surprise me it was fairly obvious which side of the fence he was on in high school. I have made the decision to attend my ten-year high school reunion if at all possible, a thing that I swore I would never do the second I walked offstage with my diploma. I will go because she deserves all the support I can give her if she decides to show up. I would like to think my classmates and I are grown-up enough not to harass someone for lifestyle choices but honestly I’m not sure, we are talking about the South after all. All I know is that if the situation hits the fan I will be there to defend her in any way I have to. I owe her for the moral support I got from him in high school. The song Just The Way You Are is now in my head, in a way it fits. One of the things I learned in school, choir kids stick together no matter what.

Day 78: “Glee”… It’s about time

I was not remotely popular in high school, most people paid about as much attention to me as they did a piece of furniture. The one thing I could do was sing. It was what made me get up every day for three years in spite of the fact that the rest of my  experience sucked royal. My school had two levels of choir, general,which anyone could take as an elective, and show choir , which you had to try out for.  I never got in to show choir though I think that was because trying to work the choreography around my wheelchair would have been interesting to say the least. Even though we weren’t show choir level my class was just as eclectic. There was a guy who played street hockey on the same team as my younger sister. I think we actually had a couple football players too, if they weren’t on the team they could have been. The best first soprano we had was actually a guy who was developmentally disabled. He could get high enough to break glass if he wanted to and he was still on key. There was a girl with Down’s syndrome who couldn’t hold a note in a bucket but I believe she had us all beat in the enthusiasm  department

When the TV show Glee showed up I was  ecstatic. Finally a show that reflected pieces of my high school experience. I never got hit in the face with a slushy but then again my school didn’t have slushy machines. I do know that the show choir teacher who reminds me very much of Mr. Schuster physically picked up some kids who were making fun of me and throw them out of his class. I wasn’t actually in his class and he still took it that personal. The boy who played street hockey with my sister actually put several bruises on some guys who were badmouthing me, I think he may have even stuffed them into a locker.  I commend the writers for giving a voice to the marginalized portions of high school society. It occurs to me that our class president came out of show choir so maybe the L that everybody assumes stands for loser actually stands for leaders.

Day 67:The short bus story

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I attended public school for most of my compulsory education.  I also had the dubious fortune of riding what was commonly known as “the short bus.”  For those of you who may be unfamiliar with this piece of slang, the short bus is a mildly derogatory name for the bus that the special needs students use, it is most often shorter than a regular bus because they’re not as many seats in it because of the need to carry a wheelchair lift and provide space for a wheelchair itself.  If someone asks you if you rode the short bus this morning it is most likely because you just did something really dumb,a reference to the fact that many of the students who use the short bus are mentally disabled.  My short bus story isn’t funny and I wish with all my heart that it had never happened.  In the fall semester of my senior year I discovered that a friend of mine had died over the summer and not a one of my classmates had thought that I should know.I wasn’t shocked that my friend died, he had a congenital heart defect so I was kind of expecting it.  The thing that shocked me the most was that he didn’t die from his heart defect like we all expected, a semi truck ran him off the road in the rain killing him and his younger brother on the way home from their dads.A teacher that we’ve both had for a previous class told me the story.  I cried sporadically for the rest of the day.  Like a lot of schools mine had vending machines and at the end of the day I decided to get myself a Dr Pepper.  I think I would’ve actually preferred a shot of whiskey but considering I was underage at the time I took the best substitute I could find.  It was against the rules to bring soda on to the school bus but that day I couldn’t care less, fortunately for me my teacher’s aide informed the bus driver and her helper what had happened and so they never said a word about it.  However I was not lucky enough to have everyone keep their mouths shut.  There was one boy who got on my last nerve almost every day.  He had ADHD and used that as an excuse to annoy the daylights out of most everybody, think Dennis the Menace in middle school and on Ritalin.  He knew about the no soda rule and kept threatening to tell in this very annoying singsong voice.  I was doing my very best to ignore a, because considering my state of mind I wasn’t sure if I started hitting him I would quit.  Also on the bus were a couple of boys who had severe anger management issues and could be very scary if they wanted to be.  Next thing I know both of them had turned around and told the little past quite calmly and evenly to shut up and leave me alone they then turned to me and apologized for his behavior and also that my friend died.  I guess you can imagine that “Dennis” almost swallowed his tongue and left me alone for the rest of the trip.  I think I even laughed, but in spite of that I would still trade the whole experience to have Paul around.

days 63: some people should not work in the school system, or a letter to a person who damaged me

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Taken from prompt 84 at creative writing prompts.com .
Mrs. Polk:

I have decided to tell you something I should’ve said a long time ago.  I despise you.  I know that you didn’t like having to help me in the fifth grade.  Guess what?  I didn’t particularly like needing your help either, trust me it’s not fun having a teachers aide following you around the whole year like some sort of subtly malevolent paid shadow. Yes, you did your job, you help me write assignments and assisted me in the bathroom but you made me feel awful about myself at the same time.  You told me I shouldn’t  wear jeans because you found them inconvenient.  You got frustrated with my lack of understanding in math and made sure that I understood that the times we stayed in at recess to practice  you considered it the punishment because I was obviously lazy.  I don’t remember playing at recess at all in fifth grade come to think of it, because I was either struggling with math or you did not want to push my chair through the wood shavings on the playground, therefore I was relegated to reading on the sidewalk beside the teachers bench.  I don’t mind reading but all I wanted to be was the same as my classmates.  It wasn’t like I was asking you to take me out of my chair and put me on the swingset or anything, I wasn’t, I learned long ago that there are other things I can get people to do with me that are just as fun.  The problem was because you insisted that I remain separated from everyone else just because you didn’t want to run the risk of getting wood chips in your shoes the rest of my classmates thought I was standoffish.  Believe it or not they still thought that in high school which made it almost as bad as elementary school.  I don’t say anything about middle school  because I was homeschooled for it, largely because your poisonous attitude ruined my self-esteem.I don’t care that your job description was atypical of a teachers aid one of the implicit directives within that job description is to help and encourage students.  You failed me miserably in that department.  I really believed that I was a daily and constant burden to you,a pebble in your shoe which you only bothered with because it meant a pay check.

You may be interested to know that I went back to mainstream school for high school.  Fortunately for me the teacher’s aide I got then was absolutely nothing like you and while my high school experience was far less than stellar at least by the time I graduated (with a 3.0 GPA in spite of my problems with math thank you) I believed she was proud of me and in some way loved me.  So I leave you with this final thought, I hope that when you have to go into a nursing home because you can no longer take care of your self the nurses who take care of you are nothing like you were  to me. If they are I hope you remember every day how awful you were to me and realize that what ever it is you’re going through you deserve every bit of it.

Rachel

Day 50: 2020 hindsight or the things I wish I knew back then

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When I set out to write this post originally the topic was on a completely different subject.  However before I had even written the first paragraph something changed.  I began talking to a friend of mine who I’ve known since high school, to say that neither one of us is where we thought we’d be at this point in our lives is an understatement.  I remember when we were in high school, we all swore to keep in touch no matter what life threw at us.  I am sad to admit that I’m just as guilty of not keeping that promise as anyone else.  I am sadder still to say how many friends I believed would be there to the end turned out to be nothing more than fair weather friends.  Some of us had a rough way to go after graduation and as I watched people turn their backs on the people they had promised to stand behind I grieved.  These were not the people I believed them to be.  I wish I had known then what I know now.  If nothing else I wish I had known enough to try and shoulder some of the pain. I know now that true friends abandon you just because being a friend becomes difficult.  A true friend does not condemn you for falling into a pit of your own making but instead lends a hand to help you out of the pit and stays there for as long as you scratch, claw, and fight your way out.  A true friend is there to clasp your hand and pull you out of the dark, to stand linking with you at the light of day.  I did all I could in high  school but that was precious little indeed.  I hope now, being older and knowing things I didn’t know before I may become a better friend, one who will face a darkness that is not their own with an outstretched hand knowing that somewhere within the darkness there is a friend.

Day twenty six: photographs, or small-town life as still life

I live in a small town.  I mean really small, as in one traffic light and no post office small. It has its good points I suppose.  The city allows mom to keep livestock because the land we live on has apparently been farmland since the beginning of time .  This makes her happy which is good enough for me.  My dad tolerates the sheep, unfortunately for him he is well and truly a city boy.  The town I live in has no sidewalks, a fact that puts me in constant contention with the local police.  Apparently they believe that just because the town has no sidewalks I should remain safely in my yard at all times and not venture down the road at all for any reason.  They still have not managed to convince me to comply.  I don’t know everyone in town by name but that is mostly because I didn’t go to school with them in part due to the fact that the local high school wanted no part of my attendance.  I went to the next closest high school which ironically enough was a whole different social stratosphere.  To say that I didn’t fit in is quite the understatement.  The children I went to school with were upper-middle-class snobs for the most part, though there were a few exceptions thank goodness.  The fact that I went to a different school then most of the kids in town made it slightly awkward. By the time I got to high school I was the only disabled person in town.  I still am to the best of my knowledge.  Most of the kids who he used to live here have scattered to the four corners of the earth, or at least an hour or two away from here.  My younger sister used to invite people over here for bonfires.  I was at least good acquaintances with most of them and good friends with some.  Most of them promised vehemently that they would remember to come visit me since it was unlikely that I could come to them because I can’t drive.  Four years later, maybe almost 5, I have heard from may be three out of the dozen who promised to keep in touch.  Small-town life is often romanticized.  I’m had to tell you that not all small towns bear any resemblance to Mayberry.  One of these days I will find a way out of here, and when I do, I want regret leaving or miss it much at all.