1st Grade Woes
1st Grade Woes
By Eli G.
In order for the reader to fully comprehend the severity, no matter how seemingly conjured, imagined or exaggerated, of the situation in which I found myself as a young, innocent 1st grader, it must be understood that when attending a very conservative, private, Christian school, at even the slightest mention of kissing, the horrified reaction of those who heard might have been the same if you had suggested genocide nonchalantly.
Thus, on a deceivingly ordinary and mild lunch hour (whose name also, was deceptive. Unlike its name suggests, truly, we were only given 30 minutes to run off our endless supply of energy) I began noticing peculiar behavior towards my person from my fellow classmates. Their contempt filled and disgusted expressions made me feel as though I must have been infected by some horrible, ghastly disease to which I was oblivious but apparently the others in my class were well aware of—perhaps too aware. Although I am, to this very day, thankful for my classmates’ candidness in their doubt, my mortification is still, a full decade later, beyond words.
It was only until ironically the boy with whom I was practically obsessively in love with (and would be for yet another excruciating 6 years) hesitantly and haltingly told me of a sickening rumor he had heard about me. Thankfully, he approached me about his suspicion that it was too “wicked” of a crime (as it was seen among my young peers) for one such goody-goody as me to have committed.
He took his own sweet time in telling me with tantalizingly tortuous ambiguity that he did not indeed believe this rumor as many as my faithless friends had. After what felt to my young heart as an unbearably protracted amount of time, he finally got to the juicy part of his tale. Somehow, he managed to get out, between his many and repeated, “I don’t actually believe this”, or “This is just what I heard”, that some unknown entity had accused me of not just going into the boy’s
By Eli G.
In order for the reader to fully comprehend the severity, no matter how seemingly conjured, imagined or exaggerated, of the situation in which I found myself as a young, innocent 1st grader, it must be understood that when attending a very conservative, private, Christian school, at even the slightest mention of kissing, the horrified reaction of those who heard might have been the same if you had suggested genocide nonchalantly.
Thus, on a deceivingly ordinary and mild lunch hour (whose name also, was deceptive. Unlike its name suggests, truly, we were only given 30 minutes to run off our endless supply of energy) I began noticing peculiar behavior towards my person from my fellow classmates. Their contempt filled and disgusted expressions made me feel as though I must have been infected by some horrible, ghastly disease to which I was oblivious but apparently the others in my class were well aware of—perhaps too aware. Although I am, to this very day, thankful for my classmates’ candidness in their doubt, my mortification is still, a full decade later, beyond words.
It was only until ironically the boy with whom I was practically obsessively in love with (and would be for yet another excruciating 6 years) hesitantly and haltingly told me of a sickening rumor he had heard about me. Thankfully, he approached me about his suspicion that it was too “wicked” of a crime (as it was seen among my young peers) for one such goody-goody as me to have committed.
He took his own sweet time in telling me with tantalizingly tortuous ambiguity that he did not indeed believe this rumor as many as my faithless friends had. After what felt to my young heart as an unbearably protracted amount of time, he finally got to the juicy part of his tale. Somehow, he managed to get out, between his many and repeated, “I don’t actually believe this”, or “This is just what I heard”, that some unknown entity had accused me of not just going into the boy’s