Reunion

The original purpose of this blog was to give me something to do while away while serving as a means for friends and family to keep up with my whereabouts during my sojourn in West Virginia. That stint is, for all intents and purposes, done with now. So I am deciding whether to keep writing. I guess while I still have relatively interesting experiences to share (or at least interesting to me) without delving too far into my personal life, I’ll give it a try.

This weekend I had a reunion with my three best friends from Elementary school. One is still a very close friend, my closest actually, but the other two I’d not had contact with in many years. T, the one who has stayed in my life and lives in Brooklyn – we’d actually lived together in New York for a stint, had the idea of putting together this weekend in honor of our thirtieth birthdays. They’ve already crossed the threshold; I’m the last to go.

We officially met on the first day of fourth grade at Craig Hill elementary school. J, T and I had actually been at our K-3rd school together, and T and I had been classmates in second grade, but J and I barely knew each other. A was coming in from a different neighborhood school.

In fourth grade we had all tested into “Delphi”, our school district’s “Gifted and Talented” program. It was a product of the times – existing in an era before tracking kids went out of vogue, before it was recognized that all kids simply have different learning styles, and before the “experts” realized that completely cloistering kids and sending them the clear message that they are all at once “special” and outcasts could completely fuck up an entire generation of kids.

I know it did a job on all of us.

Delphi was indeed a blessing and a curse. We were at a normal feeder school, but we had little if any contact with the “normal” kids in our grade. The only time we mixed was at recess and during after school programs. When we did mix, the other kids wouldn’t really talk to us.

They bussed us in from all over the district. Ironically, this particular school also housed the district’s special ed program. So we, quite literally, “rode the short bus” to school” every morning along with the kids shuttled in for special ed classes. The Delphi kids insisted on having a trivia bowl every morning on the bus ride in. There was a girl with down syndrome on our bus named Colleen who would keep the score. The bus drivers must have thought we were all loopy.

Our teachers aimed to “enrich” our learning experiences to keep us “challenged” I suppose. In fourth grade, Dr. Callard (she actually did have her doctorate, and never let us forget that. Later I found out she was also an expert on teaching “gifted” children, and probably using us as guinea pigs all the while) taught us French, typing, computer programming, and chess. We also had to jog around the school as a class several days a week. The other kids had a field day with us. Who could blame them? We would jog by their classrooms following behind a woman with big red hair and a pink track suit like little lemmings every afternoon, then file into our class room and line up our rooks and bishops.

I wouldn’t have liked us either.

So they called us “Delphi Dummies”. Which didn’t really make sense. We were nerdy, sure. We were socially awkward. But we weren’t dumb. In response we called them “Regular retards”.

And you wonder why they did away with that kind of academic tracking?

The good side was that, yes, we really did have an exciting and enriched learning experience for those three years. (But on the flip side – shouldn’t all kids have that privilege – “gifted” or not?) The teachers in the Delphi program did take their jobs seriously, granting us greater academic freedom and creativity (which I guess they thought we’d earned simply by having higher IQ scores) while at the same time reinforcing the value of learning. For those three years it was actually cool to do well in school. At least within the four walls of those classrooms. There was no shame in achievement. We were competitive and hungry -- school was what we did, and what we did well.

Sure, we talked about boys and make-up and went to the mall and listened to Cyndi Lauper and Madonna. But we also talked about ideas and thoughts and dreams. We were allowed to be kids. I didn’t know what it meant to “make out”. I didn’t know anyone who smoked anything. We didn’t even think about drinking or cheating or stealing. We were good kids, because we were allowed to be just that – kids.

It was quite a shock when we started seventh grade.

Suddenly we were surrounded by kids who knew what a blowjob was, who went on dates, who socialized based on status, who wore lots of eye shadow and hairspray.

It took a long time to adjust. I’m not sure I ever did.

Suddenly, it seemed the most desirable thing in the world to be “regular”. So we bought what we hoped were the right jeans. We pretended we would rather watch MTV than read books. We watched what we ate, we worried about not being thin enough, or pretty enough. We got contact lenses. We stopped smiling quite as much. We didn’t laugh so loud.

From fourth to sixth grade I was known for my constant soap-boxing about everything and anything. In seventh grade I climbed down from the box. As a young person I was sure that I could make the world a better place. By thirteen I was no longer sure I even wanted to try.