A SCHOOLING LIKE ANY OTHER
by Connor Nathans
The story of a pre-high experience that left one with a lot to learn from
During my two years in junior high school, I only ever saw the principal on a single occasion, and it occurred on my final day of junior high. I do not recall the man’s name, and I cannot recall what he looked like, but I do remember that he entered our classroom around 2:00 pm on that final day with a wide smile.
A hush went through the classroom upon the principal’s entrance, and it was a hush with an added element of confusion to it, due to that wide smile. Disciplinarian, it seems, was the man’s main role in the school, so the quiet that went through us students was led by the troublemakers, who were shocked by the sudden sight of a face they associated with trouble, which was all the more shocking that face being contorted in a manner they had never conceived. I believe, though I cannot recall for sure, there were even a few audible gasps heard.
I do not recall how much I participated in the hush, but I certainly did not gasp; in fact, I was probably the last student in the classroom to even realize we were being visited by the school’s highest order. I was, I remember, focused on some last little bit of schoolwork before the semester’s end, since I did not want to take the chance of any blemish affecting my end-of-year grades. Do not worry if you find yourself laughing at this former-me, for I am doing the same thing.
“I’m sure some of y’all thought you’d seen the last of me,” the man announced to the room, which brought a hush from anyone not already doing so. “And that’ll be true soon enough, I promise. Y’all have a long summer coming up here in just a couple hours, but I’m just going class to class to share a few words with y’all. Next year’s up at the big campus, remember, high school, when the real stuff really begins. Now, I’m sure y’all are plenty prepared, and don’t let me scare anybody any, but I want y’all to know what next year is going to mean —”
I suppose it’s not necessary to share everything the man said, especially as he stood at the front of the classroom, doing his own form of lecture, for over fifteen minutes. After all, everything the man needed to say was shared in a snippet that was at the very end of the speech, at a point when his smile was at its widest. In short, across a few sentences, he conveyed to us that, upon our entering high school, all our prior grades, from every test to every homework assignment and even every group project, was to be utterly forgotten and the records purged from the earth, as if it had all never happened.
A small cheer — I will always remember it — went up at this news, but I was like one in shock, and I would be willing to bet my mouth was agape. Horrified would seem to be the only word to describe how I felt, and to this day, it is horrible for me to think about. I sat there at my desk, with no idea of anything else that passed around me, thinking a series of thoughts that were more than I can include here:
“What of us, though, who have done right? My reward, then, for good behavior is complete waste? Why did they call it my ‘permanent record’ if it was not to be permanent? Can they really expect me to believe them again? Is it not: ‘Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me’? Am I expected to be thrice-shamed? Am I the only one to be upset? I can’t be. Am I?”
This proved to be an experience that I learned a lot from.
Mr. Nathans hails from a number of places in the Midwest. He now lives and works in Miami, Florida.