Eighth grade

created by dizzy

(thing) by piq (6.1 d) (print) ? 1 C! I like it! Wed Nov 01 2000 at 4:00:10

In the American school system, eighth grade is the last of middle school. One is above the rest of the middle school populace, but about to become a high school freshman. There is a certain antsiness about them, those boys and girls, as every day is spent in anticipation and preparation for that next level. No one looks back, the cliques are distinct and don't shift. Their pubertical ideosyncracies stand out tremendously (like that extra 'h' in eighth); they fight to hide it; fight to fit in and be "normal."

"Some people smoke a bowl, some don't" - Dave Matthews - Marijuana use is prevalent at this age, as their parents do not yet suspect anything aside occasional drinking. In my class, the drinkers already stood out. Those same guys would be on coke and opium by the time they were seniors.

(personal) by badme (1.6 d) (print) ? 1 C! I like it! Sun Apr 01 2007 at 14:55:54

Mrs. Summers* directed our school's plays. Before you hit 8th grade, you were limited to grade-specific choral numbers. Maybe a dance, if you were lucky. Eighth-graders ruled the production. To them went all the vocal solos and speaking parts. You were a face in the crowd until that magic, king-of-the-school year; still were one, if you got unlucky enough in casting.

Our year was a strange one. It was an anniversary for the Sisters of Charity, who ran our school. The administration felt the need to display this fact at every opportunity; the play was no different. Summy was charged with not only directing but writing an entirely new play. The History of the Sisters. The guys were a bit turned off by this; we wanted adventure, comedy, action! We wanted the HMS Pinafore from two years ago! Even more of a shock: there was no star. The girl who would end up as the founder of the Order fulfilled an omniscient narrator role, but there was no single lead. Everything was temporally independent of each other; a scene with five sisters and a priest would end, fifty years would pass, and she would introduce the next cast of characters. It was adventurous, well-written and inclusive. Most grade-school plays have some cute scenes and a nice little moral, wrapped up in warm memories for the families to keep. This was different.

For try-outs, we had to sing the Battlehymn of the Republic , and that was it. I'm no singer. I was the only male in our choir before my voice dropped noticeably in seventh grade (gender-barrier-busting that paved the way for my little brother and his friends to pull the same stunt a few years down the line), and I sang because I loved it. I had no training, and little skill. I reflected on these facts as I walked up the steps to our grades-school's stage. My entire grade, along with Summers, sat back and prepared to watch.

I was loud and terribly off-key. I left quarter and half notes scattered over the floor in my wake. I gesticulated wildly, without purpose. Part of my brain knew this but the other part didn't. It was too concerned with observing the amazing changes enveloping my body. In that moment the music entered my heart and it lifted me and I was no longer that short eighth-grader who still liked Pokemon, I was something else. I moved my finger-pointing arm in a slow wave across my audience as I threw "his TRU-th is marching ON" out there.

I didn't get a singing part. Thank God.

I got something far, far better. I was the Dying Union Soldier.

My one scene came at the very end of the first act. I had four lines. The Sisters of Charity were running a hospital for Civil War wounded; I was one of their charges. I would call out for one of the Sisters to hold my hand and listen to me for a little while. And then I'd close my eyes and lay back. And the Sister would look up to another nun and sadly shake her head before covering my body with a white sheet. Curtain.

It was a shockingly mature part to put into a middle school play. I don't think any other one has handled death in such a real manner. It was such a remote concept to me back then; not quite so much anymore, for I've had a brush or two with death in the past few years. Nothing direct, thankfully, but little touches of decay, the hint of dreadful Things To Come. I've gotten a little older, a little wiser, a little sadder. But even to my thirteen-year-old mind I felt a deep sorrow as I closed my eyes and felt the linen cover me.

My mother told me she cried when she saw her oldest son die. I haven't forgotten this, and it fills me with a sharp pain every time I see another wrinkle in her forehead.

I don't remember much else of that play. I lost my last copy of the script long ago, and it's not like I can just buy another one. Summers should still have it on her computer; I should ask. There were some cute musical numbers, too, like the one where all the guys dressed up as priests and did this incredible line dance. And a pile of good stories. Like that time Chris Heinly was so excited and nervous when we were getting changed in the boy's locker room before the first performance that he threw his shoe through a ceiling tile, Bam-Choom, just like that, leaving us all giggling and whooping on the floor, rolling around in the dust, and almost missing our cue. It stayed broken until the next year; I felt an odd sadness when I went back to visit and saw an integral ceiling. No trace of our presence remained, we'd all been covered with glue and plaster. Or the one rehearsal when I rendered 'Please pray with me, Sister!' to 'Prease play with me, Sister!', leading all of the cast members to burst out laughing and Summers to walk up on stage and whack me over the head with her rolled-up copy of the script. I had a crush on the girl playing the Sister in question. I think she knew.

We had three performances. This was unheard of. All of the grades in the school were divided up into Red and Gold; logically, there was a Gold cast and a Red cast, and thus two performances. Not so for us; we had one cast, consisting of almost our entire grade. And word had spread about our quirky little drama. So much that we drew not only parents, but alumni. Not only alumni, but people who had no connection to the school at all. I always smiled when I heard this; I pictured two people, a little old man and a little old woman, going to this play and smiling and laughing and crying along with Mom and Dad. I later found out that this actually happened: there was a couple who, annually, went to our school's performances. They'd been doing this for over a decade. I never met them. I really wish I had. They understood the power of this beautiful thing we molded with our hearts and souls.

I did, however, get to see my fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Brick, who flew down to Texas after she taught us. It was during the line dance; I looked out to the front row of seats, and wham-bam, there she was. I felt wind leave me and almost messed up the line when she looked at me and smiled. She was the one who listened to me prattle on endlessly about that 3D Terminator attraction at Orlando Studios Florida and how I memorized all 151 Pokemon (can't forget Mew, of course); she understood us all. To realize in a split-second that she'd flown across half the country to see her darling angels again...something grabbed my heart. Soft but firm.

As the last curtain fell we jumped up and shouted to the heavens. Odysseus had returned home; the great work was finished. This was our last ride as a class together and you'd have to be dead inside, completely lifeless, to not realize what that does to people. It makes them giddy; it fills them with love and fellowship. Chris Heinly, I think, had the greatest stroke of genius this side of Newton's Laws when he shouted to no one in particular as we moshed in the center of the stage, "WE'RE GOING TO CHUCK E. CHEESE'S!" And after that, could anyone disagree?

The entire place was deserted; everyone expected this since it was far, far past the bedtimes of the 6-10 age crowd. For some reason the place was still open. I still have no idea why. The employees tolerated us when we ran up the slide and into the glorious ball pit. Chris Heinly and Tom Kelly, jokers until the bitter end, rode the "Magical Train Adventure" and shouted hilarity while pumping the plastic handcar lever. I had Mr. Pibb. I saw Cyber Sled, the first arcade game I got any good at, for the first time in years. I took on all comers.

I don't know how many classmates remember how much the play experience meant. I've fallen out of touch with almost everyone; I was always somewhat of a loner throughout gradeschool so this isn't entirely unexpected. It's still gut-churning though. I look back on these moments and feel the magic coursing through me and am 13 years old again and smiling and laughing and crying, and then I realize that most of the people I share these memories with do not remember anymore. Ghostly outlines, maybe, but that's not really remembering, is it? Not unless you can close your eyes and feel the glorious rush of eighth grade, when the world was simple and you could wake up and go to school and have recess and run to your favorite swing with that cute girl you've known all your life and sail the air together, legs pumping furiously until gravity loses hold and you giggle with her at the drunken love and you take off and fly and collapse in a joyful heap. If you can't know that innocence again, who have you become?

I've been interested in theater ever since. I have never performed in another school nor community production. I've never even tried out. I think I know already that while it'll be fun and I'll meet people and be friends with them, I'll still have that quiet whisper at the back of my skull. The kind of quiet that demands attention. The magic won't be there, it'll say. It just won't be the same, it'll say. And I'll nod and cry a little and say, yes, I think you're right.

*Proper names changed.

printable version
chaos

Talking to the popular kids is dangerous	Has anyone ever told you how beautiful you are?	middle school	high school
opium	marijuana	I shoulda been there	Pok�mon
American	A Separate Peace	Dave Matthews	when you asked what I was writing, this is what it was
For children as yet unable to talk	EIPT	Ice cream cone	November 5, 2006
Mr. Pibb	Odds	A	Final Fantasy II
thing	the blue pig	Des Jumelles Singuli�res (Singular Twins)	gummy

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