20/05/2002 - 4:49 p.m.

In Memorium

Wow. About two weeks ago, I got a notice from my elementary school. Well, in a manner of speaking. They tore down my elementary school in 1999 to conglomorate it with a school six blocks away. That old "build an elementary school every half mile" rule hasn't really applied since God gave us big yellow school buses. So, the conglomorate asked me, as a graudate of Brooks Elementary School (under which I have proudly registered myself at Classmates.com), to come and talk about my acheivement.

I went because two of my teachers are still at the school. Well, three. There's Ms Culp who I had for four years of English (because I could read and write they sent me to her third grade class for English when I was in first grade- if I'd known how to multiply they would've skipped me to third grade, but I didn't), and Mrs. Trullinger the music teacher, and also one of my fifth grade teachers from Perkins. She refused to acknowledge that she knew me.

I saw Noamy and Tiffani: Tiffani's going to DMACC next year, Noamy to ISU (I think). That was the Brooks representation. Everybody else was from Lucas. There were maybe 20 of us there. Half of them are going to be working full time at HyVee next year. The other half are going to DMACC or Grand View or something. Two of the girls had kids with them, and the fashion trend was most definately "hoe-bag".

I thought of the difference between the kids I see at school- even the ones that are slightly on the po' white trash side, and the people at sitting in the library of that elementary school today. I wish some of the assholes I went to school with had been there, all these rich kids who take education and everything for granted... I do too, but today, I looked around at some kids my age who are really considered to be doing something phenominal in graduating, and looking around at these fifth graders and realising that, most of them, will turn out just the same.

I looked through the Yearbooks Ms. Culp had (my mother's hidden all mine) and saw faces of people I hadn't seen in years. Saw the reality of people who I remembered as normal, just like me. We made fun of Joe because he was poor- all of us were poor compared to the kids I fell in with in 5th grade.

Sometimes I say to myself, "if you'd never gone to Perkins you would've been first chair violinist, you would've gotten straight A's, ended up going to Central, and been in the top 3% of my class", I don't agree with that now. I would've hated it even more than I hate some things about school now, and I wouldn't have been in a position where I could've done anything about it.

They gave us each a brick from our school, rescued after they tore it down. My memories of the building are so glorified compared to the pictures. I haven't been inside for something like five years now, and now that Brooks doesn't even exist as a school anymore, all that is left are pictures. Pictures that show desks left over from the 70's, blackboards and walls with huge cracks in them, tiny classrooms full of poor, dirty kids. I guess it had to happen, but why? The building made it 90 years, 1909-1999. Why not a few more?

Of course, I walked around the new school. It's like a prison: no windows, made out of huge cement blocks painted a horrible colour of yellow- urine yellow, the doors are huge heavy metal ones with bullet resistant glass in them- even the classroom doors. The halls, well, "five feet wide the door and three may walk abreast" just about covers it. It's confusing to walk around (I know what I'm talking about when I say confusing- I went to Callanan and Rooselvelt), hallways go nowhere, there are no stairs anyplace, nothing is marked. It's not a place I would want to spend a day.

I have five days of school left. Wow.