The period between OLOR and St. Cornelius was met with a small transformation. Given that I was coming off of my worst year of school mentally, I had more time to myself. I could simply do as much or as little as I wanted. There was no anticipation except for the hope that things would be better. Having toured the school a few months prior, I thought that the campus looked nice. The principal was a nice man students nicknamed “The German” for how hardnosed he often looked while walking around during recess. There was a lot to look forward to even if it came at the expense of having to fit into an operation that had been running for five years.
No matter how old I have gotten, one insecurity has kept an overwhelming presence. The lack of childhood friends means that I feel at times detached from who I was. There’s no way for someone to share a story I may have forgotten or even inspire me to rattle off a random detail. Things as trivial as recalling a Destiny’s Child song felt absent because nobody was here anymore. As much as I should be grateful to move forward and have more concrete friendships, I look at those who have known each other since they were children, and it hurts a little to see how happy and connected they are. No matter how many friends I have acquired, I still feel isolated because there’s nobody like that in my life.
The year was 2001 and I was about to experience a transformation of my own. After experiencing a predominant rejection from my peers for not liking the same things, I was starting to find my own identity crafted from things that looked interesting to me. Among them was the album cover for Blink-182’s “Take Off Your Pants and Jacket.” The catch was that while my parents were fine letting me venture out, I had to listen to “clean” music. Parental Advisory stickers still carried that danger. When I randomly showed up one year with Sum-41’s “Does This Look Infected?” there was a whole ordeal over that sticker. Similarly, I remember getting “The Battle of Los Angeles” one time and my parents getting mad because “Rage Against the Machine is raging against the government.” Given that my sister also couldn’t buy Britney Spears’ “Britney” because of the “I’m A Slave 4 U” music video, we were definitely children of parents holding onto those Catholic School values.
And despite this, I think there was certain lenience that slowly appeared. All of the sudden I was allowed to listen to rock (KROQ) and pop (KIIS) stations. I was allowed to watch Total Request Live and notice that the world was much more razzle dazzle. I would buy that Blink-182 album from a Las Vegas strip mall on our way to a South Dakota family reunion. For as tedious as that road trip was, it was one of the more memorable journeys of the early 2000s. If anything, it was a nice moment to take in the last blissful innocence of the world before a major calamity rocked our world (more later).
So yes. In 2001, even as a late bloomer I started to shift into my preteen self. I was indulging in Top 40 rap for the first time even as my parents actively disapproved in that hackneyed “rap crap” way. The world was growing, and I was excited to be free of that Radio Disney innocence. Much like the childhood friend conundrum, I do think there’s part of me that always feels like I arrived at trends late. I think I’ve always had a cautious nature when it comes to enjoying something. Maybe it’s because of self-image and reputation insecurities that emerged, but suddenly I simply couldn’t like a song. I had to find ways to “brand” myself in a way that made sense to others.
A parallel conflict was dealing with developing a personality. As someone who self-identifies as autistic now, I can only imagine how many social cues I have missed throughout my entire schooling experience.
There was a calculated effort when it came to presentation. Even if I was doing a recognizably bad job, I began to observe situations before piping in. A common description among different friend groups is that they don’t notice my arrival. I’m simply there. For me, it was never about pageantry or getting recognition. I wanted to simply be there and enjoy the camaraderie of my peers. I suppose that I observed others and tried to take in aspects that would make me liked. I was with the boys, so it was a lot of the hormonal frustrations that came with that. Sex puns were inherently funny and doing recklessly stupid things was en vogue. We were in the wake of Jackass still being on MTV in its first run. I can’t say that I really had an identity, but from behind an inexpressive face I did my best to make people like me.
It's been the issue because these were the formative years when you were supposed to form your own identity. God love him, but trying to imitate my dad is a conflict that I’m still struggling with. He was very much a byproduct of boomer humor. While he could be seen as the “cool dad” at times, there was also the sense that he wanted to be your friend and would helicopter. It seems cool as a preteen because it gives you access to so many opportunities. However, it meant that I also was picking up on cues that weren’t helping me make friends. He wasn’t the most eloquent speaker. In an attempt to make me seem cool, we agreed for me to wear fishing t-shirts that said “I’m a bass man” when I began to play bass guitar. The pun was forced and my dad’s sense of humor was more broad than mine. My approach is more dry.
Which is to say that as I developed an affection for Adam Sandler comedies, I managed to find aspects to latch onto. I acted out because I knew it would get me attention. People would like me if I acted wacky. As I shifted to more wordplay type jokes, I think my dad began to not understand what I was going for. They were still Sandler-esque, but something about me trying to make punchlines convinced him to start using backhanded compliments. I say backhanded compliments, but they were like a nail scratching the skin, slowly getting underneath. At one point he landed on the phrase, “You’re the smartest person I know who plays dumb.” There could be truth in that, but it’s a fallback he often uses when he feels like he’s losing an argument and wants to gaslight me. Similarly, he can’t let a mediocre joke die peacefully. If he doesn’t get it, he’ll make sure to give a criticism, drawing attention to the point that your joke was dumb while he’s the only one in the family who watches Two and a Half Men for amusement.
I’ll admit that forming my personality around this time was difficult because it meant going in directions that ultimately didn’t stick. My reinvention was a byproduct of realizing how much I struck out at OLOR and needed to make sure I had friends when I left St. Cornelius in three years. I think it meant that I eventually developed an acceptance with being occasionally gross and self-effacing. People at my dad’s work laughed at me running into walls, so I played into that. I won’t say that I was solely the joke person, but it’s something that comes immediately to mind when thinking about that time. More will come as the years go on.
Sixth grade was a lot of things. This was also the last year where I had a nun as a home room teacher. Sister Miriam was a nice woman who made my transition to the school as pleasant as she could. She was the type who also enjoyed making others feel comfortable by giving into silly jokes that we came up with. This included a “raise the roof” routine that still exists on a VHS somewhere. Like every other teacher, they did their best. I think it helped that sixth grade meant that we moved across the way from where K-5 grades were, so most of the teachers were meeting the class fresh along with me.
Given that this was over 20 years ago, I am not fully sure what happened in what grade. However, I do think that I can recall the early days pretty well. For example, I remember the first day of recess where I sat on a bench looking out at the playground. Everyone was having a great time and my instinct of solitary observance was still ingrained in me. So I sat for those 15 minutes and watched the world around me pass by. When the bell rang, the principal came over and asked if I was being treated unfairly. I think that was one of the moments where I predicted that things would be different this time. The adults actually cared about my well-being. Soon I would be introduced into the student group and play basketball with them for most of the next three years.
I wouldn’t say that I was the *best* student. I think it would be several years before I approached any status like that again. However, I was assimilating in ways that were clumsy and awkward. I landed on a friend group with Kevin and Diego that started on the wrong foot. Kevin liked seeing me beat Diego up so I did for a few weeks before it became clear that my willingness to have someone point and I shoot wasn’t nearly as fun as they thought. I think my lack of individuality pleased and annoyed people because of this. I could joke about morbid topics and get a few laughs. Nothing mattered so long as they were welcoming me into the group.
For those keeping track, the year 2001 brings with it another familiar event that reshaped everything going forward. On September 11, 2001, I woke up to the news of the World Trade Center attacks. Because I was 12, I had no understanding of what I was looking at. There were planes crashed into buildings and my brain couldn’t process. I assumed that it was a movie. Every day I’d turn on the TV from there and it would be footage of Ground Zero. Even as I recognized the severity, I was still not able to know what this would mean in the larger scale of things. At my dad’s work, we listened to conservative radio hosts discuss the tragedy in real time.
This is not an essay meant to deconstruct the lengthy influence of 9/11 on my school years. However, it was an event that immediately impacted my education because of when it happened. There was the fear of planes flying into a west coast location. Reports of The Pentagon being targeted only brought more fear. The one that fell into a field was both tragic and a relief. Every new detail was so surreal and something in American history that wouldn’t match in shock until January 6, 2021. Even then, this was a moment akin to “innocence lost” where we went from being naïve and optimistic about the future to preparing for outright war, racial targeting, and levels of American patriotism that seemed cool at the time but grew more embarrassing the closer you looked. The world stopped for this event. You could no longer walk people to their gate in the airport. So much changed, and all I wanted was for things to get back to normal.
But the punchline to all of this is more symbolic of what I’ve discussed up to this point. Yes, while I didn’t lose anyone on 9/11, I did have one setback. Because of how the calendar lined up, September 11, 2001 was St. Cornelius’ back to school night. My parents have spoken about how they weren’t entirely sure what was going on because of that.
For me, I personally doubt that my whole life was changed because back to school night was canceled. However, I think it got to the heart of a bigger issue that emerged in the months following 9/11. As the school processed the event and began discussing it in class, I realized that there was nobody I could grieve with. I could simply watch everyone around me react and take in their comments. Nobody seemed overwhelmed by the event, but there was still concern. People would bring in conspiracy theories (the funniest being how a Wingdings-type font had 9 11 appear as a plane and two towers) and there was a hefty exchange. Looking back, we were not the most empathetic group of people, though there was effort to try and understand. I remember somebody once wrote a whole skit where somebody did an interview with Justin Timberlake about the Super Bowl incident. It was a confusing time and the only downside is that I had nobody there who made me think, “Yeah, I’d be sad if I lost them” since I had only known them a matter of weeks at that point.
There were a ton of sporadic events throughout the school year that came to define my time there. The most noteworthy was The Fiesta. It was one of the few times where I could watch my dad set up booths without having to help because I was in class. There was some relief but also the idea that he was present everywhere meant that I didn’t really have the freedom sometimes to just goof off. He would bring something up. But The Fiesta for those three years was fun. We’d get a group together on the weekend and just loiter around, being allowed to go everywhere but the gigantic beer tent. A band was often set up playing family friendly covers of The Champs’ “Tequila” (now “Chaquita” where they’d hold up a banana) and Sublime’s “Santeria.” It was a real family environment. The issue is that once everyone graduated, the event ceased to be fun.
Another thing that came with the territory was school dances. Grades 6 through 8 would gather in the gym every few months and get to have a few hours of fun. The deal was that people brought in CD’s with their names tagged somewhere on them. Maybe they’d have a song recommendation. Whatever the case may be, we followed the standards that we weren’t allowed to play “naughty” music. So long as it met those guidelines, we had a great time just standing around a room vibing to our music.
It was here that I got the reputation for being a dancer. I wasn’t necessarily coordinated or that great, but the way that I thrashed around drew a crowd and people enjoyed watching me. It was thrilling knowing that the attention was on me. Even as I grew sweaty and exhausted, I kept going because I loved the feeling of being part of the crowd. They would talk about me. I think on some level the moment when they turned away hurt too much. I didn’t have much to offer these people, so I had to give them anything that resembled appeal.
The final thing that was constant during my time at St. Cornelius was church. Much like OLOR, we had that regular schedule of having to attend mass on Fridays. Depending on who you were, this was a great release from class or a very long, boring hour where you got to hear the same stories from the bible. I can’t say that I ever loved being there, but it was simply part of my life. Much like wearing uniforms in every grade until I was 18, it was just ingrained that I needed to be here. We would also come on Sundays, at which point my grandparents would also be there singing off key in a laughable higher pitch.
It's because of these years that I do struggle with the idea of religion being an inherent good or bad. At no point do I feel like I was discriminated against. Nobody treated me poorly or abused me in any way. All problems were solved with rationality and while we’d disagree on certain values, there was never the sense that these people were being overbearing with their beliefs. I do believe wholeheartedly that there’s people who are Catholic without it feeling like they’re preying on others. Maybe it’s because of this time I have a soft spot for many hymns. Once I accepted the bible as more allegory than truth it became an interesting read. With all that said, I still think that celebrating the abuse of Jesus and how he was a sacrificial hero can’t help but fill everybody with irreparable guilt. This one detail seems problematic because it reads to me like a victim complex in the wrong hands and a sense that you can only be loved by being brutally assaulted.
But if I’m being honest, I don’t have a good answer for where I stand overall. The best that can be said is that I’m not a fan of church on a more national stage where groups like Westboro Baptist Church are against groups that don’t support their values. I think of the film The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2022) which I feel is one of the best depictions of the two sides of religion I’m grappling with, notably when it applies to personal values and public spectacle. I had no issue with any of the priests who were all capable of providing delightful sermons post-gospel and used the students as crowd work. One time there was a whole spiel that resulted in him saying, “Say hell no to drugs.”
The final piece of this puzzle is that even as I contemplated so much of my relationship with religion, I was one of the most reliable altar servers that the school had. I knew the routines. I feel like I got picked out of a crowd a few times to fill in for people. There’s not a lot to discuss at this stage. If we were consistent enough, we would be invited to the altar servers trip, which was usually to Knott’s Berry Farm. I’ll admit that as time went on I did get a little rambunctious, but I think there was too much respect for the job that I never actually misbehaved while in robes on the altar.
As far as introductory years go, sixth grade proved to be a complete success. I can’t say that I had a new best friend, but I was able to fit within the peer group and feel like I belonged. Then again, that’s the byproduct of being in a class of 30ish students. Everyone knows everyone and the one or two you don’t says something about them. I will have more fraught relationships that I will get into in the next section, but for now I am relieved to say that everything was going okay. Over one summer I would invite everyone to a birthday party where we saw 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003) at a local theater. We’d hop over to the local pizza joint. When everyone wound down, we would shift to the arcade where a group of us worked through The Simpsons Arcade Game, each taking turns.
Though I suppose there would be room to learn. As much as I don’t remember what happened where, I do remember one detail from the end of sixth grade that showed I had a ways to go. A random student, not even in my grade, was talking to me about my behavior. He mentioned how annoyed he was that I was the type to answer “What’s up?” with “The sky.” He had to explain casual discourse to me in a way that made me think he thought it was tough love. That, and he thought it was embarrassing that I was tucking in my shirt. Small changes like that came to define the rest of my time there. Even then, I think that there was some disconnect between me and several students that would only grow in the years ahead. Sixth grade was nice, but I think from here on out it was about testing my limits and doing my best to not get in too much trouble until graduation in 2004. Yep, middle school really was an odd time for everyone involved.
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