They’re also, obviously in the habit of groping around, metaphorically, trying to get a fix on things that puzzle them, mostly personal relationships. And thinking, thinking and wondering about all those confusing, sometimes troubling emotions that don’t quite know how to handle. And that three-letter word that is so confusing. Does it equate with love? Can't, not possibly, the way it comes out sounding so ... squalid. And awkward, unbelievably miserable, actually.
Just have to think back (squeamishly for some) of the sex education classes thrust on them from ... let's see ... grade five or thereabouts. When some of them really resented having to focus on things like that because it was boooring, and after all they were kind of young for that kind of thing, weren't they?
The girls at this school represent rural children, raised in a countrified atmosphere not far from a large, cosmopolitan urban centre. They are, themselves, cosmopolitan to a good degree. How could it be otherwise in a world of instant, constant communication, where everyone has a cellphone, access to computers and the Internet, and the rumour mill is constantly grinding out fascinating stories of adventure and social misadventure.
It’s a two-story school, originally built to accommodate roughly 350 students. The student population has been gradually declining, due to the fact that the families themselves are aging. Currently only 161 children attend the JK-to-8 elementary school. Which meant that classes were most often combined to make more functional use of classrooms and teachers.
It’s the Grade 7-8 class that’s out for recess this wintry day of minus-6-degree windchill. Not all that cold, to be sure, but plenty of snow accumulated. The class is a small one, divided between boys and girls, the girls having a slight edge on the boys. Ages twelve to thirteen, taught by a young woman with ten years teaching behind her, all at the same school. Her reputation has always preceded her; the students in grades 6 and 7 having been informed through the living grape-vine of school talk that she has a tendency to hysteria.
All the students had ample time over the summer months to prepare themselves for a new school year replete with plenty of homework, a new curriculum, and an instructor whose propensity to screeching never endeared her with any of her former students.
In fact, some of the students from the previous year’s graduating class, now attending high school in another nearby town, still regularly text-messaged some of the younger kids with whom they’d established friendships, occasionally asking about the most recent melt-downs of their former, detested grade 8 teacher. It was easy to whoop with laughter when you were no longer in her class.
For those remaining at the elementary school, anxious to complete the year and go off to first year high school, their teacher was an oppressive presence rather than the guiding hand most of them wished for. The school year hadn't, actually started out that way. Despite her reputation for bullying and solving problems of insubordination by hysterics, she hadn't yelled at them all, at first. Those were the honeymoon months.
Since then, she has repeatedly informed her class that they're collective nincompoops, learning-impaired, lunatics and malcontents. And they reciprocate by stony silence, then a whispered "retard!" between them, expressing their contempt for their teacher.
That, however, is beside the point of the events that occurred yesterday, when the class was out at recess on a blowy, snowy day. The girls perambulated separately from the boys, of course. They were as two separate species, acknowledging mutely the presence of each gender, but strict avoidance really worked best.
It was a trifle too cold for the more casual gear most of the boys and some of the girls had latterly effected. This day everyone wore hooded jackets, even if the hoods weren’t being worn. And many also wore ski pants - or more likely snow-boarding pants, to enable them to fool about in the snow and not end up with wet, cardboard-hard jeans afterward that would make them miserably uncomfortable for the remainder of the school day.
Two girls walked together in close conversation. They were long-time friends, had gone through the school system together, and lived not far from one another; one in an converted log cabin that had once been the local schoolhouse since modernized, the other in an old farmhouse on property owned by several generations of her family. They were very tall girls, very well developed, standing equal in height to their teacher. Who was out, doing yard duty that day.
The girl with the curly hair in a black-and-white checked jacket with a faux fur edging around the jacket’s limp-hanging hood (no self-aware - and they are all magnificently, vulnerably self-aware - teen would be seen sporting anything that could be taken as an actual pelt, or part of one, of nature’s environmentally embattled creatures. Faux does very nicely, thank you, and the more outrageously-elaborated-and-tinted-obviously-faux, why the better) first saw a younger classmate approaching and warned her partner.
Her friend, in a hot-pink jacket that emphasized her long burnished-blonde hair, grimaced as they both turned to await the approach of a grade 7 girl whom they both detested. The girl had her own group of friends, and why she insisted on bothering them continually was a bafflement and an irritation to them both. The younger girl, dressed in a full suit of purple jacket and matching snow pants, stopped just short of them, and performing an elaborate twist, kicked up a thick dust of snow against the legs of the older two girls. Who stepped back from the approaching snowdrift, turned their backs on the younger girl, and proceeded to walk away. When they stopped again, to continue their conversation, they became aware that the other student had followed them, when another drift of snow hit their jeans-clad legs.
“Stop that!” said the girl with the black-and-white jacket, turning angrily on the younger girl. “What do you think you’re doing? We’re not wearing ski pants, and we aren’t thrilled about getting snow all over us, thanks to you. What’s the matter with you?”
The younger girl smirked in response, and again repeated the twist and thrust, sending another spray of wet snow and ice bits onto the two girls’ jeans. Then stood there, hands on hips, waiting. A sudden silence seemed to envelop that portion of the school yard, as the younger girl’s companions, standing not far off, watched intently. An unfolding drama, just the kind of interesting event that gripped everyone’s attention on an otherwise-boring day.
“I told you to stop it”, said the girl evenly, her voice steady, but a threat of response lingering in the statement.
“Too bad, so sad”, trilled the other, and let loose with another spray.
“Warned you, didn’t I?” the older girl said, as she aimed a kick at the younger girl’s legs. Accurate contact.
The younger girl ran off, stopping in front of their teacher who had observed everything.
“Well, who told you to keep bothering them?” she asked.
Later, in the gym, the class was assembled for a co-ed dance, none of them wanted to engage with, and everyone quietly grumbled about. This class was very good at quiet grumbling, and even better at class rebellion. It didn’t take much for them to form a chorus of dissent, unwilling to give attention to a teacher given to melt-downs instead of firm control. This, she informed them firmly, was important. A choreographed dance routine for the school Christmas concert.
But then, they were soon diverted by another little drama. The same grade 7 girl, of almost equal height and weight as the two grade 8 girls whom she seemed to constantly shadow, once again approached the curly-haired and the blonde straight-haired companions. Stopping directly in front of the curly-haired girl, to shout directly in her face that she was a “horrible bitch” for having kicked her.
The girl receiving the message hardly blinked. But she did, emphatically, order the other to “back off, stupid. Don’t screech in my face. Get lost, Psycho”.
Which enraged the younger girl even further and she stood her ground, belting out a series of profanities at the older girl who reiterated her previous demand that the younger girl cease and desist: “I don’t appreciate stupid kids screaming in my face. Kindly back off.”
When nothing resulted but further denunciations of equally shrill dimension, along with a number of choice expletives, the older girl raised her hand and slapped the other in the face.
This was the first and only time the older girl had ever allowed herself to succumb to physical reaction in the face of any kind of provocation. She could recall her grandmother having told her, years ago when she was little and had been a victim of a bullying child, to hit back. She had recoiled, said to her grandmother she couldn’t do that, it wasn’t right. Now, after her hand had made contact with the cheek of the other girl, she felt a flood of released energy melting away her fury. She felt good about what she had done. And, as the enraged younger girl continued her rant-and-advance, she raised her hand to whack her again.
Which was when she became aware of many hands pulling her, pulling at her shoulders, her waist, pulling her away from the other girl. And that obnoxious pest, she saw, was also being pulled away from her near presence.
This was not a good day, nor a way to end a less-than-sterling school day.
Later, when the young girl with the curly hair got back home after school, she texted her grandmother:
Hello, im so frustrated with Mrs.Mccauley i swear im going to kill her she got all mad at me today for a million little things where i dont know what i did wrong like during math, lunch, crafts and dance. (gym) Then theres this girl darby who i almost murdered today she kept kicking snow at me because i wasnt wearing snowpants so she thought that was ok. then during dance/gym she kept screaming in my face so i told her to stop and she got louder so i pushed her away and of course she did it again so i slaped her and once again for the millith time she came back and then people started to kind of pull us apart thank god because i was about to kill herHer grandmother sat there, staring at the message, aghast. All those spelling errors. What were they teaching young people in school, these days?
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