2c Victory
All of us second graders sat in the auditorium waiting for something to happen, something was obviously afoot. There was about to transpire a thing so big it was outside our scope to even imagine it. As the teachers of the four second grade classes consulted with each other down front, we second graders restrained ourselves from loading clear plastic Bic pen shooters with gooey spit balls. This uncharacteristic line towing amongst the four classes was testament to the power of belief in a promised future goodness. That we were being duped did not even occur to most of us. We had been threatened by the most foreboding of the teachers and told to sit quietly, face forward, and keep our hands in our laps. On that day I for one had no greater promise from anyone, of an unknown reward, so did exactly as told. The feeling I derived from this bridling of self was one of both satisfaction and uneasiness. I did not know then that the duping went on throughout life, every day if you cared to look, and so tried, pretty successfully on that day, to be good and thus win a vaguely promised prize. After a wait that began to have all the earmarks of punishment, when there was throughout the auditorium the faint sound of ripping paper and a concealment of chewing, one of the teachers told us what the deal was. We were all going to return to our separate classrooms for a contest in which only two of us, one boy and one girl, would be chosen as winners. We were by class, 2a, b, c and d lined up single file and led back to our rooms. There was throughout this process so much wasting of valuable learning time that we all began to feel somewhat, already like winners. So we of grade 2c sat forward in our desks and waited nervously for the contest to begin. I was not then and am not now a classic winner. I was second in spelling contests and could add numbers together and write one page murder mysteries, if someone helped me spell knife. I had guilelessly outsmarted the Grim Reaper once, or maybe twice by then, but had no trophies to show for it. I was surviving the pummeling love of my older siblings but knew not what worth there was in that. The teacher said--we are going to have a smiling contest, and we all smiled. But she wasn't kidding and that's what we did, smiled our best smiles while she walked around the room and inspected us. In the end it was Greg Parker and Emily Rhimes who won, which I begrudgingly admitted to myself later on, as logical, seeing as how they had the exact same smile, and seemed to need no joke or promise of love or tickling of ribs to bring it on. They got to represent the second grade for the newly formed elementary school student council, minor figure heads really, as the seventh graders of course ruled the school. Since that day 40 years ago I am apt to see myself in every forced and awkward smile begging for a reason to be real. I did later in my youth win a trophy or two, for team sport participation, but one of them had my name misspelled.
View current page
...more recent posts