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School, oftentimes became a space with<br />
order and rules, common procedures,<br />
expectations, deadlines, some form of routine,<br />
some form of cohesion to my existence. It also<br />
meant a free warm meal in the morning and<br />
one in the afternoon, it meant some form of<br />
safety and parental supervision. Most people<br />
would find no joy in this, but I did. Preparing for<br />
back to school was an event at home. Mom<br />
would talk about back to school shopping with<br />
my two sisters and I weeks before. She would<br />
tell us, “El viernes los voy a llevar a comprar sus<br />
cosas pa’ la escuela” My sisters and I looked at<br />
each other, smiled and simply said, “YES!”. You<br />
see mom worked, always, and gave, always.<br />
Back then she was not much of a deal finder<br />
nor were we tied down to a budget. We got what<br />
we wanted, simple as that. We got all the<br />
mechanical pencils, actual pencils, erasers,<br />
pencil grippers, sharpeners, led for our<br />
mechanical pencils, pencil pouch, dividers, the<br />
biggest most baroque 7 things in one 3” binder<br />
you could find, equipped with its own storage<br />
pockets and secret compartments, of course<br />
we got a backpack every year, just as baroque,<br />
we also got scissors, ruler, color pencils,<br />
crayons, markers, mini stapler, paper clips<br />
(which we never used), hole puncher (which we<br />
used to make confetti, but not for our<br />
homework). My sisters, got a lot of the same as<br />
me, but theirs was Lisa Frank everything.<br />
After all the school supplies, we would go<br />
home open everything in complete chaos and<br />
disorder, and organized our backpack. Soon<br />
after that Mom would take us back to school<br />
shopping yet again, but this time it was for<br />
clothes and shoes. Again, she would go all out,<br />
no budgets. Sure, once we had our first weeks<br />
of clothes lined up and school supplies waiting<br />
to be used, we had all but two weeks until the<br />
first day of class. By the time school would start<br />
most of our pencils were almost gone from all<br />
of the sharpening, and most of our things would<br />
be a bit out of order and missing. This<br />
happened in elementary and part of middle<br />
school. In high school this was still true, but the<br />
things were all plain, they were all simple and<br />
meant only for their use, they almost seemed<br />
industrial, massed produced. To us it didn’t<br />
matter, cool meant not caring or pretending not<br />
to care, if in elementary it was all about school<br />
materials in high school it was the complete<br />
opposite. We carried simple 1” binders and<br />
found ways not to carry school materials and<br />
books. In classes, it was cool not to participate<br />
or care because if you did it would be a bit<br />
detrimental to your popularity. I guess where<br />
I’m going with all of this, the big point in<br />
SCHOOL BOY: A MEMOIR<br />
Chapter 7: School Lockdown<br />
elementary and middle school, oftentimes<br />
became a space with order and rules, common<br />
procedures, expectations, deadlines, some<br />
form of routine, some form of cohesion to my<br />
existence. This was still true in high school, but<br />
this became blurry during school lockdowns.<br />
The worst lockdown was in Mr. Nolan’s<br />
English class, it was the last period of the day.<br />
Perhaps, that day we were talking about Amy<br />
Tan, Eleanor Coerr or one of John Steinbeck’s<br />
novels when suddenly, a voice over the<br />
intercom, perhaps it was the principal or one of<br />
the assistant principals, said we were all in<br />
lockdown. Meaning that something dangerous<br />
perhaps treating was taking place near campus,<br />
this meant a shooting of some sort near school,<br />
which did not surprise us. This lockdown was<br />
different, after thirty minutes of being forced to<br />
be under our desks, as if it were an earthquake<br />
drill, we got impatient, we worried, we feared,<br />
we were confused, we were unsure, this was<br />
not like other lockdowns, this was not like<br />
before, it was well after school and we were still<br />
waiting, another thirty minutes must of have<br />
gone by when one or two of my peers, got<br />
impatient, as we could hear movement behind<br />
our classroom, our class was a portable all the<br />
way toward the back of the school, right next to<br />
the baseball field, and two peers stood up to<br />
see what was happening outside our room.<br />
Their faces rose red and pail in shock. They<br />
whispered, “Dam, there’s cops pointing their<br />
gun at this man who drove his car onto the<br />
field”. We could not believe it and soon after,<br />
over the school intercom one of the principles<br />
urged everyone to please remain in their rooms,<br />
since a suspect accused of shooting someone<br />
in town and of carrying a weapon fled the scene<br />
and brought the chase to campus. We didn’t<br />
know how long the man and cops had been on<br />
the field, we knew Mr. Nolan knew, but he<br />
remained calm, but soon after knowing this we<br />
didn’t, we couldn’t, the thought of a bullet<br />
piercing it’s way through our portable room,<br />
freaked us out, some began to call their<br />
parents, many of us just wanted to end, wanted<br />
to leave school, wanted to go home. After that<br />
day school became strange, different, we all<br />
had this feeling of a treat always feeling<br />
eminent, it felt possible, it felt like it could<br />
happen again. Days after in Mr. Nolan’s class it<br />
was not easy to concentrate, anytime we would<br />
see movement in the baseball field from<br />
the window pane we flinched a little as<br />
we tried to learn.<br />
CONTINUE…….<br />
Written by Julio Enriquez-Ornelas<br />
Professor at University of Tennessee, Knoxville<br />
Si sufres injusticias, consuélate, porque la verdadera desgracia es cometerlas.<br />
If you suffer injustice, console yourself because the real unfortunate is committing them .<br />
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