Paloma Magazine Volume 50

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