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 . 76 831.917.4227 familia+cultura+religión+sociedad
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