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Orientation
Orientation

We walked through my old elementary school today. The one so many people insist has changed. After all, it's been 35 years since I went to kindergarten here. They don't duct tape kids to their chairs anymore. They don't lock them in coat closets. They don't control their classes with an "ugly stick".
I spent my delicate and anxious youth trying to hide here, pretending to be alive, shutting my eyes and ears to the terror of it.
Yesterday, when your sister was choking on a LEGO flower, I glanced at you. You had fallen to the ground on top of your little frog legs, your hands pressed hard over your ears, and your mouth in the shape of a scream. The fear had sucked the air right out of your lungs. That. That was how I lived my childhood within these walls.
"Things have changed, Allie."
I walked through these halls with you trying to see it anew. It will be your school in 5 days. There is a hermit crab hiding on a stick in a tank, pretending to be dead. There are superheroes painted on the walls of the lunchroom. There's no air conditioning and the heat has brought out the scent of almost 100 years of chicken patties and gym shoes, souls of the kids like me. The other parents are fanning themselves with school handbooks and inoculation records. You've bitten off all of your nails.
They take you away with the other kids, without any ceremony, to meet your teacher and ride the bus. In the chaos you're separated from your twin sister's hand and pushed onto a different bus. When you return you're crying that they'd pushed you, given you a tag. You don't know how to read yet and you didn't know what it said. Your sister lives at your house and you were not with her so where were you going? Would you see us again?
You don't want to go to school anymore.
No one notices you crying in my arms.
Childhood.
Tiny traumas, one after another, preparing you for a life of the same.
I kiss your hair as you cover your ears. What do I even say.
You found your sister's hand and we move through classrooms. Your teacher is nice. You hug her immediately. She asks you what you want to be called and if you would rather be called by your nickname. You spell if for her proudly and I remember my teacher changing the spelling of my name because she didn't like it.
"Things have changed, Alli."
I never changed it back.
I feel sick and wonder if the nurses office is still blue, remember throwing up on the principal's shoes after she shook my arms and told me I wasn't sick. One single hallway where we covered our heads and held our ears during tornado drills. Hermit crabs in a hall. Little box classrooms with walls pasted with the word "Consequesnces". What are the consequences, I wonder. What are they, really?

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Taken on: August 10, 2018
Tags: Everybody's photos tagged with childhood childhood Everybody's photos tagged with school school Everybody's photos tagged with cry cry more » Everybody's photos tagged with fear fear Everybody's photos tagged with kids kids Everybody's photos tagged with trauma trauma « less
Groups appears in:   • CHILDREN'S PORTRAITS    • Child Photography    more » • Kids Life    • You are not a dinosaur.    • CHILD PHOTO COMPETITION    • Flickr Social    • "Useless, useless" again    • Children being children    • Petits riens | Simple things    « less
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Orientation

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