Thankfulness

Thanksgiving has come and gone again this year and, as always, people are asking “What are you thankful for?” I have a lot to be thankful for, as most people do. Even in the most horrible of situations, there is something to be thankful for. Now, I know what you’re thinking: “You don’t know that! How bad has your life been? Probably not that bad! People have it a lot worse!” And in response, I say, yes people have had it worse, but even then, they have something that they can be thankful for. If you work a crummy job and hate your life, you still have food, a job, and a life to hate. Even in the direst of circumstances, like living in poverty in a third world country, or being oppressed in a tyrannical dictatorship, there is something you can be thankful for: your family, your life, your ability to walk, talk, dance, sing, think, breathe. There is always something, down to the crumbs you found in the garbage to satisfy just a moment of hunger, that you can thank God for.

My life has never been that bad, thanks to my loving parents and their hard work that they have put into life, and that trait being passed onto myself. However, I have run into some difficulties that I found very hard to deal with throughout their occurrences, that I now look back on and am thankful for. That is what I am discussing today.

When people think of school, most people think of their middle school, or high school, or college, or even just their home (for all you homeschoolers out there). I think of 10 different places:

1. Kindergarten: Public
2. 1st-2nd Grade: Homeschooled
3. 3rd: Half homeschooled, half private schooled
4. 4th: Homeschooled
5. 5th: Public
6. 6th-7th: Homeschooled for History and Language, Public for Music, and Co-Op for Math, Science, and Religion
7. 8th: Skipped
8. 9th-10th: Private
9. 11th-12th: Public
10. 1st College: Private
11. 2nd College: Public

That is a lot of schools. I remember each one pretty well, even back to kindergarten. And when I got into high school, I cursed all of this change. School was a source of socialization and friend-making for most of the kids that I had met, who had maybe changed schools once or twice. I had already changed 6 times. But now that I am in college, I have seen that each of these experiences shaped me in ways that no other experience could have. So, because I am thankful for them, I am going to run through each of these places, and what they taught me.

#1: Public Kindergarten class.

The only particular things that I remember about Kindergarten are a religious experience and leaving. I remember my mom taking me from school one day and saying that I wouldn’t be going back. I was confused, because the year wasn’t over yet, and I wanted to go back to my friends tomorrow. She explained that what I was learning wasn’t going to help me, so she was going to teach me instead. As a 6-year-old, that was fine with me, because my mom was awesome and if she could teach me stuff without ever leaving my yard, then woohoo!

The other part I remember was at Christmas time. Our class was sitting around in a circle on the floor, and the teacher was reading to us from holiday books. We read about Kwanza, Hanukah, and a Muslim tradition that I have forgotten. We made decorations and sang songs from these traditions, and I, in turn, told my mom about them when I came home from school. She asked me if we had talked about Christmas. I explained that I had brought it up, but our teacher wouldn’t allow us to learn about Christmas. She said it was an exclusive holiday and that it wasn’t allowed in the classroom. When my mom heard that, she called my teacher. She had some words with her, and then the woman hung up on my mom. Bad move on her part. My mom brought me to school the next day and brought with her a book about the Christmas story. She handed it to my teacher and threatened a lawsuit if she didn’t give it the same attention that she had given the other holidays. At the time, I had no idea what was going on, I just knew that I shouldn’t eat the Playdoh, and we got to talk about Christmas! I was excited, and so were the other kids, as most of them celebrated the holiday of Jesus’ birth.

What did I learn from all this? I learned not to be ashamed or afraid of what I believe, even if it makes me stand out or other people uncomfortable. I learned that my faith was something to stick with, and not let people bar me from. Also, don’t eat Playdoh.

#2: Homeschooling 1st, 2nd, and 4th grade

Through these years, I learned under my mother the basic understandings of math, science, history, and language. She taught me well, and also consulted an online teaching program for other subjects like music. These years are a bit of a blur, but I remember many field trips and fun days in which we explored learning outside the classroom (aka our living room).

What did I learn from this? Mostly, I learned to love stories. Anyone who knows me, or has read my previous posts, knows that I love telling stories, writing stories, and making stories. This urge to create, write, and share is a large part of who I am, and I would be a completely different person without it. More often than not, my conversations start with, “Did I ever tell you about the time…”

#3: Private Christian school 3rd grade

The home-schooling part of this year blends in with the previous, but the private school part stands out in stark contrast. The school I attended was so small that only one teacher taught 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade all in the same classroom. This would have been fine, except that all the grades learned the same material. This made the lessons very hard for 3rd graders, and too easy for 5th graders. Thusly, many students got bored or frustrated and caused a commotion in class. This was the first year in which I worked with other kids in a semiserious school setting. The other two 3rd graders tried to help me adjust, but I didn’t quite accept their help. As I had spent the last two years developing without many kids my age in my educational atmosphere, I wasn’t used to the helping, teasing, or them even existing. All in all, the school didn’t work out. It was an atmosphere of weirdness, and I can only remember the crazy stuff that I told my mom about when I got home each day. “Some kid started taunting a car in the parking lot.” “The teacher keeps reading us little kid books.” “Mom, what’s an (expletive)?” I left the school after only being there a month or so, as the atmosphere was less than constructive.

What did I learn from this? I learned to work with other people. I was trying to learn and grow by myself, and throughout my time at this school, my grades and performance suffered because of it. After this experience, I learned that it was more beneficial to everyone if we worked together rather than alone.

#4: Public school 5th grade

This was one of the hardest years of my pre-teen childhood. My teacher was talented in her profession, but also a monster. She constantly picked on students, singled them out and made them feel bad about themselves, and held grudges forever. She was a solitary woman, and none of us knew anything about her. She wouldn’t share anything personal with us at all, to a distracting and obnoxious extent. Once, a student asked her what her husband’s name was, and she gave them the silent treatment for the rest of the day. I made the mistake of googling my school to learn about a fire that had happened at the school a year or so before I attended. I found a picture of my teacher and showed her the picture, “Hey look Mrs. Teacher, it’s you!” She treated everyone like trash for the rest of the day and then sat us down as a class after lunch. This was what she told us.

“Class, I’m sorry if I’ve been in a bad mood today, it’s just that someone (and she turned her head to glare at me) has been looking me up on the internet.”

“Who?” the class wondered. However, some had caught on to her glare.

“I won’t say any names (she glared at me again) but they know who they are. I like my privacy, so it is deeply disturbing to me when I find out that people are trying to find stuff online about me.”

I hadn’t looked her up. Her classroom’s picture had been featured in the news article detailing the fire. It had popped up. For her to be angry at me was childish. But this wasn’t the worst thing she did.

One week, she said that If we could get all our homework in on time for a month, she would make us brownies. We were excited because she had never done anything nice for us before. We worked very hard to make sure everyone got their homework done on time, and at the end of the month, the class had not a single assignment unaccounted for. The next day, the teacher passed out napkins, and forks, and brought out a brownie pan with a lid on it. she then walked around the room and pulled out little brown papers in the shape of the letter E, and put them on our napkins. We had a good laugh and asked her where the real brownies were. She then told us: “Why would I give you brownies? You should get your homework done on time without any extra incentive. Let this be a lesson to you, that people don’t always do what they say they are going to do.”

That was it. No joke. She just took our napkins and forks and moved on to our math lesson. Total witch, right? Well, she wasn’t the only one.

There was a girl in my class, call her Jill, who had a monster crush on me. She also had a bad habit of making my life very difficult. She got me into trouble many times, and outside the classroom, she tortured me as well. I live near some soccer fields, and both her and my sibling played soccer there. So, when a game came, we both ended up being there. I sat and watched the game, but Jill had other plans. She did the classic steal-his-hat move that girls like to do when they like a boy. Ladies, a word of caution, GUYS MIGHT HATE THIS. They might not, but if they don’t respond positively, give it back. I let the hat go, and didn’t pursue Jill at first. But then she started running up behind me and hitting me with my hat. She started taunting me, singing little chants and calling me a wuss. Well, little 10-year-old me was not a wuss! So, I finally got up and chased her. I was so mad and had so much angry adrenaline running through my already large body, that I had no trouble catching her and grabbing my hat. I told her to let go, but she wouldn’t. I said this wasn’t funny, but she just laughed and laughed. If you have ever seen the film adaptation of the play Dutchman, I was Clay, and Jill was Lula. Well, naturally, I did what a boy did when somebody had something of his: I pulled really hard. And I got my hat. However, Jill had been pulling really hard, and when she no longer had a hat to hold onto, fell backward. She hit her head on a soccer goal and cried all the way home. She barely dinged it, and her mom said she was fine. She was in school the next day and didn’t have a scratch on her. However, it was her day for show-and-tell. She told a dramatic story of how little me chased her across the field and tackled her to the ground, for no reason, and slammed her head against a metal bar. She also said she went to the hospital and got stitches, but that was just a blatant lie. Of course, my teacher turned this into a lecture for me, and how I needed to be nicer to girls. I just sat at my desk and shook my head.

What did I learn from all this? Tolerance, Self-control, and how to deal with conflict. Did I yell at my teacher for making me the subject of the lecture and an angry rant? No. Did I yell at Jill for lying to the class and making me out to be a bully? No. Did I get mad when that girl stabbed me with a pencil on the bus? Well, yes, but that was well deserved. She stabbed me. With a pencil. It drew blood! But as a 5th grader, I gained the necessary skills to keep my mouth shut when it counted.

#5: Co-op, home school, and public school 6th and 7th grade

These were weird years. Trying to cover everything that happened during them would be futile because there is too much to tell. So instead, I will recount two major stories, and then what I learned from each place.

The first story is of a kid we will call James, who was in my choir class at the public school. He was a tall kid, played basketball, and went to my church. However, over the course of the year, he stopped going to church and instead told me he was worshipping the Greek gods now. This came out of nowhere and didn’t last long, but it happened. Anyway, I saw as the years crept by, James started to become more and more angry and hateful of the world and people around him, but to an extent that the public-school society was okay with. He got mad at people who followed strict rules, who had different opinions, or who tried to tell him what to do. One day I came to class, and overheard a conversation with him and the guy sitting to his left (I sat on his right) about “gay rights”. I put that in quotes because I think it is very misleading terminology, but that’s a discussion for another blog. James was talking at this kid and worked himself up to a pretty angry level. He then turned to me, minding my own business, and asked: “What do you think about gay rights?”

“Which ones?” I asked in return.

“Gay marriage,” he said. He seemed to have settled down, and he was asking my opinion, so I gave it to him straight: my 7th-grade opinion: “I think that what they do is wrong, but I don’t think the law should tell them what they can and can’t do.” This is what I was trying to say, but no sooner had the words “I think what they do is wrong…” left my mouth, before a giant hand slapped me across the face with such force that it made a loud clapping sound and several heads turned to look at us.

“You cannot say that! You don’t get to say that! Who are you to tell them what they can and can’t do??” I was holding my face and fighting tears. I had never been hit like that before. My parents were brutal when it came to punishments but slapping was where they drew a line. James then folded his arms and turned his back to me, pouting like a small child. I tried very hard to hold it together, as our teacher called for order and explained the lesson for the day.

The second big defining moment of these years came one day after school. My parents couldn’t pick me up until a half an hour after school had ended at the public school, so I held the door for students as they left, and talked with “friends” I had made while in class. These kids were nice to me, choosing to stand at the door with me and talk to me after school. But one kid, call him Dawson Drake, was a real jerk. He made fun of me being overweight, single, polite, musical, Christian: you name it, he teased me about it. His torture hurt, but was easier to manage when other people were around to talk to. As long as I was in a group and could focus my attention elsewhere, I was fine.

But one day, my father couldn’t pick me up until an hour after school had ended. This meant I had to sit outside on a bench and wait for him. Dawson Drake stuck around after school too, and he decided to make a new record of the number of insults he could throw at me in a day. It took all of my strength to keep from crying. I would have hit him, but his vocal jabs were so brutal that the fight went out of me. The school was only about 4 miles from my house, so I decided to leave. I just started walking home. I couldn’t stand to be around Dawson anymore, so I left. I made it a little over a mile before it started to downpour rain. I was sopping wet when my dad found me, and he was angry like I had never seen before. “What are you doing out here?? Why didn’t you wait for me??” But when I explained what had happened, he calmed down and asked how long this had been going on. I told him that it had been happening for over a month, and he said, “Well it stops today.” When we got home, he called the principal’s office. “May I speak to the principle?”

He was transferred and heard this when the phone was picked up: “Hello, this is Principle Drake.” He gave me a wide-eyed look.

“What was the kid’s last name?” He asked me, covering the phone with one hand. “Drake,” I replied. “Well Mr. Drake,” he said laughing, “this phone call just got a lot more interesting.” He sorted out the conflict with Mr. Drake, and although Dawson was unapologetic, and denied ever having teased me, he didn’t do it again after that.

What did I learn from all this? In my Co-op, I learned to love math. I had hated it before then, but my teacher opened my eyes to how numbers were actually really cool. In my home, I learned how to properly write stories so I could do things like this blog well. In my public school, I learned a couple different things:

1. People don’t seem to like anything to do with religion in a public school.
2. If you have a problem, work it out, don’t run from it.
3. Bullies will be bullies.
4. People are not always rational.
5. Teachers can be wrong.
6. I love making music.

These things came with time, and both positive and negative experiences, but ultimately were great lessons to take away from middle school. I skipped 8th grade the next year, so these two years were all I had of middle school, and believe me, they were enough.

#6: Private school 9th and 10th grade

Too many stories came from this place. So many that I could, and might, write a book on it. One such story is Closure is a Beautiful Thing.

I learned a lot about the real world, and what things in it meant. I was pretty sheltered up and to this point, and after these two years, I had no more questions about anything.

Some of the stories I have from this time of my life:

1. Bobby: the boy who insulted my mother.
2. Mr. Science Teacher: The teacher who didn’t teach.
3. The time I made my Spanish teacher cry.
4. The Christians who weren’t Christian.
5. How I met one of my greatest friends.
6. Mock trial and its mockery.

There are many more, and I will no doubt expand on them later, but for now, I’m just going to focus on what I learned from this place.

What did I learn from all this? Well, for one thing, I learned what it was like to be at the bottom of the totem pole. I was chubby, goofy, and an outsider at this school, making me the lowest of the low in the social scene. I also learned what it was like to be betrayed. Most of the people who I called my friends from those years ended up abandoning me by the end of sophomore year: not all, but most. This taught me to put my trust in God rather than people. I learned how to fail, and to value the humility that comes from it. I also learned to ignore people who brought me pain. I became a master of the art of avoiding conflict, which had positive and negative effects.

#7: Public school 11th and 12th

These years are the complete opposite of those at private school. These were some of the happiest years of my life thus far, and I am so happy that God saw fit to give me the lessons he did at this school. Again, there are way too many stories that came out of this place to sum up here, so I will explore them later. One such story is The Prom Night I Got Dropped Like It Was Hot. Some others include:

1. 1, 2, 3 Strikes You’re Out: Letting Go of a Girl
2. The Talent show
3. Dealing with Loss
4. Following God, Even When You Don’t Want To.
5. The Grimm Brothers’ Spectaculathon
6. Shrek: The Musical
7. The Teach Who Freaked

What did I learn from all this? I learned so much at this school, it was simply incredible. First off, I learned what it was like to be at the top. Within the first semester of my being there, everyone in the school knew my name. I was popular and had a fantastic reputation. Teachers liked me, students liked me, parents liked me. I lost 40 pounds during my junior year and kept the weight off through to graduation. My first year there I was made Prom King at the junior prom. I was a lead singer in my choir. I led a Bible study. I had tons of friends. I had good grades. I got a lead in the school musical. My senior year I was voted Most Active in School, and Best to Take Home to Mom and Dad. I was at the top in almost every way. AND YET, my life felt somewhat empty. All these things, popularity, friends, good grades, they meant nothing once I had them. The friends were not all true. The grades went away. The popularity ceased to exist after high school. I had invested a lot of time and effort into gaining these things, and they meant nothing to me once I got them. After these years, I was more conscious of my true friends and invested more time in family. I pursued my faith with new vigor and tried to become the best man I could.

#8: Private College 1

This year in college was amazing, and I loved it. It was a place of growth and joy. Sadly, it was also a place of hardship. When I returned from that place, I found that my character had eroded down to a fraction of myself and that I needed to find a better place to develop. This is why I transferred to my public college. Again, there were so many stories out of this place, I cannot recount them all. Some were Board Game Girl and Visiting The Best Community in the World, and there were many others which I will write about later:

1. The Many Pick-a-dates
2. My Crazy Roommate
3. Italy: Best Trip Ever
4. Stargazing
5. The Night of the Watchman
6. Voice Lessons
7. The Most Difficult Teacher Ever
8. The Time I Rick-Rolled College

What did I learn from all this? The best place on earth might not be the best place for you to grow. I was in a place filled with great people who cared about me very much, and who had very similar ideals and values as I did. It was an amazing place to be a part of. I think didn’t grow as a person there because I didn’t face a ton of adversity. I wasn’t faced with opinions radical to my own, and I wasn’t challenged in my faith. But in that place, I felt a bit of heaven on earth: like it was a small reflection of what Christ’s Kingdom on earth would look like. The other thing I learned there was confidence. I learned to be outgoing, unique, and confident in my personality as an individual.

#9: Public College 1

This place is where I am today. I can’t say what it has brought me, because it hasn’t been completed yet! I plan to stick around here for another two years though, so hopefully, my days of school-hopping are behind me. Some of the stories from this place so far include Green Bean Girl and The Night We Didn’t Sleep. Many more stories are to be made here, and I can’t wait.

Overall, the things I have learned from all this can be summed up in this list:

1. To accept and be bold with my religion.
2. How to tell stories well.
3. How to work with other people.
4. Self-control, Tolerance, and how to deal with conflict.
5. How to love academics.
6. How to deal with difficult people.
7. How to love music.
8. What it’s like to be at the bottom.
9. What it’s like to be at the top.
10. Confidence
11. Girls are confusing, so don’t think about them so much.
12. Growth is more important than comfort.

All of these things were gained from hard days and times of my life, and I am so thankful for them. Their effects on me have been invaluable, and I cannot wait to see how they help me and others later on in life. God uses all for the good of those who follow Him, so these experiences can and will be used to better many people.

Happy Thanksgiving! What A Day…

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash