Be true to your school, and let your colors fly

My grade school was my second home growing up, partly because my parents worked full-time and it offered reasonably priced before and after-school care, but I hung around mostly for the people who filled up the classes.

My school was not a traditional public school that many parents turn their noses up at for fear their child will turn out to be dangerous, uneducated, and violent with their curse words and other hoodlum habits they think are taught there (full disclosure – I fully support public schools and the school of the hard knocks, and my children will be attending said public schools, but that is another story for another day).  Rather, my school was a parochial Lutheran school set in the south side of Peoria, Illinois; a neighborhood some people avoided completely but where I found hidden gems of loveliness and beauty sprinkled throughout the tattered homes and overgrown yards, some with chained-up dogs that barked and jumped ferociously at us whenever we crossed the street to attend our weekly chapel service.  And let’s not get started on the one time there was a murderous clown roaming the streets during school hours, again, another story for another day.

Numbers, letters, learn to spell, nouns and books, and show-and-tell

My classmates and I were in it for the long haul of a nine-year relationship, learning about each other, making each other better, and helping each other along when shit got real as it often does for children and adults of all ages.  We sometimes fought, but we did it with vigor and an intensity backed by the superlative Christian morals we were fed religiously day in and day out through mid-day chapel services and hour-long religion classes that replaced lessons on evolution and natural selection with didactic on the difference between Catholocism and Lutheranism (was this really something I needed outside of playing Jeopardy?).  Looking back on this setup, I feel a bit cheated as they could have filled the time in religion class with a course on financial responsibility, how to form good habits, or a run-down on why rich people do what they do, but hindsight is 20/20 and if we are looking at the bright side of life, which I like to do, I did learn the art of storytelling in those religion classes.  

We snacked on small bits of jokes, bathed in the trends of the week (the Yo-Yo craze and sour Warhead competitions were by far my favorite), got our names on the board for talking too much or passing notes, and read stories together while we watched the clock and waited for the end of the day to arrive so we could run off and play our beloved volleyball or basketball in the state-of-the-art gym (where some of us had a revelation years later on where our offering money was truly going).  We ran twenty-five kids deep and we advanced classrooms year after year, owning a little bit more of the school as the years went by. 

I can tell that we are going to be friends

On occasion, a new kid would emerge at the start of the year, and we would hound them like a dog sniffing the butt of a new dog or a visitor in the house.  My classmates and I would perform our ceremonial pissing contest, circling them, asking them questions, and finding out why they were here and why they had not chosen to have been here the other years before.  At the end of the introduction, one or more of us would self-nominate as their buddy and help them acclimate, being their representative to break into the world of the cool kids.  We were not mean but we were protective of our own.   

One year we had a kid bring blinged-out keychains to school, which we thought was a bangin’ idea, but then he tried to sell it to us for an outrageous price of three dollars a pop.  We were eight, and the only money we had was from gritty chores or that leftover change from the ten dollars our grandparents gave us at the basketball game; we were not about to spend it on just anything.

Another year we had a girl from public school who was mature beyond her years, and you can only imagine the stir this created as we were in the thick of puberty.  The guys gravitated towards her stories and advances, and the girls, including myself, sat back and wondered if things would have been different if we had acted her way from the start.  Fortunately, most of us girls held strong to our cores and maintained our confidence without needing to sell our services; the jury is still out on how many stayed true to their colors.

Up in the mornin’ and out to school, the teacher is teachin’ the golden rule

As for me, I was an adventurous, self-conscious, energetic, and curious ten-year-old; mornings consisted of eating breakfast and watching Scooby Doo while getting ready for school.  I sang classic rock with my dad and brother on the thirty-minute commute from our home in the country, and when at school, I inhaled lessons in the classroom and utilized recess to the fullest, skipping around tree stumps, digging holes when it rained, making mudpies and branding them as Juper’s Jellies, and selling said creations them to other kids in exchange for playground treasures.  By mid-morning on any given day, you could find me in a mild tangle with one of my best friends about how they prefer to be best friends with someone else, and by afternoon you could find us bear-hugging, reconnecting our friendship necklace puzzle pieces, and sharing secrets.  My room was a shrine to the Hanson trio and I watched more rounds of Titanic and The Faculty than one would consider mentally healthy; being a ten-year-old was a supreme deal if you did not count the heavy backpack and raw knees resulting from amateur attempts to save a volleyball while crashing on that newly polished gym floor (remember where all of that offering money was going to?).

But being a ten-year-old took a quick turn that spring when Julius died.  None of us saw his departure lurking in the distance of Fate since fifth graders should not house the worries of death in their growing and expansive minds.  I cannot definitively say if we got stronger or weaker in fifth grade, but I can assure you we became more aware.

I think of that year almost every day of my life, and talking with other classmates nowadays, it appears I am not the only one.

You wake up late for school and you don’t want to go

The day Julius departed was a typical Wednesday morning, the arrival of spring teasing the Midwest as the calendar turned from a pesky F into the flowering and promising road of M-A-M.  My morning was filled with Shaggy’s nervous quips to the gang to turn the Mystery Machine around, to go munch on Scooby Snacks, and to forget about the cares of the world.  My cereal bowl sat atop the plush ottoman as it did every morning, a towel placed underneath the bowl to prevent my sloppy eating habits from becoming friends with my makeshift table, and my lower half contorted in a cheerleader sit while my eyes remained superglued to the television and my hand did a repetitive robotic motion and shoveled Cinnamon Toast Crunch from the bowl to my mouth. 

Minutes into the show, the phone rang, which was unusual as it was years before telemarketers figured out a way to get rich off of phone calls.  As a nosy, curious, loud, and assertive ten-year-old, I popped like a prairie dog coming out of a burrow to answer any phone call; it usually meant a great story with whoever had the guts to call up our wild house or a deep chat with one of my wise grandparents, conversations I readily engaged and hoped for.  But on that particular morning, instead of taking action to remove myself from the tube and get in on the phone scoop, my dad answered the phone, taking the call in the bedroom before he came down the hallway to make our descent to school from our house buried thick in the outskirts of city life.  

My mind knew his footsteps sounded different that day, but my brain did not compute it until hours later.   

My dad appeared in the living room and stood there, defenseless against his own mind, being sucked into a black hole but showing nothing but strength, not exactly sure how to start talking and wavering on whether or not to say anything at all.  He seemed sick.  

“There was an accident today at your classmate Julius’s house, and something bad happened.  There was a fire and they weren’t able to get him out in time, and he did not make it.”

Make it.  Did not make it.  What did that mean?  Did he forget to come to school that day?  Was he sick from the fire?  Did his family need our help?  Millions of thoughts raced through my mind, none of them the truth.  My heart tried to keep up with my mind, my breathing got faster, and my head pulsated and felt heavy.  

“He died?” It felt like an alien had overtaken my body and spoke these words for me.  I was an outsider to myself, not yet computing that death was a possibility for children too.  

“Yes.”

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? 

I was not sure what was happening. Kids were immortal, or at least it seemed like that when we were flying off of the swingsets and landing in a perfect Keri Strug-like move.  No way could he have died; it was not allowed until you were old.

My mind turned to the scene of the crime as it does whenever I hear of someone dying; the image of him lying in his bed as the smoke monster enveloped his soul churned in my brain.  Did he suffer?  When did he realize this was it for him?  Did it hurt or did it happen in his sleep?  

My whole world felt suffocated, wronged, and unfair.  For a solid ten years, I had cavorted here and there, laughing and galavanting like it all was a-okay, thinking life would never end and happiness would live on forever.  I took chances, stepped where I should not have and acted recklessly for the sake of a good time.  I laughed so hard my abs got a workout, I got worked up about cheerleading moves and volleyball games, and I absolutely loved candy.  Death never crossed my mind unless I was attending yet another funeral of my extended family (and believe me there were quite a few), where finality becomes clothed in promises of closure but where the sadness really begins to set in.

And I know you’re shining down on me from heaven (or somewhere for that matter)

To lose Julius was to lose part of my childhood.  With his rounded almond eyes, his ever-wearing grin, and his beams of encouragement, Julius was a friend to all.  If I had personified him into an animal, he would be the most loyal and gentle of the creatures, a comforting ball of love one goes to when having a hard day.  

Julius came to our school later in the game, he was one of those kids we encircled and butt-sniffed, but he was a good seed we could have used from the start; we all knew and felt the good vibes when we met him.  He hated no one, held his own with the other big personalities that galloped the room, but did it in a mild, respective, and content manner that could charm the angriest of lost luggage victims.  He made you feel like you were doing your best and your best was good enough.  Losing him was like losing the uplifting part of your daily routine.

Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality

It is difficult to imagine ten-year-olds being hit with the kind of tragedy only adults should have to face; it is even tougher to think these days there are children younger than this having to cope with the image of their classmate being shot in the head.  

Looking back, the biggest shock is how all of the kids went to school on the day Julius died.  I think about this often as now I struggle to attend anything if I am not in a good headspace or have the slightest hangnail.

Although I am a proponent of being a hermit crab, had I not gone to school the day Julius died, I am confident I would have been worse off; I would not have known that other people cared, that other people hurt, and that death is scary to most people, including myself.  I would have never learned that crying and pain are a part of life and that we will probably suffer more than we will party, although we will fight for the latter tooth and nail and might go down suffering in the process.  

Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see

My point is this – there is no point.  Losing someone at any age is awful and feels impossibly hard.  As I become entrenched in my parental years, I think back on this day from a new perspective.  I think about Julius’s parents and sister, who are beyond resilient and have used the cataclysmic event to support others, I think about the kids around me who never knew death and how it affected them, I think about what life would have been like had he made it past that fire, I think about how unfair it all is, but mostly I think about Fate, Life, and the fact that everything happens for a reason, although this event still feels like unfair punishment for all.  
Julius pushes me every day to do my best and live life to the fullest and is a reminder that life can change even on a Wednesday morning when you are comfortably watching Scooby Doo while debating which of your friends is going to be your BFF for the day.  So get out and make it happen folks, and remember that you are one of the lucky ones.