I wouldn’t consider school a second home even though it did take up a majority of my life. Remembering of a place that meant so much to me was hard because I’ve only known so much. The place that came to mind is a place that I would have never thought of revisiting because once I left I never looked back. It may sound silly to think that a middle school can be such a dangerous and gut-wrenching place, but that is how I felt back in the seventh grade in 2007.
Edward P. Jones and his short story “Old boys Old girls” highlights Caesar Matthews as someone who had to struggle with change, losing friends and nearly dying while making a home for himself at Lorton’s prison. Jones also characterizes Pancho Morrison as the vulnerable repenting individual who will do whatever it takes to survive Lorton’s prison and make amends with his family. Lorton’s prison was the place both Pancho and Caesar had to survive. Leonardo Da Vinci’s Intermediate School 61 was mine for the next two years. You would think that a school would be considered a second home since you spend most of your time in one.
Instead I learned that a school could be a prison when you have to do things that you are not proud of to build a reputation for yourself if you wanted to survive. Even though Leonardo Da Vinci’s Intermediate School 61 didn’t resemble Lorton’s prison from the outside, once I was inside each classroom felt like a cell. Geographer Tim Cresswell mentions geographer Yi-Fu Tuan in an essay on how Tuan believes that “Home, more than anywhere else is seen as a center of meaning and field of care” (Cresswell, 39). A school is supposed to give you that feeling of security, you shouldn’t have to come in feeling like a prisoner like Caesar did.
Unlike Caesar did not have a reputation nor was l”a protected body” (Jones, 76). Everyone in class 707 was an absolute stranger. Everyone else seemed to know each other from the previous year. From the first day alone I knew that this class was going to be trouble. I don’t like to judge people by the way they look, but at the time these boys looked like thugs. Some of them looked like they belonged in high school. Surprisingly enough my best friend Gabe at the time was also put into the class and reduced the amount of distress that I would later encounter.
Cathedral’s words of “you can’t let nobody fuck with your humanity” can be related to Gabe’s attitude because he was half my size but he carried himself like he belonged there (Cathedral, 77). I on the other hand struggled with making friends, fitting in, and just adjusting to this new class. Caesar was influenced by Cathedral and Multrey to force Pancho Morrison into giving up his bottom bunk as a way of showing dominance and letting “him know who rules”(Cathedral, 77). Similar to how they convinced Caesar I was also convinced by my friend Gabe to bully a Chinese boy named Sam.
I don’t blame my friend as much as I blame myself for carrying out all the verbal and physical abuse that we caused him. I can’t remember if I did it to seem cooler in front of Gabe or to show how tough I can be, but all I know is that I would regret it later on. During History class my teacher called out Gabe and me to report to the dean’s office. As we were leaving my teacher held the door open with the look of disgust and shame, I already knew what this was about, considering Sam wasn’t in the room. I was considered one of his better students and he would never look at me the same. The dean didn’t call our parents.
Instead he had us apologize to Sam and gave us a warning that if either one of us continued harassing Sam that he would get the cops involved. I could try and play the “I was just a kid” card, but I knew what | was doing just like Caesar did when he assaulted Pancho. Ever since that day I never bullied Sam or anyone for that matter. I actually considered Sam one of my best friends down the road similar to how Pancho and Caesar gained a mutual respect before Pancho was released. I guess I could come across as a bad guy from the previous paragraph but that is nothing compared to what was going on around me at the same time.
Besides being exposed to the reality of drugs, alcohol, sex, gangs, and racism I can also relate myself to Pancho Morrison when Jones mentions how “though he could have got up he stayed there, silent and still. ” I was actually bullied myself by a couple of people throughout my two years in this class. I remember this one time I was sitting at my desk when all of a sudden I felt arms around my neck and my breathing rapidly decreasing. I was turning red, and struggling to breath. The guy flung me to the ground. I stood up and looked at who it was and noticed immediately that this kid was untouchable.
He had an older brother with a terrifying reputation and his friends along side with him laughing like the guards as they watched Pancho give in. The kid was shorter than Gabe and I knew I could do nothing because his friends had already had a bad reputation for harming other students. So like Pancho I didn’t say a word and I knew my place and got back to whatever it was that I was doing. There was another individual Mark, who used to slingshot paper with rubber bands, fling the rubber bands themselves in the position of a gun with one end of the rubber band behind your thumb and the other end below your pinky.
He was the worst. He would act like a friend and the minute you turn your back he slaps you in the back of the neck. He would physically assault you and act as you were friends. On the last day of seventh grade we were in Math class and I was just waiting for the day to be over so I can go home and enjoy the summer when Mark hits me in the back of the shoulder with a stick. The incident was so fast that I didn’t realize till later on that he had had a thumbtack attached to the end of that stick. I picked the worst day to wear white.
I was now the one that was being used as an example to make someone else’s reputation a lot more credible. Home is a place where someone should feel safe and sound. A school is supposed to feel like a second home to anyone because we spend most of our time getting an education in one. Tuan’s view of home being the number one place of feeling safe is not valid for everyone when a school is not able to offer that. I learned that in order to make this school a place for myself that Teither had to build a reputation or turn the other cheek when things got bad.
