A Crying Shame

For reasons I cannot explain, one of my earliest memories is of my first day of school. Perhaps I remember it so well because it was the first time that I was separated from my mother; the first time that I experienced the unfairness of life, and the first time that I felt a good deal of pain at the hands of someone other than my dad.

My teacher was the first-ever total stranger to manhandle me. She shoved me into a kiddie’s seat and said through clenched teeth, “Stop. Crying.” She tumbled a handful of mangy blocks from an old pillowcase onto the desk in front of me, saying loudly, “There! Let’s see what we can build, shall we?” Her words sounded kind, but she spat them at me. In the blink of an eye, she and my mother were standing on the far side of the classroom, talking to each other about me. I could feel the tears welling up again, but I didn’t want to cry because there were other children at the table looking at me.

The guy on my right was actually a girl with very short hair. Her name was Marie Healy, and she was to become the first girl I ever fell in love with. The guy opposite me was a Polish immigrant called Richard Sluzarczyk. Richard was to become Marie’s first and only boyfriend. I noticed that Richard had many more blocks than me, and they all seemed nicer than the grubby ones I got. Yet, despite his block wealth, he leant over the desk and raked in an armful of my blocks, leaving me with only two or three. I leant over and raked them back. The teacher had given them to me, after all. He leant over, hit me, and took them back. My blocks were now his, apparently. Marie laughed. I turned to look at her, and Richard leaned over the desk and hit me again. Marie thought this was so funny. I tried my hardest not to cry, I really did, but you can’t stop it once it starts.

I looked all around for my mother, and Richard, in the blink of an eye, had leaned across the desk, taken a green block, bitten into it, and spat all over it, and put it back with the others. I couldn’t see my mother. She must have gone. I wiped my eyes. Still sobbing, I looked down at the abject poverty of my blocks. I placed them slowly and neatly one atop the other. What else could I do? I saw the green block; it looked like someone had tried to eat it and it was wet. I didn’t put it on top.

The teacher came back to our table, looked at my feeble tower and said, “Oh, so you think blocks are for eating, do you?” She grabbed me by the wrist and yanked me out of my seat so hard that my tower fell down. She dragged me over to the back of the classroom and thrust me into a chair next to a boy called John Monaghan. I got a smart smack on the back of my hand (which really hurt), and I was commanded sternly to stop crying, and something about, “If I ever catch you eating blocks again, so help me…” I looked back at Richard and Marie, but I couldn’t see anything because my eyes were all watery. I looked down at my desk. There were no blocks, so I couldn’t show the teacher how well I could actually build. I wanted to show her how good I was at it! It was so unfair and so unjust!

As one does, while crying, one has a few loud and uncontrollable bursts of shuddering and sobbing and great gulps of big air. Everyone was looking at me, and this made me cry even more. The day was hopeless and hurting. I turned and looked at John for sympathy, but he didn’t look at me. I saw he didn’t have any blocks, either. John, chubby and mumbling, just rocked back and forth in his seat constantly, like a metronome. He also mumbled loudly, all the time. I guess this was why he was also put at the back of the classroom. Another thing John did, which was a little more difficult to get used to, was to lash out suddenly with his fist. He really hurt my arm. I couldn’t look at the teacher for any length of time because I had to watch out for John’s sudden lunges. I couldn’t hear anything that the teacher was saying because John was constantly mumbling rubbish, and I couldn’t see what the teacher was writing on the blackboard because, well, I really hadn’t finished crying for the day.