Looking back on when I was a little nappy headed boy…
…I started out going to this little private school in Silver Spring called Alexander (shout out to my classmates Cherie and Felicia from back in the day).
In Head-start, Kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, and the 3rd grade, my dad would wake me and Allison up, get us showered and dressed, make us breakfast, pick my bush, comb and pig-tail her hair, and drive 20 minutes to take us to Alexander on his way to work.
I loved that school. I made some great friends. Since I’d been there so long, I was one of the popular ones.
Me and my crew ran the playground. I owned the swings. Nobody could jump off the swings at a higher altitude than…ya-boy. The sandbox was my sand-castle. I could build anything in there. I was like an architect! I was a legend in ‘Throw-up Tackle’ – even amongst the 4th – 6th grader upper classmen. Kickball…Dodgeball…anything-ball…if it could be played on a playground, I was involved. I was the playground-whisperer.
Girls? Not interested! If you couldn’t run with me and my crew in the wild wild west environment of the playground, then stay your barrette-wearing, ruffled sox, shiny shoe sportin’ behind out of our way.
My social status was at its zenith!
But when the school pulled the okie-doke and increased tuition in the beginning of the school year to some crazy amount, my parents had to pull Allison out and put her in Bel Pre Elementary, the public school near our neighborhood. She didn’t mind so much.
But in February, of the same school year, when my parents told me I had to leave Alexander and go to Bel Pre, I cried and cried and cried. I was leaving a school where I was liked and respected by everyone…to a school full of strangers. I was grief-stricken.
The first day, my dad took me to school. My face was all turned up…mean-mugging the world. First stop…the principal’s office. I get my class assignment. The principal walks me to the class room.
Now…the way the classroom is set up – there are three rooms separated by two retractable room-dividers – which were open. 3rd graders to the left, the middle is common area, and 4th graders to the right.
I walk through the middle door into the common area. There’s a huge ruckus of 3rd and 4th grade kids walking, yelling, and scurrying about. “Excuse me…” the principal says. Some kids stop and look her way. “Boys and girls, you have a new classmate. His name is Heath…and he’s in third grade. He’s going to be in Ms. Harold’s class.”
I’m now mortified. I look around at a sea of unfamiliar faces staring at me.
All of a sudden…to my right…BAM! My eyes lock on this one pretty little girl with long hair. She looks at me…I’m definitely looking at her. Then her pretty little friend walks by too…BAM. Then another one…BAM.
My little heart starts beating all fast. I tried to remain cool. I felt something move below my waist. What’s that? I didn’t know…but I liked it.
“Everybody welcome Heath to the class.” the Principal concludes. Some people wave. The pretty little girls go back to what they were doing. I head in their direction.
“No Heath. Your class is this way.” she says as she grabs me and turns me around. I’m like DANGIT! So I go and join my 3rd grade class to the left and sit down on the floor in the back. I don’t even know what they were talking about. All I kept doing was looking across the common area chasm into the 4th grade class at the pretty little girls.
And in an instant, I was no longer grief-stricken from leaving my friends at Alexander. My grief was overcome by a crush on some pretty little girls.
TELL ME about one of your school-girl/boy crushes back in the day.
Follow