Wednesday, May 14, 2001

 mfinley.com  "7th Grade"

by Michael Finley

A young man I know, who is in the seventh grade, looked up at me with Bassett eyes the other day and asked, "Does it get better?"

Meaning, there is something peculiarly awful about that year in a boy's life. You feel the world expects you to act like a grown man, but your only idea of how a man behaves is to be as brutal as possible with one another. No mercy, and no let-up in the teasing, the name-calling, the constant ripping. The young man feels he is living in a giant blender, cranked up to puree. His question clearly required some sort of response.

So I will describe a day in my life precisely 38 years ago, when I was a seventh grader at St. Joseph's Elementary in my little quarry town of Amherst, Ohio.

It was class picnic day, the second last day of the year. Sister Mary Patrick was our very ladylike teacher. "Sexy" is perhaps the concept I am reaching for here. She was a tall woman, with a long face and low voice. You could hear her beads rustle when she walked into the room, and it perked up even the youngest, smallest boy in class -- me.

I had skipped a grade several years earlier and was pretty lost socially. The grade behind me saw me as a turncoat, too big for my britches. The grade I entered into saw me as an interloper, and unworthy of them. I was the least developed boy in class during that critical year, with a high, piping -- and funny -- voice. Kids teased me by calling me "Finkley," which I found out later was a real name. How kids named that must have suffered.

Oh, I was developing, but it was mainly mental. For example, that was the year I found out about breasts. I got the idea from a Mad Magazine spoof on Jayne Mansfield. The artist exaggerated her curves, and I remember walking to mass all that April with a spring in my step, thinking about how beautiful breasts were. Why hadn’t I noticed them before?

Today the lovely Sister Patrick had ordered Popsicles as a treat for us. All the kids lined up for the routine favorite flavors -- cherry, orange, and grape. They all looked dopey to me, making slurping sounds, primary colors dripping down their chins.

I decided to take the road less traveled. Like a connoisseur examining a wine list, I asked the guy with the paper hat what other flavors he had. "Just a blueberry at the bottom of the box," he said, peering in.

Yes, blueberry, I thought -- the perfect choice for today's Popsicle sophisticate. He dug it out for me, and I took it from him, stepped back, and casually stripped the paper sleeve away. It was diamond hard. The ice gleamed under the classroom lights like the hood ornament on a sports car. I nodded coolly, leaned against the blackboard, crossing one foot casually over the other, trying to catch Sister Patrick's eye.

I touched the Popsicle to my mouth, and in that instant everything changed. The Popsicle, sitting at the bottom of the freezer box, right next to the dry ice cake, was vastly colder than the others, and the molecular structure of the ice crystals bonded in a flash with the flesh of my tongue and epithelial tissues.

My Bing Crosby smile vanished, replaced by Jerry Lewis remorse. I pulled on the stick, but only pulled my tongue out. I turned my back on everyone, and began tugging to wrench the Popsicle free. No dice. Worse, my frantic tugging caused my tongue to commence bleeding. When I turned back to the class, a few looked at me in horror, my mouth a tangle of frozen blue and dripping red. I can only imagine what the look on my face was.

This was the thing you never want to have happen in seventh grade: give anyone a handle to tease you with, because there is no such thing at that age as an unspent shell. If someone shows weakness, you bomb them into the Pleistocene. It's the code, you do it, or someone else will do it to you. I looked at the other kids, and I knew my future among them was rubble.

Then I felt a hand on my shoulder. They were the long white fingers of Sister Patrick, who calmly turned me around, and led me, beads rustling, out of the classroom and down the corridor.

Her hand against my head, she shielded me with her habit until we got to the girl's washroom. "Girls," she announced, "will everyone please leave. We have an emergency."

Why the girls room? Because there were only two washrooms in our school, and the boys was on the other side of the building. And Sister Patrick can’t have been eager to go in there.

Even in my dither, I looked around at the girls' lavatory. It was as alien a space to me as a UFO. Sister Patrick had me kneel at the hand-washing trough, and hold my tongue out, like a communicant, under the lukewarm spray. The water did what all my tugging could not do. In less than a minute I was free of the blueberry Popsicle.

I took the afternoon off and walked home by myself. The next day I might have expected my world to shrink to a black dot of ridicule. But it was the last day of school, and I just didn’t go back. People had all summer to forget. My tongue would be ragged for a week, but it healed.

I did see a few kids over the summer, but no one was mean. It was like they were a little older, a titch more thoughtful.

And I think people sensed I had experienced a moment of privilege. I had been on my knees, my face in Sister Patrick's white hands, in the girls toilet. I had gazed up through my tears into her perfect face, and she was the very vision of kindness. Who would not have wanted to be on their knees in my place?

And yes, young man, life has been better ever since.

mfinley.com 
_{COPYRIGHT (c) 2001
by MICHAEL FINLEY}

Mike is available to write for your publication or organization right now. Call him at 651-644-4540. Or e-mail him.

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