Window Shopping Lives

After I was ‘diagnosed’, I still had many problems when it came to being in my regular class. It was this year that fifth grade ended up being my enemy. My newest teacher, Mr. Griffith was mean to start. I knew immediately that he hated me and as most mothers say when you come home spouting that, it’s your first day, you don’t know him that well. Well, first impressions are the ones you always remember.

Mr. Griffith was a man in his mid to late fifties. He had well built muscles and from that day on, never wore pants and always had his socks pulled all the up with his Dockers. He was a harsh grader and wouldn’t put up with anything other than the curriculum. It was because of this fact that I was automatically sought out and shot down with high powered missiles. If any teacher had radar for picking out students to hate, I was on his relatively from the time I was born.

When we would take tests, he would have us spread our desks a few inches apart so we couldn’t cheat. One day I took this a little too far, thinking that someone would actually copy off me, and moved my desk against the wall and away from the other students. Of course there was a sub giving the test and we didn’t have time between classes to put our desks back in place. The next day, he is of course at school and has moved everyone’s desk back except mine. Thinking he just forgot, I began to move my desk back. He immediately stopped me, Oh Caitlyn, that’s where your desk is supposed to be. Please put it back.

Shocked and amazed I sat down; hoping the wave of confusion would pass. But it never did. I was the new wallflower. Mr. Griffith expected that as the year went on, the more I would just sit and be cooperative to the punishments he could creatively, come up with but he obvious had not read my file. I wasn’t trying to be overly problematic, in fact, it all started with a friend asking a question. It was about what section we were I suppose and as I turned to respond to her, he caught my lips moving and suspected I was talking the entire time. Without warning, he grabbed my things and moved me into the hallway.

The hallway was more like a quad, there was one hall leading into this one because it was the fifth/sixth quad, right off the library. Along this narrow hallway was one window peering into Mr. Griffith’s classroom which was right next to his door and right along that wall were several desks. They were all broken in some capacity and the teachers had shunned them and given shining new replacements but to me, these desks became the epitome of my fifth grade years.

The quad itself held two doors on the wall to which I was now stuck to, two along the back and three along the wall opposite me. There were four sinks against the fourth wall and cabinets filled to the brim of art supplies. There were a few large tables spread in the middle of the room for various needs, projects mostly and when the entire wing gathered for lunch. Each teacher had at least two cupboards next to their door of teaching supplies and extra text books. Each of these cabinets and drawers I would find myself wandering through within the course of the year. I still adamantly believe that I learned more about the teachers who taught those classes than I did anything in fifth grade.

After I had searched every nook and cranny, over used all my entertainment way past any sane person should, snuck off a few times to the computer lab and caught, checking out books and never being noticed, I decided that I should give him what he thought I was already doing: distracting the class. It started with notes posted to the window asking to go to the bathroom to cartoons of Mr. Griffith himself. He soon sent me with nothing to which I could write upon. So I began to throw things at the window, make faces and play pictionary with the kids in the class. Sometimes I would just sleep until recess until he woke me up, come back, sleep until lunch, come back, and sleep until the end of school.

I was never that bad, I was just hated. I soon saw that acting out would get me no closer to what I wanted than anything else so I sat and I observed. I spoke rarely and kids soon became bored with me. I observed their behaviors, even caught glimpses of notes.

It wasn’t until the end of that year that I realized I had been window shopping for a new life.