Hey guys. 4th Grade begun and I was now going to Cherokee. Cherokee was actually in my neighborhood unlike the previous schools. Another thing that was difference was the bus. Instead of a small yellow bus picking me up in front of my house, a large, regular sized, bus picked me up at the bus stop just down the block from my house which was located in front of the Long Island Expressway. The Bus felt big, and more crowded. There had to be over a hundred more people on that bus compared to the previous year on the tiny bus when it was just me and two other kids. When the buses came in front of the building, the tiny buses were located next to the big buses. They were small. I was looking down at them out the window of the big bus thinking that the people in the small ones looked like ants. My younger brother Stephen and I would ride on the same bus together. For the first time ever, I would be in the same school as one of my siblings.
Cherokee was a completely identical building to Bosti. Same color, structure as well as the cylinder looking street lamps that I loved looking at which was in front of both schools. Cherokee had an extra hallway attached to the building marking the only difference between the schools. Plus, Bosti was in an open area while Cherokee had a lot of trees surrounding the building.
In class, I noticed that my 4th grade teacher was a lot more strict than Mr. Long. She wasn't into sports and she wasn't socializing with her students. It was all about the work.
There was a social struggle in the beginning. For the first time, I had to deal with the process of getting a bathroom pass at the edge of the classroom in order to go out and use the bathroom. I took one and asked my classmates out loud how the process worked. They all started laughing at me as if I were the most dumbest person in the world. I went o the bathroom with the pass and came back. When I entered the classroom, I was asked a very important question. "Hey AJ, where's the bathroom pass?" "You're suppose to bring it back." I left to a loud chorus of laughter. I got the pass from the bathroom. When I came back WITH the pass, the laughter grew even louder.
I attempted to fit in by joining the majority of the kids in booing a kid during a speech when he proposed to make school hours longer so people can learn more. This didn't go over well with my classmates and I booed him just because others were booing him too. In other words, I was willing to change my character traits, just to be like the rest of the class. Even to this day, this still eats at me and I was am still haunted by my actions that took place in the 4th grade. The speaker had a great point. It would help that school hours would be longer. It does help for students to learn more. Luckily I changed later in the year.
Lesson Learned: Be Yourself, don't be what other people are if it goes against your character.
We did this project called New York State. We had to talk about the state of New York and advertise it. We had to try and persuade people to come and visit New York City, just for pretend of course. Unfortunately, I had the wrong idea. I didn't realize about the persuasion part. I thought we were just suppose to talk about New York City. In order to do my work, I used the advice my parents gave me over the years. This is what I said when I went up to do my presentation on New York State. AJ: New York City is very dangerous. There are a lot of bad guys on the street so you really can't go anywhere by yourself. It's also really big and you can easily get lost. I was laughed off the front of the classroom and people kept yelling to me, "Then people wouldn't want to come here!"
I took my tests in a resource room with a resource teacher while the rest of the class took it in the classroom. I would do writing assignments in a separate room by Ms. Callahan who was the same teacher I had for the second and third grade at Sycamore.
In the 5th Grade, also at Cherokee, I had another slow start. Even though my 5th grade teacher was strict, she did like sports and we had conversation about Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa who had that great record breaking Home Run Race the year before. I was really into it and predicted how many Home Runs the two would hit at the end of the year.
Two girls whispered to each other and said I was annoying, then they laughed.....
Later that year, I found out that I was moving to the Bronx. New School, new friends new scenery.
I was suppose to graduate from Cherokee in the sixth grade. I was currently in the 5th grade but schools in the Bronx went from K-5 meaning that I was graduating a year earlier than expected.
The second to last day of school in Long Island, we played Floor Hockey in our gym class. The game was tied at five. The gym teacher was counting down the closing seconds of the game.
10...
9....
8...
7...
6...
My team was trying to shove the puck in the opposing net but the goalie kept stopping it.
5....
4....
3....
2....
1...
I was able to shove the puck into the net just as the buzzer sounded. I scored the game winning goal. My teammates rushed and mobbed me. I never felt anything like it before. It was a great way to close out my educational career in Long Island.
A ot of my friends form my Special Education class also made the trip to Cherokee. They weren't in any of my classes but I always saw them in the halls and in Gym. These were people I knew since Pre-school. We always traveled to different elementary schools together. Now I was leaving and this time, they weren't coming with me. I would have to start over again. Heading to my fifth different elementary school in P.S 14 located in the Bronx.
My first day there, I wanted to make an impression. When I was in Cherokee, a poet came in and shared her work. That inspired me to write poems. I wrote a poem about seeing the sunset. Everyone there loved it. During our writing activity in my first class in the Bronx, I wrote the sunset poem again. Everyone was in shock when I read it outloud. They loved my writing. It felt great. I was actually making a great first impression for once.
During Recess, things were different. There was no playground equipment like slides, ladders, monkey bars or swings. Long Island had them but not the Bronx. It was just a ground surrounded by the fence. I loved going on the swings because it would let out all my anxieties and let me stimulate fantasies, hopes, daydreams, worries, etc. in moving motion.
In order for me to continue doing that, I decided to run around. I used to do that in my living room when I was four. Everyday at Recess, I would run around the area, just kept running in big and small circles. It felt great.
Three months after moving to the Bronx, I graduated from P.S 14. My long Elementary School careers was over.
That night, I finished my first writng story about the events that led to my parents seperation from my point of view called "Three Sides of the Family." Unfortunatly, I didn't save it when we moved to another location within the Bronx years later.
I was now in Middle School, I.S 192. My mom, aunts, uncles, and sister graduated from that school. In the 6th grade, I noticed something different about myself. I was doing really good in the classroom. I had a grade average of a 93 for my report card. I was constantly getting 100's on my tests. It felt great.
Although, there was controversy. Many people were speculating that my sixth grade class was a Special Education Class. I did have classmates who had reading disabilities. My classmates said that they received taunts from other people within the sixth grade that we were all in a Special Education Class. Our teachers informed us that this wasn't the case. If we were, maybe that's why the tests seemed so easy.
That year in the sixth grade, I was walking to the bathroom just down from the cafeteria. I walked past these group of kids. When I went past them in the bathroom they grabbed me and lifted me up. They were attempting to give me a wedgie. I was randomly firing punches at all four of them. It worked because they dropped me. One of them gave me a hook to the face and bolted out of the bathroom as they sensed that an adult was coming. That was a tough experience but at least I prevented them from giving me a wedgie.
In I.S 192, there were a couple of traditions. There was "Wedgie Wednesdays" and "Freshman Fridays." Freshman Fridays meant beating up the sixth graders. Oddly enough, the day they attempted to give me a wedgie was on a Monday.
In the 7th grade, I was placed in the top regular academic class in the entire grade. We no longer just had one classroom for all four subjects. This time, we alternated rooms and teachers for different subjects. My grades went from early 90's to middle 80's. I suffered my first class in which I didn't get at least an 80 in which was Social Studies and got a 75 in it during the second marking period.
In the 7th grade, I was planning on doing a skit in a show called "The Gong Show" which was I.S 192's big time traditions before Christmas Break. I wanted to sing the National Anthem as a skit but my Drama teacher felt I didn't have a good enough voice to sing it. She suggested I dress in a Pinocchio costume she had and sing "I've got no Strings." I thought it was a great idea since I couldn't come up with any of my own since my last one got shot down. I talked to my mom about it and she said I would be a laughing stock if I did that in front of the whole school.
I thought about it and agreed with her. I skipped school the day of the Gong show so I didn't have to go through with it. That decision helped by my mom may have saved my social career at I.S 192.
Towards the end of the 7th Grade, I had to deal with the toughest project of my educational career. We had to do a baby project. Partners of the opposite sex had raise a doll baby. The baby had to be treated like a real baby. We had to feed it with a fake bottle and we couldn't put it in our bags. We had to carry it at all times even outside of school. I walked to I.S 192 because it was just three blocks away from where I was living at the time.
I named my baby "Diane." I named her Diane after my Aunt who passed away a couple of years prior. I fed Diane at home while mom was giving me her real bills because the teacher wanted us to bring bills in as if the husband and wife lived together and we also had to plan a monthly budget. Thinking now, I felt this was a scam so the teacher could look at our family bills.
I was walking to school with Diane in my arms. Kids fro the moving bus laughed at me from the window. At school, a kid slammed Diane from my arms and screamed "why are you playing with dolls?" I just picked it up and walked away. I had trouble finding a babysitter when I had gym class but I was finally able to get one.
You guys are probably wondering, "What about my wife?" My wife in this project wanted to do it herself. After I bought Diane from the store, she got her own baby. She would have divorced me but the process would have been to difficult so we raised our own baby. She felt that I would have slowed her down.
Amazingly, she was suppose to be with someone else at the start of the project but he didn't want to be her partner so the teacher asked me to be her partner since I was a "nice guy" and the teacher felt I wouldn't have a problem with it. I agreed to do it, but I quickly regretted that decision.
In Math class, one of my classmates grabbed my poor daughter and started throwing her around the classroom. Poor Diane, I guess I'm not fit to be a father. I finally was able to get her back.
The project finally ended three weeks later and I received a 95 on it. I was ecstatic and relieved when it was over. A huge weight was lifted from the pit of my stomach. For those three weeks, I did not take my mind off of that project. I donated part of that 95 to Diane, haha.
In the 8th grade, I was socially getting better. I was walking home with friends. I had conversations with other friends in the schoolyard about Dragonball Z, Yu Yu Hakusho, etc. It was a fun time.
I was always great in Math but I struggled with it starting this year because instead of basic Math like Adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing which was what I was good at, I had to deal with Algebra and Equations.
The Gong Show last year, transformed into the Talent Show. It was like the Gong SHow only you wouldn't get Gong'ed if your act was terrible. As 8th graders, it was mandatory for us to do it.
My friend suggested that I do the Cha-Cha dance and he would direct me the moves on stage. I looked for a better idea. Finally, I did a dance skit with a bunch of girls from my class. We rehearsed and we rehearsed. This was my first time performing in front of a group of people.
Finally, December 20th 2002 came. The I.S 192 Auditorium was packed. An elderly teacher came up to me. His name was Mr. Kezner. He was so well-respected a local neighborhood band in Throggs Neck named their band, "The Kezners" in his honor. My sister was dating one of their members at the time. Nicky always referred to my sister's former boyfriend as "Musical Mike."
I told Mr. Kezner that I was really nervous. He told me that I would do fine and not to worry about it. I took his advice. Our act was now happening. The girls did their dance routine, then I busted in and did my solo. I noticed from the left corner of my eye, Mr. Kezner was the first person to rise. Then the whole auditorium rose in the air and cheered. I couldn't believe it. I was busting some moves and it was working.
We were all dancing to the music on stage. The first time, we got a 9 and two 8's from the judges. We did the skit again later in the day in front of a different grade of students and got a 10 and two 8's from the three judges. This was the first time I ever danced in front of a big crowd like that. It really helped me gain the confidence to dance and I still dance to this day.
I graduated I.S 192 by being in the Honor Roll. I was in the Honor Roll for every market period I was in I.S 192 except for the second to last one in my last year.
My Journey now continued in High School.
TO BE CONTINUED.......
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