The following story was included in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Teens Talk Middle School
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Summertime between sixth grade and seventh grade flew by, and I entered my very first year of junior high school. Suddenly, going to school wasn’t like going to a second home anymore; it was scary. Not only were the kids tougher and meaner, the workload was a lot heavier than it was in sixth grade. I had always been at the top of my class, and seventh grade tracking placed me in with the honors group of kids (aka. The kids with the least discipline problems, the most visible parents, and not necessarily the most apt minds.) In math class, a subject I always considered to be one of my best, my teacher Mr. Comer announced to the whole class that I was a “dumb blonde” which was why I didn’t know an answer. Art was graded. Music involved a lot more than just singing. English consisted of reading large books with small print. And Social Studies, which had always been my worst subject and which remains so (unless it’s the History Channel), proved to be nearly impossible. Not to mention that the school building itself was in shambles, and due to feared gang activity we couldn’t carry backpacks or wear our jackets in school, even in the dead of winter when the heat was virtually off to save money.
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Social Studies and History had always been my worst subjects in school. I just couldn’t seem to grasp them like I could science and math. My very first report card “C” was in sixth grade Social Studies. My teacher told my Mom that it should have been a “D”, but she just couldn’t bear to put a “D” on a report card that was otherwise filled with, and had historically been filled with, “A”s and “B”s. Something about the dates and events that occurred so long ago made Social Studies boring, flat, useless to me. Everyone had to take the subject in seventh grade, and I dreaded every moment I had to spend in my social studies class, doing the homework for the class, and even thinking about having to go to the class. The minutes spent within the confines of the map-plastered walls seemed like decades. Rumor had it that my teacher kept a shot glass of vodka behind the lens of the film projector. Whether or not that was true, and I’m inclined to believe it wasn’t, the class was the most boring extended experience I had ever suffered through up to that point in time. To make eternally worse, I had an enemy sitting next to me in my Social Studies class. His name was Mark, and no I didn’t change his name to preserve his identity just as I didn’t change that bastard Mr. Comer’s name, either. Mark would call me stupid, he would make fun of my teeth and then eventually my braces, he would make fun of my clothes and my hair, and he would get the other kids to laugh at me. He was the worst classroom next door neighbor I had ever had. He was just an evil boy. I didn’t know what to do with such a mean person; I had never encountered one before! The torment spilling from this boy’s mouth was non stop. As if the boredom and impossibility of Social Studies weren’t torture enough, I now had this person to listen to, whose attitude towards me was no doubt egged on by dullness of the class. Mark had to find something else to do besides nod off, because that would have gotten him into trouble, so he picked on me.
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One day, just as any other day, I entered the classroom, sat down in my seat, and waited for my daily baptismal of character building. But this day, none came. I looked to my left to gather some clues, and behold! A big, black, Captain Hook eyepatch donned my enemy’s eye! I could not believe what I was seeing! An eye patch was one of the worse things; worse than a cast, worse than braces, worse that a period stain on the back of your pants! This was my day to shine! This was my day to get him back for all of the torment he had put me through. “Nice eye patch,” I had to say (maybe I said more). “Shut up,” was his reply. Ahh ha haha! Finally a day where I was the tormenter and someone else was the tormented! I cannot honestly say that it felt good to make fun of him, but what the hell. He did it to me all of the time, and everyone was making fun of everyone else. It was the cool thing to do. Little did I know that later that very day my entire outlook on Life would change forever because of my disapproval of Mark’s eye patch.
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Walking home from school that day was strenuous because it was extremely windy, icy and cold. I really only had about two tenths of a mile to walk home, door to door, but it felt a lot longer because of the wind. Being early Spring, and not far past a snowy Winter, the streets were still covered with sand which, mixed with wind and a splash of Karma, is a bad cocktail. Sand whipped up off of the street in a mini-tornado and right into my eye. It stung. Reflex shot my hand up to the pain and began rubbing. I kept rubbing and rubbing. I rubbed my eye the rest of the way home, but the sand would not go away. I kept rubbing. Finally, after about a half hour of crying and desperately trying to get the sand out without luck, my Mom brought me to the hospital. The doctor told me that I’d be okay, that I’d just scratched my cornea, and that my eye would be as good as new in 24 hours. He fitted me with a giant white gauze eyepatch, which he taped to my face using thick, one foot long pieces of white medical tape that encircled the entire left side of my head. I’d never make fun of anyone again, as long as I lived, even if they did do it first.
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I learned a valuable lesson that day, and even if I could rewrite history, I would keep my eye patch story. I learned that windy day that what goes around really does whip back around, right into your eye or wherever the target might be. When I made fun of my enemy’s eyepatch, I was building up bad Karma that would come back to me in the form of, well, an eye patch. I tend to choose my words much more carefully now, and always know that any negativity (and positivity, for that matter) will return to me. Sometimes, though, I just need to vent and hope that God realizes this. I pay a high price for each lesson I learn, but pay only once. It’s the price I pay for simplicity, and I’ve really taken to simplicity. Simple is good.
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