The First-First Day

The first day of anything will always be rough. First day of practice for a sport, first day of work, first day of therapy even, but the most common of stressful first days will always be school. I vividly remember my first day of elementary school where I made my first ever friend and met new people and experienced a public school for the first time. We had loads of fun often, from playing jenga to teaching me how to play chess. Public school itself was also so much fun, every holiday we had parties, especially during christmas time where we would make gingerbread houses and eat candy canes.  But as I grew older I started to learn more about what the future held for me which all the teachers drilled into our skulls, middle school, high school, college, middle school, high school, college, middle school, high school, college. And to make this cycle worse everyone would talk about how scary middle school was, everyone would say “if you weren’t ‘cool’ you were outcasted from everyone else” or teachers would say “if you don’t study 24/7 you will fail and never succeed”. The teacher’s may have been worse than the students because I had really high aspirations for life. So to be frank, as a 12 year old, I was scared for my life when my 5th grade summer was coming to a conclusion, I was expecting my entire life to shift for the very worse, a new world of the highest level of work mixed with the most vile type of students.

Nevertheless, it’s not like I could stay home the rest of my life because I was an aspiring marine biologist. September 8th 2016, the morning was long and it was my first time commuting to school by myself on public transportation. As a New Yorker, there was nothing new about these buses in particular but being on the buses feels different when you don’t have your parents there with you. I repeatedly felt like I was lost despite me taking these bus routes before, however, I just stayed as confident in my navigation skills as I possibly could and rode the route how my dad had taught me several times throughout the summer before the first day of school. I was scared, every single step that I took along the way to the building felt heavy and to make matters worse I was late to my first period class. How could I be late to my first class? “The teacher will probably think I’m some sort of criminal. Or maybe some sort of rebel” is what I thought throughout the entire way up the stairs to room 215 for English class. When I walked into that classroom my anxiety rose through the roof, all of those eyes that were burning through my skin at the time and made me realize everything that I was told before was completely true. There was even a student who had a whole beard on his face and a very deep voice. I had thought we were in highschool. All of the girls looked as if they were all judging my every move like I was an orca at SeaWorld meant to put on a performance for the class. I believed that these next 3 years were going to be tortuous, I felt as if I was on a rotisserie stick being slowly roasted over a scorching fire just waiting for my demise. I felt as if I was a fish stuck inside of a bowl and everyone was on the outside jeering at me. As one can see, I was a very overthinking anxiety riddled child but there was one moment in this first day that changed everything. It started at the first lunchtime I had ever had in middle school.

During lunch I was eating the lunch that the school had provided for me minding my business and accepting the fact that I was socially doomed. The period was winding down minute by minute and I was just waiting patiently for my computer lab class with Ms. Harris Hoy but then I heard something that made my heart absolutely drop. I turned around and I saw a boy, he was short with glasses and he had this short but curly hairstyle who I would later find out was named Ariel. One of the biggest identifiers that he had, however, was his unibrow which was bold and intense but to make it worse is that it was so noticeable in middle school. One of the biggest unwritten rules of being in middle school that everyone also made apparent was, “Absolutely do NOT do anything or have anything to stand out” and this kid was breaking that very rule. In fact, I heard stories that if you had something to laugh at you would get bullied every single day for the entirety of the 3 years. Past Ariel, there was a girl, very tall and mean looking, who was making fun of him and not in a playful, friendly way, but in the most harsh way she possibly could muster. All that came from her mouth was a flurry of insults but the one that hit deep was “That unibrow is so dirty, you need to burn your face off now”, and that’s when I stepped in without even noticing. “Hey, chill out and let him be. You are being mean for no reason” is what I said and the girl instantly backed down, “that’s it, I am now officially finished” is what I thought afterwards. But Ariel praised me like I was a deity or his guardian angel and he ended up being my first ever friend in middle school. Overtime Ariel and I have become very close friends even up to high school and further after that. I believe that I made the right choice because I was able to gain a lifelong friend through this experience but there will always be something off about this event of me acting out of character. 

Sometimes I still think about that day and I try to think about why I did what I did to help Ariel, especially since I didn’t know him in the slightest. I understand it now, it was because I have been a victim to the same issues before. I would get remarks about my large lips or the way I would stumble over my words because I was talking way too fast. It boggled me how I forgot where I came from, although elementary school was fun, I would always get made fun of for some things I quite literally could not control.  I knew how it was like to be on the “inside” (being part of the conflict) of everything, to have everyone surround you like large oak trees in a forest and when adding that with the terrors of middle school; I could not let that happen. I stepped in because for the first time I got to be an “outsider” (detached from the conflict at hand, or in other words, a simple viewer of events)  but rather than joining the other “outsider” I used my perspective and experience to help the person who was stuck on the “inside” of everything. And in retrospect, it felt really good to help those who needed it the most because at the end of the stay that will always be my community for middle school, and the best thing one can do for their community is make sure everything flows well within. I don’t want to brand myself as a hero for it because every outsider should migrate to the inside in order to make sure everything can flow beautifully. The second first day I have ever had in my life allowed me to turn the tables on the stereotypes of middle school and it is the most memorable first day of my life.