A Diary of a Private School Kid

by Penn Brooks

  Diary of a Private School Kid

  The Inadvertent Bully

  Penn Brooks

  Copyright © 2016 by Penn Brooks

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Snowdrops Publishing

  To St. Francis-St. Hedwig School of Naugatuck:

  Great memories, wonderful friends, creepy basement.

  Contents

  A Letter to the Bishop

  Disclaimer

  Introducing Me

  Best/Worst Thing About School

  Describe Your Home Life

  When Have Your Actions Led You Astray?

  What Item Empowers You?

  What Item Empowers Your Mind?

  Discuss the Incident on the Bus

  Lessons Learned

  Continue Reading…

  About the Author

  Dear Archbishop Gregor,

  My name is Ben Montgomery and I am a student at one of the schools in your diocese. I would like to raise a very serious issue I have with one of its teachers.

  Sister Ellen of St. Guadalupe in Pinewood resorted to cruel and unusual punishment to drive home a point that she was trying to make. I did something wrong, and I can readily admit that. I told her how guilty I felt for doing what I did, and still she gave me this punishment.

  This wasn’t like detention. That’s pretty standard and easy, sitting in a room and twiddling your thumbs. This punishment was far worse - writing lengthy essays about myself in hopes that I get in touch with my feelings. You’ll find the evidence of these papers attached to this letter.

  I am asking for immediate action in this matter. Maybe providing me with a few bonus days off in trade for the time I spent on these papers. Maybe Sister Ellen has to give me a mandatory A for the classes she teaches. Or what about a free pass to heaven? No? It was worth a shot.

  Thank you for your time, your honor.

  Forever your sheep,

  Ben Montgomery

  Disclaimer

  Dear Future Me,

  Sister Ellen is making me write these essays because she says I need to get in touch with my soul. I am doing this under protest. Please don't think of your past self as some weenie for writing glorified diary entries. For your entertainment (and the benefit of filling up more page space), I am including some pictures.

  Sincerely,

  Me

  Introducing Me

  My name is Benedict Montgomery, but most people call me “Ben” for short. Actually, that’s not entirely true. My family calls me “Ben.” Most people call me “Egg-boy” even though I beg them to stop.

  The name evolved from an unfortunate choice in wardrobe one day not too long ago. Like all bad things that happen in school, it turned into this whole big deal that can never be undone.

  I should state for the record, that I am not an egg. I am a boy. I’m 10 years old and in the 5th grade at St. Guadalupe’s. Every day, I have to wake up and put a tie on to come to school. This stinks because St. Guadalupe’s shares the same bus routes as the public schools. I wait at the stop and ride along with the pubbies (that's what we call the public school kids).

  Every morning they show off their funny T-shirts, awesome sneakers, and fad accessories. Me? I wear the same dorky thing every day. White shirt. Blue pants. Penny loafers. And a plaid tie. Plaid: for when it's more important to hide stains than to look good.

  At least there is one good thing to come from wearing a tie. It proves I’m a boy. Obviously, eggs don’t wear ties.

  My class is small compared to the ones they have in public school. There are nine boys including me, and eight girls. That's the entire 5th grade. That number is sure to decrease next year. There has already been talk about a few kids transferring to the public Middle School for 6th grade. I won’t have such luck. My parents are completely vested in the belief that private school is the way to go. Phooey! This is my sixth year here and I don’t see myself as any better off than those public school kids I ride the bus with. One time I saw a kid go to school in pajamas. How awesome is that? Pajamas! What am I doing here?

  My mom tells me I look handsome in the school uniform. She says that a tie is very distinguished. That may be true for a businessman or lawyer, but mine clips together around the back of my neck and constantly loosens. This wouldn’t be such a bad thing if we were allowed to unbutton our top button, but we can’t. The top button is part of the uniform according to Sister Ellen. So my malfunctioning tie does not make for the most suave look when it droops down on my still-buttoned collar. Oh yes, so distinguished!

  I am not the coolest kid in my class, nor am I in the top sixteen. I am dead last. Not only am I dead last in my class, but there are fourth graders that would probably rank higher than me. I’m like the crumbs at the bottom of a potato chip bag. While they should be treated the same as the big ones, they are often tossed away with the bag and discarded.

  What I find so ironic and hilarious is that these classmates of mine that think they are so much better than me are huge dorks and dweebs themselves in the eyes of the pubbies. When it comes to the hierarchy of the kids in this town, public always wins. Even the runts of the public school crowd rank higher than the coolest of us cathies (that's their unfortunate nickname for us).

  It makes for a very interesting culture on the shared bus system. Take for instance, Josh Baker. He is pretty much the it guy in the St. Guadalupe’s 5th grade.

  I know of at least three girls in my class that would shave her head to go out with him (whatever "going out" means to a 5th-grader). All of the other seven boys in the class fight to have him at their sleepovers, parties and picnics. Josh is pretty much on a seven-weekend rotation with these kids. In this little world of ours, we have our kings and queens. Josh is our grade’s king. But as soon as any of us step outside of our parochial world, we become losers to the public crowd.

  Josh, for instance, tells anyone in our class what to do. If he needs his lunch fetched for him, he has a handful of numbskulls to do his bidding. If he forgets his homework, he only needs to say the words “yeah, so last night…” before receiving a copy of the answers. People are always ready and willing to help him because he is what everyone aspires to be or be around.

  But let’s take Josh out of our isolated 17-student classroom and throw him on a bus ride with pubbies. He becomes less than ordinary. One time this dork from City Side, Stanley, who I would have to imagine is the social waste of his school, had the nerve to come up to Josh and ask him for his seat. Stanley was obviously put up to it. All eyes on the bus watched him walk over to Josh. They watched this trapper-keeper-carrying, light-up-shoe-wearing, Vaseline-haired dork utter a request for the coolest kid in 5th grade to change seats.

  I don’t think I ever witnessed anything so riveting. Everyone on the bus started muttering to each other about what would happen next. Was Josh going to punch his lights out? Was he going to make Stanley eat his rainbow unicorn T-shirt? Was he going to deliver a verbal drilling that would diminish every ounce of self-worth poor Stanley had? No! None of these. While many assumed that Josh acted based on the intimidating looks he received from the cooler pubbies and not the words of Stanley, Josh still honored Stanley’s request. This forever changed the social hierarchy between our schools.

  Josh’s one act put every single one of us cathies below all the pubbies. Our plaid ties or plaid skirts became marks of inferiority. Anyone wearing sneakers to school felt entitled to step on anyone wearing brown or black shoes.

/>   The cooler cathies made out okay. Like a pack of wolves, they stuck together. No one wanted to mess with a larger group of kids. The ones that were targeted were those who traveled alone and didn’t hang out with the others. So basically, that was me. For the longest time, I flew under the radar. I got on the bus, found a seat and nobody bothered me. But it seems like there is always a need for a doormat, a person to wipe the mud on. Josh’s act forged a bond among the public school kids that didn’t exist before. The baseball players were cordial to the chess players. The make-up wearers were friendly to the bookworms. If you wore street clothes to school, you were family. If wore a uniform, you were the hostile neighbor.

  A sense of family was not present in the cathy group. The same cliques stayed clicking and the outsiders stayed on the outside. Since then, I have become the face of loserdom. No one from St. Guadalupe’s ever sits next to me on the bus. Nobody ever helps when a milk carton hits me in the head.

  And everyone seems to join in the laughter that involves me licking the school bus floor. I guess I don’t blame anyone. As long as I exist, everyone is content in their role. Even Josh seems to be okay with the status quo as long as no pubby dorks mess with him.

  So that’s me in a nutshell. I am plankton in the ocean that is Pinewood’s school system. I guess that makes the other private school kids some kind of bottom feeding fish, and then the public school kids a large carnivore like a shark or narwhal.

  Although real narwhals don’t bother real plankton that much, so I should rethink this analogy a bit more. The narwhal’s in my example bother the plankton A LOT. You get the idea.

  

  Best/Worst Thing About School

  I’m sure you want to hear a glowing answer about why I love coming to school, but I need to be honest and say that there are no redeemable attributes of going to school at St. Guadalupe’s. The building is old and smelly. The cafeteria “food” is rank. And the textbooks we learn from contain questionable content.

  By far, the worst part about attending St. Guadalupe’s or any private school has to be wearing a uniform. As I said before, it’s a symbol that says, “Hello world! I’m second-rate!” It’s much like wearing a sign on your back that reads, “Kick me.”

  Aside from the negative social side effects that come from wearing a uniform, another downfall is the need for a highly efficient laundry system at home. There are five days of school per week. So I have five shirts, five pants and five pairs of socks that fit me. The key here is the part about them fitting me. About half of my entire wardrobe is made up of school-related stuff. I have some shirts from last year that fit, but are a little too snug. I have pants that are the same way.

  Now in a perfect week, I should wear a new pairing each day I go to school. Since we do just about everything in our uniforms (recess, gym, art, etc), we get it fairly dirty. At the end of these days, I put my uniform in my hamper at home. Then on Saturday or Sunday, my mom does the laundry and PRESTO! A new week begins with a clean slate of clothes.

  That is the ideal plan. Unfortunately, that is not the reality. I come home each day and throw my dirty clothes in the hamper. That part of the story is consistent so far. However, the amount of times my mom actually does my laundry when she is supposed to is like one in four. So what happens on the following Monday? I have to tap into the year-old backups that don’t fit any more. These are tough days, both physically and mentally. I have to endure the pain of being squeezed in the waist and thighs and choked in the neck. And remember, I can’t unbutton my top button.

  The mental torture comes from dealing with the comments all day long. How many comebacks can one person make to “where’s the flood?”

  Now we are done with day 8. I have used up my five days of clean, properly-fitting clothes and my clean, snugger-fitting clothes. All but two times, my mom pulled through and did an emergency weekday wash. But those two times she didn’t, things got really bad.

  The first time it happened, I got through the 8-day cycle. On the ninth day, I had to reuse an old uniform. You might not think that is a big deal since there are many people who wear things more than once before washing. That wouldn’t be a problem if I prepared for it. My problem was that I put the clothes in my disgusting, locker-room-scented, toe-cheese filled hamper.

  Day 9 is really really bad.

  The first time I had a Day 9, I managed to get out of the house without being analyzed by either parent (morning time can be hectic). I first noticed how bad the odor was when I boarded the bus.

  Kids scooted as far toward the window in order to avoid contact with me as I walked down the aisle. I decided to test the magnitude of the odor’s power by going straight to the back. You know that little seat by the rear door? I never got to sit there before. Usually the hot shot of every bus gets that seat. Well Theo kindly gave it up to me on that day. I was invincible!

  As the day went on, the smell got a lot riper. Our school doesn’t have any cooling system, so the air can get pretty stagnant. When we all returned from recess, the heat we all gave off made the odor linger. It took on a life of its own. Jordan, who sits in front of me, passed out at one point. Literally. He turned around to look at the clock on the wall and then conked right out.

  I don’t think Sister Ellen could come out and say it, but I sense she was giving me a lesson on the ABC’s of hygiene when she discreetly handed me a pamphlet about personal cleanliness.

  Surprisingly, the insults were disappointing. I felt it was a wasted opportunity for some funny comments. Unfortunately, the cleverest remark was the easiest. Since the smell was reminiscent of eggs, I became Eggs BENedict, or Egg-boy for short. Once that came out of the bag, everyone latched on and didn’t let it go.

  When I came home, the smell had gotten so bad that my mom finally took notice. When she greeted me at the front door, one small whiff was all she needed to keep me out. I had to disrobe on the screen porch before I was granted access to the house. My mom asked me how I could let myself leave the house like that. I countered with the argument that she should not have let my laundry get out of control. In hindsight, that was a bad thing to say.

  The second time a Day 9 came around, my mom was nowhere to be found. She, my Aunt Cheryl and some of their friends went on ladies-only vacation. She left my dad alone to take care of my sister and me. There must have been a miscommunication before my mom left, because none of us had clean laundry. This is not a big deal to my dad or sister, because they aren’t bound by having a daily uniform, for me it was déjà vu for disaster. While I probably should have pointed out the lack of clean clothes the night before, I failed. I woke up and went to extract the outfit from the hamper and I couldn’t bring myself to do it. The memory of my last Day 9 (or at least the memory of the smell from that day) plagued my mind. I did the noble thing. I told my father about the lack of clean clothes. At first, he thought I was exaggerating. Then I proved it to him and made him a believer.

  We tried to do an emergency load of wash. The “quick wash” feature only takes 20 minutes, so we chose that, but my dad didn’t realize that the hot water was on. The clothes came out clean, but my white school shirt turned light blue – a major violation to the school uniform code. It was unwearable.

  Not only did I effectively reduce my wardrobe cycle by one day, I also had to go back into the hamper and get another uniform set. On top of smelling gross and looking wrinkled, I was now going to be late for school. My dad had to drive me there.

  Before he dropped me off, he thought it would help if I slipped his car freshener in my pocket. You know those little Christmas tree things people hang in their car? His was brand new and very strong. I quickly found out that it did nothing to mask the smell. It only enhanced it.

  After that day, my parents (headed by my dad’s fear of ever smelling that smell again) ensured the laundry cycle would never get that far again. So far, it hasn’t, but I don’t think I will ever feel secure.

  Describe Your Home Life

&nb
sp; Things at home are a lot different than they are at school. I find myself not being tortured or ridiculed on a consistent basis. That is not to imply that I am praised or coddled, though. I fit in somewhere in between, like a backdrop to the chaos.

  I have a dad, a mom, and a four-year-old sister, Samantha. They all call me “Ben”. Actually, there are many times my parents call me “Benjamin Matthew,” but those times usually coincide with me getting in trouble.

  Sometimes, this is handy. It gives me the heads up on whether to answer them or not.

  Life at home is not as stressful as it is at school, but it’s not without the drama. I tend to have a different outlook on life than my parents and this certainly leads to some conflicts.

  For instance, I like TV. A lot. It is my lifeblood. I am pretty sure the gentle glow of the television screen is a bundle of heaven’s rays stuffed into a plastic-and-glass box.