The Fifth Grade

The Fifth Grade

The fifth grade is the year kids are trying to figure out who they are and what kind of person they are going to be throughout the rest of their school years. I was one of those kids, anticipating the fifth grade with confidence and excitement. Especially since I knew I was going to be in a class with one of my best friends, April Clapton. I knew April from church, and I had spent many nights at her house. We were great friends, or so I thought. Little did I know, because of her, the fifth grade was going to turn out to be the worst year of my life.

It was the first day of school, and I was nervous. I walked into my classroom and found my name on the desk where I was supposed to sit. I looked around hoping to spot April right away, so I would have someone to talk to. There was a girl sitting next to me, her name was Sarah. She was really nice to me. We made small talk about what the first day was going to bring and how nervous we were about being in a brand new school. Then I spotted April walking through the door.

"Hi April!" I was so happy to see her.

She walked over to me and she had this cold hatred look in her eyes.

"Don't talk to me at school." And that was all she said.

She went and sat in her seat clear across the room from me. The desks were in alphabetical order. April Clapton and Rachael Taylor were not near each other. Even if they were, she had made it clear she was not my friend anymore, for no apparent reason. I kept racking my brain, trying to figure out why she was being so mean to me. Nothing came to mind. Not only was I crushed, but I was terrified. Now who was I going to talk to? I didn't know anyone else. I wish I could say that was the end of my pain in the fifth grade, but it was only the beginning.

For some reason everyone liked April. She was pretty and everyone in the class labeled her as popular. She turned everybody in my fifth grade class against me. Nobody wanted to talk to me, and they started to make fun of me. Even Sarah, who had no problem at all with me on the first day. One day April had a boy push me over a desk chair for no reason. I had done nothing to these kids to deserve the torture I received from them. I was not good looking, but I did not think I was ugly. I was an eleven year old girl. A lot of the other kids in my class looked worse than me at the time, but they were not getting ridiculed. Nobody wanted to sit by me or talk to me. If they got paired up with me by the teacher, they would make a face and say,

"Awww!" or, "Ewww! I don't want to be her partner, I'll get cooties!"

You would think the word cooties would not be used anymore in the fifth grade, but I heard it every day directed at me. There were only two girls who would talk to me. April Pierce and Holly Long used to go out of their way to sit by me and invite me to come eat lunch with them. I always thought it was because they felt sorry for me. So in other words, I had two pity friends.

It gets worse. I have had bad knees ever since I was a child. They dislocate when I straighten them, and I have to be careful, or I will find myself on the floor. I was standing in line one day and one of the boys thought it would be funny to kick me in the back of the leg. I went down, and the whole class started laughing at me. I just picked myself up and went to the back of the line. Every day one of the boys would kick me in the back of the leg just to humiliate me and see me fall. One of them actually did it in the lunch room one day, and I fell in front of the whole school. It's to painful to explain the humiliation and pain I felt every time I ended up on the floor. Finally I just quit letting anyone get behind me. I would always get in the back of the line. To this day, I hate people standing directly behind me.

My fifth grade class never let up on me. I never told my parents. I didn't want them to think I was a loser. The teacher knew about everything, but all she would do is come up to me and tell me she didn't know why everyone made fun of me, because I was so pretty and nice. Nobody ever got in trouble. It got to where I hated going to school, but somehow I still went. I never let my classmates see a tear. I would come home from school everyday and go straight to my room and lay on my bed and cry. That's how I handled it. I took it every day, and I never fought back. I don't know why. Maybe I was scared to fight them, or maybe I just wanted to pretend it wasn't happening to me. It did happen, and it changed me. It killed the person I could have been throughout the rest of my school years.

After the fifth grade the bullying and the harassment stopped. April Clapton moved away and I had a new sixth grade class, and they didn't make fun of me. I never gave anyone a chance to because I shut myself off. I didn't want to talk to anyone, and I never let myself get close to anyone at school. I didn't want their world of cliques and popularity. I never forgot the people in my fifth grade class. They grew up and became popular, and I stayed away from them. I wanted nothing to do with them. Even when I got to high school I didn't really talk to anyone in my grade. Looking back now I wish I could go back and involve myself in more activities and communicate more with my classmates. I feel like I lost out on a true high school experience.

I am now twenty-four years old, and the fifth grade feels like a milestone I had to cross many years ago. It still haunts me today. I still find myself being nervous the first time I meet someone. I am always in fear of rejection, but I now know that I am a great person. Once people get to know me they love me. I make them laugh, and I feel accepted and it feels great! The fifth grade caused me to have a lot of self-esteem issues I am still dealing with to this day. I do my best to fight through the issues, because my true personality is too good to waste. Life is too short for me to dwell on the past. I am a stronger person because of the fifth grade.