At Least You’re Not Svetx: The “I’m Okay; You’re Okay” Blog of the Post-Nineties Era

It was the seventh 30-minute recess of the first grade when I began suspecting I was odd. Actually, one of the teachers told me, “You’re odd.” She formulated this assessment right after I confessed that I hated recess. I just wanted to stay inside and play with the Baby Jesus doll in the toy bin. But I always attracted negative attention for being overly possessive of the Christ child. Often, I was forced to surrender him to the powers that be. This was a special trauma since every god-fearing five-year-old knows what happened to the Messiah the last time a friend surrendered him to an authority figure.

Still, crucifixion of a loved one could never rival the horrors of the concrete jungle and the iron jungle gym, a tool clearly engineered by parents of unwanted children. To a homesick, baby Jesus-stalking-five-year-old wearing corduroy culottes, 30- minutes felt like a day-long New England church sermon spoken in Old English.

It’s significant to note that I started school a year early, and I hadn’t yet learned how to tie my shoes. My mother died when I was four; my father often worked as an electrical engineer in a place called “Hollywood, Kentucky,” and my grandmother was in charge of the safe deposit keys at Valley Fidelity Bank in downtown. No one was home during the day, so my dad and grandmother prematurely deported me to a place that strictly enforced recess. There, I learned fast that the concrete jungle is no place for a child with loose laces.

The teacher assigned to guard the prisoners during that dismal half hour of doom, the same teacher who deemed me “odd,” simply did not know this. It wasn’t her fault. What six-year-old doesn’t know how to tie her shoes? How was she to know that I was a barely-five-year-old masquerading as a normal first-grader? So, when I beseeched her assistance with my shoelace predicament, she assumed I was lazy. She accused me of being just another attention-hungry white child trying to get folks to do everything for me.

I felt grossly misunderstood, a perception that was growing increasingly familiar to me. Conversely, she felt unfairly saddled with naive, blonde, culotte be-clad Aryans forcing her hand to shoe-tie as a way of upholding a long-entrenched social structure fraught with evil, inequity, sorrow, and subservience. She felt grossly used and underestimated, a perception that had already been long familiar to her.

Ironically enough, recess taught me to be everything but attention-seeking and dictatorially dependent. Survival depended on keeping a low profile. Attention was never something for which one should strive in a land of posturing jump-rope divas and bullying little boys pretending to be Gene Simmons. And I knew damn well that low profile maintenance requires self-sufficiency. So, I was desperate before I sought help. Naturally clumsy, I needed to eliminate any potential risks, and undone shoelaces were a major liability, especially if I found myself in need of a quick bipedal getaway. Which I did, soon after I got chewed out for being a spoiled, attention-starved toddler-tyrant. I was just minding my own business, nursing my bruised ego following teacher-rejection when Shannon Green “declared war” on me for no good reason other than currying favor with the recess warden.

She charged her blood-thirsty, brainwashed minions to run me down, a herd of salivating hyenas corraling supper. I fled toward the front-most middle swing set pole, which I knew was “base,” that locus of safety considered neutral ground. But I didn’t make it. I tripped over my shoelaces, fell, and skinned both knees and hands. The teacher felt terrible, dispersed the rabid mob, and sought band-aids for me immediately. They had Snoopies on them. I couldn’t fully bend my legs for nearly a week, but my dad taught me to tie my shoes that night. At the end of the day, I got to watch the Gong Show & play with Mr. Potato Head before bedtime.