Compare/Contrast

The School Shimmy!
I moved from Washington to Louisville; Louisville to Badger Groove; Badger Grove to Orleans; Orleans to Osgood; and Osgood to Bicknell. So when a change in venue is necessary, I’m cool with it. Most moves are about the same. I lose most, if not all, contact with my former friends. I go through the long task of packing and then unpacking everything I own. I go to a new school, make new friends, and move on. While my entire environment can change overnight, there are still statics in the blinding flurry of dynamics. My family was always there for me. The sky was usually blue. The basic kids that go to one school have roles similar to other kids roles at other schools. There are jocks, bullies, druggies, thinkers, stinkers, sleepers, slackers, loners, and teacher's pets. Most schools are surprisingly similar.
The most striking similarities are within the elementary section of schooling. So naturally I progressed through grade school as most any other child would. As I got smarter my curriculum got harder. When I grew my desk got bigger. There I was an everyday sixth grade student in the Jac-Cen-Del school system. I was at the pinnacle of the elementary school hierarchy. Then something normal happened. I went to high school. I was on the bottom rung of the proverbial ladder once again. The teachers were different than I had ever had before. They seemed to expect something more of me. As if on an unseen see-saw, the more rigorous my work got, the more lax my rules became. I was allowed to chew gum in almost every part of the school. I could drink soda in the hallways. But the punishments intensified also. Instead of getting a citizenship grade, detention was the primary source of punishment. A splotch of ink on a piece of paper is no comparison to spending two and a half hours of a Saturday morning confined in school. Everything was normal and then dad got the calling to move on.
When you get the calling to move you simply can't stay. We moved to Bicknell over Spring Break in my eighth grade year. So I unpacked everything and got settled in. My first day at my new school was almost a week later. Mom drove me to this big three story, yellow-brick building in a small town that I barely knew the name of. On the way to the office I noticed something was off. Where there should have been numerous lockers there were pegs with small backpacks on them. I put this and the throng of little children i saw in the gymnasium together, reasoning that in this system the elementary was the two floors under the junior high floor. Once reached the office I was given a student guided tour while mom filled out paperwork. As my guide was explaining the daily schedule to me, she mentioned when we have recess. I thought it queer to have recess now that I was out of elementary school. The rest of the day was spent getting my books, figuring out where classes were, and trying to get to know some people.
Day number two went differently. Having all my books and a vague idea of where my classes were, I did what I always did. I looked at the rules. Gum was not allowed anywhere in the school. No food or drink was to be consumed except at lunch and at the water fountains. I didn't think too much of this. The school probably had an insect problem. The next thing I looked at was the punishments for these actions. I was under the demerit system! The demerit system is among the worst systems of punishment invented. When a wrong is done a demerit is given. It is simple and non-effective. It takes a set number of demerits to receive actual punishment. One of its big downfalls is that as people rack up demerits they brag about how many they have. The only way a demerit is used effectively is as a threat. So why would a school apply a system with such obvious faults? The students were not expected to reason about the system, they were merely to know it. That's when it hit me. My progression through school had turned away from moving me toward my future and began to regress me to my past. While being younger appeals to the old, it appalls the youth. Most children strive to be older while only a few strive to be younger. I couldn't imagine what was in store for me now that I was torn from the fringe of high school and thrown into the spindle of elementary redundancy and adolescent confusion.
Like a cow in a twister, there was nothing I could do but to wait till the frenzy stopped and I hit the hard ground of reality that is too often flown over. I survived just as I always did. I leaned on my family. I looked at the blue sky. I made friends. I moved on.