Memory Lane

I don't remember much about 3rd grade. Most of my memories are rather vague; I remember being really happy that I had Mrs. Hellman because she was the super-cool teacher that everyone wanted to have. I vaguely remember some lesson about candy that involved us making red lollipops. And for some odd reason, I also remember that I did really well in the spelling bee, but I lost because I couldn't spell 'palomino'.

However, there are 2 very distinct memories that I have. The first happened during a story-lesson. We were all sitting on the floor kind of like a 20 kid pile up. A girl that lived a few blocks away from me was sitting in front of me. I noticed that she had just gotten her hair braided, complete with the hairbeads that were everywhere in the 80's. My 8 year-old mind was fascinated by this, so I reached out to touch her hair -- just to see what it felt like. Predictably, Christy wasn't happy about this and screamed "He touched my hair!" I was really super embarrassed. Mrs. Hellman said something along the lines of well your hair is different, and he was just curious about it. No harm, no foul. I didn't get in any trouble, but Christy was very upset. I wanted to apologize, but I really didn't understand what was going on. Since I saw Christy after school many days and played with her, things got sorted out.

My second memory is about month later during the ever popular snack time. We'd sit around the tables, and eat whatever snack our parents had packed for us. The class rich-bitch bully had decided that she and her posse were going to sit across from me. Betsy kept taunting and daring me to touch her Little Debbie StarCrunch. Mostly because she knew that we didn't really have the money to spend on snacks like that. After about listening to her for 5 minutes, I had enough of her and her stupid StarCrunch. Figuring that I'd gotten away with touching something I shouldn't have touched before, I jabbed my finger at the StarCrunch.

Betsy started crying. Mrs. Hellman treated me like the 3rd grade version of the AntiChrist. I tried to explain what happened, but I got read the riot act, was made to publicly apologize and I had to bring a whole box of StarCrunches to class the next day and give them to Betsy. Properly chastened, I came to school the next day and gave Betsy her demon treats. She responded that she didn't really want them and she just wanted to see if I'd actually touch her damn food.

Confused by the conflicting messages Mrs. Hellman sent out, I decided it was best not to touch anything that was not mine or physically attached to my body. But I couldn't help but realizing: It's apparently OK to touch the equally-as-poor-as-me black girl's hair, but it's NOT OK to touch the rich, white, blonde girl's snack. Growing up at the lower end of the middle class in a very rich suburb made me accutely aware of all the things I didn't have at a very early age. But without even realizing what she had done Mrs. Hellman had taught me something about how society in this very rich suburb worked: Rich White Girl > Poor White Boy > Poor Black Girl. Fortunately, that equation never took for me.

Christy and I remained friends until my family moved across town when I was 15. Betsy got steadily more stuck up and nastier as the years progressed. The last time I ever saw her was at the end of 6th grade. From what I heard, she was one of those popular rich tyrants in high school. Which of course means that everyone hated her.