Emily Hoffman

    In the early 70s I attended sixth grade at Washington Grade School in Omaha. Washington, an older school defined by its red brick, had two playgrounds, one for the kindergarten through third graders and one for the fourth through sixth.
     Being teased began early for me, with the older kids making fun because I played on the baby playground. At least I had swings.
     My happiest time in that school came and went in first grade. Mrs. Berry, an awesome first grade teacher (second only to my mother whom I never had as a teacher), had a school house complete with a bell. The reading reward center had a prominent place in the front of the class. Leading up to the school house were flat paper boulders that had words written on them. The student who could read all the words could ring the bell located in the window of that schoolhouse. Thanks to my fairy godmother, I read all the words one day and got to ring the bell.
     That was 1967. School began to go downhill from there. School and I never did agree, quite evident during sixth grade.
     I'd graduated to the big playground long before I'd turned 12. I missed the swings. The only piece of equipment on the big playground was a jungle gym. The loners and outcasts hung out there while the rest of us, the popular girls and the want-to-be-popular girls, were double jump roping on the far end of the playground.
     Double jump roping, the act of having two girls twirling two jump ropes in opposite direction while a girl in the middle jumps both ropes, could be dangerous. Often, if we missed a jump, we'd get slapped hard by the rope.
     I had been teased plenty by the sixth grade boys that year because I didn't look or act quite like the other clones. I figured if I could just be one of the popular girls, I wouldn't get teased so much.
     We all wanted to be Debbie Lewis in sixth grade. She had a boyfriend, cute hair, was skinny and had boobs. She had "it" whatever that was. She managed to control sixth grade by publishing her "most popular" list each Monday. I would do just about anything to be number one on that list. I hate to admit that I did.
     I punched Sandy one day because Debbie told me to. Just to place on her list. Sandy, a gangly girl with stringy blond hair and a unique smell about her, came to school dressed in tattered, ugly clothes. Instead of having compassion for her, I had distain. At 12, I couldn't begin to understand what it meant to have little money, little love at home. I had this desire to be accepted. I couldn't see that Sandy had that same longing.
     Often, looking back at the Sandy incident, I've wished I could meet her again and apologize. During our life journey we wrong people. We make errors in judgment. That's understandable when we're younger, we're immature. We don't have life lessons under our belt. We should be learning some lessons as we grow older. Unfortunately there's not much change in the way we treat the Sandys of our lives when we're over 30. We might not slug them, but we snub or gossip instead. Our lives will always have a Sandy or two, I was reminded of that this week. How we respond to them is more a reflection on us than it is on them.
     Many people still long for the Debbies in their life to put them on an "A" list. Turning 20, 30, 40 or 50 hasn't diminished that desire for acceptance and belonging.
     Some of us are still hanging by the jump ropes, counting the turns before jumping in, and still getting hit with in the back if we miss.
     But some of us have finally learned that the best place to hang out is at the jungle gym, with all those outcasts and loners because we finally figured out that conforming isn't that much fun after all.