David N.

Troubles of Being an Eight Year Old

David Noble

5 December 2008

WC: 1442

The Troubles of an Eight Year Old

Trying to think back on a pivotal moment in my writing career has been like trying to remember what the inside of my mother’s womb looked like. It’s not because I hate writing, I enjoy some writing quite a bit. But when I had given up hope on trying to find a memory, when I just stopped thinking about different experiences in my writing, I found a pleasant memory to focus on. It was during third grade when I finally was able to learn to write in cursive. The lead up to learning cursive and the events occurring in my young life melded together and reflected each other, now that I look back and examine the events.

I had just moved, for the first time, into a house. It was a summer day in June, the trees were a brilliant green, and the smell of fresh cut grass was wafting through the summer air. I was disappointed because I had to move and change schools. None of my friends lived close by, and I had also found out the girl I had been crushing on since kindergarten liked me back. I was a little irked at my mom, forcing me to move.

The neighborhood itself was quaint. On each side of our new house lived two little old ladies, one nicer than the other, but generally, they were both kind. The rest of the neighborhood was the same, old people everywhere and not a kid my own age in sight. Later that summer, a young couple with two little girls moved in, but the new kids were too young to be bothered with, and besides, they were girls.

However, all my solitude changed in August when I went back to school. There were more kids than I could shake a stick at, and I didn’t want to admit it... I was excited. The smell of school does that to me though; the smell of Elmer’s glue in the classrooms, mingling with the coarse construction paper, with the sound of scissors slicing through the paper, creating monstrosities that were supposed to be our mommies. That was beside the point though; I was in a new school and I was now a “big kid.”

Third grade was the place to be since I started elementary school. They were big, smart, could do math with weird symbols, and most of all could read cursive. Ever since the first grade when I had been introduced to writing, such as learning when a sentence was not at the end of the line, but where a thought stopped (it took me until middle school to realize what the hell a thought was). I also found out what cursive was, and it haunted me. Cursive was an elusive mistress, just out of my grasp, but still within sight. Teachers always sent me on errands at my other school, with a note pinned to my shirt, written cursive. I knew two things when I went on these errands: first, the note was about me. How could it not when the teacher asked me to go here or there. The second, and the one that really angered me, was that the teachers knew I couldn’t read the note and got their kicks out of watching me trying to decipher their loops and zig zags.

Not this year, though. This year, I was the big shot. I was wrong though, as most little kids tend to be. The new school I was at had mixed classrooms, that is to say, grades were mixed together. I was with fourth graders, kids bigger than me… well some were. I had never mixed with grades before, and I was a little intimidated. It felt too much like I was being vaulted into, not the big kid world I thought of but the young adult world.

After I had become accumulated to the older kids, I started to stress out again. It was cursive time. The year I had been waiting for, for two long years, had come. I thought that I would be solving world problems and having groupies of pretty girls massaging my massive brain in a matter of no time. Again, I was proven wrong. I witnessed my teacher and the girls in class make graceful strokes and curls and loop de loops with their letters, while mine looked little better than scribbly vomit on a page. After weeks of practicing, I couldn’t get my letters to look the way I wanted. On top of that, my hand was killing me from the constant writing that cursive entailed. Cursive writing was not what I thought it was.

My life, on the other hand, was the opposite of my adventures with cursive writing. I had a couple friends, my awesome skills in football were respected and admired in class, I was the smartest kid in my class, and I got in a fight and kicked some kid's “A.” Everything going wrong with cursive was going right in my life. My life was not forced like cursive, nor did I have an achy feeling after participating in life. I felt a conundrum; the place I was hesitant about was treating me well, but the thing I wanted to learn was arousing my fury.

My life did not get a break from the drills we had to do with cursive. After finally being able to write legible script, I now had to write my spelling words, 15 words ten times each, on a paper three days a week. I remember being so focused on my cursive, that the only word I can remember learning to spell was “nickel” and I’m pretty sure that was fourth grade. One thing that did happen that I enjoyed, was finding letters I liked to write in cursive. Any lower case ‘f’ would make me salivate. I went crazy with joy every time I got to write words like 'of' or 'off.' But that has always been me, always trying to find that silver lining to go with those grey clouds.

Surprisingly, my life had taken a turn for the worse. My mother was not dying nor did I get drafted into some war going on, but the friends I had made were all fourth graders. The end of school promised me to finally be the big kid in the classroom, the one everyone else looked to, like my best friend Nick. However, that happened at the expense losing my best friend to the fifth grade. The pretty girls had left as well, seeing as they were all fourth graders. That was not as sad to me though; they always thought that because I was a third grader I was gross (which was probably true) or short (I do remember looking up at them) or weird (I admit whole heartedly to this and still do).

However, the one thing that I was excited about the end of the year, was that I had conquered cursive writing. I could write it, I could read it, and I could not understand it (who really knows the use of cursive writing anyway, besides my teacher’s excuse, “It’s faster!”). Cursive writing did not turn into the bane of my existence like I thought it was. If anything, I would have to say, me and ol’ cursive were on an unsteady truce. I would not use it, and it would not hurt my brain or my hand in return. This truce did not last long, just the summer. I was so focused on being the big kid and smart guy, that I did not remember my friend Nick’s dilemma all year long: everything that I would have to write as a fourth grader had to be in cursive.

Those were the days. I can still remember some of those things clearly, like the smells. Elmer’s glue will do that to a guy. That year was the last year I truly felt like a kid. Responsibilities had begun to pile up more and more and year after year. The only responsibility I can remember my eight year-old self having, besides the standard house chores and personal hygiene, was my self appointed task. The innocence of the task still strikes me as naïve, learning a technique that I’ll never, ever use for the life of me again. However, the proudest thing I can and will say is that: “I can read your code now, teachers. I have broken it, and it will never be used against me again!”