autobio: sixth grade

I really could care less about what people choose to say about Chapel Hill Middle School in Douglasville, GA�"it is honestly the best thing that happened to me in my early teenage years. All three years I was there and the administrators I experienced�"Dr. Morris, Mr. Strong, Mr. Graham (after I left)�"led me to love my home away from home. It was even then in sixth grade that led me to journaling and documenting my entire middle school experience. It was where I experienced love for the first time, found my passion, connected with adults who are mentors to me to this current day, found a best friend and lost him, et cetera. But basically…I began to grow up.

 

a sixth grader

For Chapel Hill Middle School, there were three “feeder” schools: Arbor Station Elementary, Chapel Hill Elementary (my school), and Holly Springs Elementary. So just by all that, you can conclude that I didn’t know around two-thirds of the whole grade. And considering I knew two people in my entire homeroom, I was bound to make a new friend someday. That’s exactly what I proceeded to do. Her name was Schellbie Bibbins: she sat in front of me in homeroom, she was in half of my classes, she became my best friend.

Other new friends I came across, like Schellbie, began to get very close to me and we exchanged numbers very quickly. It came to a point where I rarely talked to those who went to elementary school with me. Schellbie and I shared the same fourth period/lunch, and there we were introduced to the students: Kimani Smith and Lance Wise. Man, after that we were a clique! As Kimani and Schellbie grew close and soon became as close as sisters, Lance and I soon became like brothers…but didn’t want to admit how close we had become. For example, in Reading, we were writing about our best friends and we both chose other girls we were close to as our topic to write about but agreed it was a lie the next week. We were each other’s best friend. You should know how dudes act. We want to exude all this masculinity, but it’s truly nothing more masculine than expressing how you feel. Lance was the first male best friend I had since I was sexually assaulted. It isn’t like we took advantage of each other. It was a real brotherhood, a real bond. Hence when I found out he was moving at the end of sixth grade, it was surreal; surreal enough we both cried on the last day of school. We tried to continue the brotherhood for as long as we could, but I guess the distance overtook us.

My bond with Kimani was also genuine and real. We had a friendship away from the clique as we also had third period together. Even though we liked our teacher, we made it our mission to personally “get on Mr. McCuller’s nerves” and in turn, was always given silent lunch. Even if one of us got silent lunch, the rest on the clique would go to silent lunch and dare to talk. We didn’t really like many of our teachers and didn’t care what really happened; we could be disobedient when we liked to be. Kimani could really be a best friend to me then too because she continuously had my back, day in and day out. She was (and still is) a genuinely great person and a fun person to be around. Back in the simple days, no one could tell me or Kimani anything to throw us off our high of having fun.

As I got close to these three people, a girl from Holly Springs snuck into my life: Bralyn Curry. It started when I had a crush on her, but she thought I was gay. Any chance of us dating ended right there in that moment, but it didn’t stop the possibility of a friendship. We grew so close over the course of sixth grade and even the rest of middle school. Bralyn was my girl and we were close, there was even a rumor in seventh grade that I got her pregnant. No, we were sexually active with each other and she was not pregnant. That’s another story for another day. We never really got into an argument in sixth grade because we were the closest in seventh grade�"like I said, another story, another day.

Piggybacking off of my annoying instances with Mr. McCuller, I got my first In-School Suspension (ISS) ever for the first time in sixth grade. I vaguely remember it now, but there was a dude named Chase whose locker was next to mine and he was in my homeroom. As I was closing my locker, he put his hand in the way and was being annoying. Even back then, I was easily annoyed and just ready to get to homeroom. But he was being antsy and dared me to “slam the locker on his hand.” Growing up, I was not the one to back down from a dare or anything of that nature so I backed the locker up to gain momentum and slammed it over on his poor fingers�"then he screamed out. He ran to our homeroom teacher and I’m apologizing because I know I’m going to get in trouble but I wasn’t expecting to get ISS. Personally, I don’t think it was that serious but the assistant principal�"Mrs. Barrett, at the time�"said that was “a very violent act” and so I got ISS for two days.

I remember coming home and my mom knew (the process was to get written up and then they call your parents) and I didn’t get it in trouble. She just simply said, “I am so disappointed in you.” As a kid, that rocks your world and I couldn’t even think straight yo. I fell asleep crying, woke up again, and fell asleep crying again. I was such a softie, but don’t worry. By the next day, I was back fine.

November to February was the most hectic time of that school year because of my most beloved academic sport: Reading Bowl (back when I was reading faithfully)! The basis of Reading Bowl is there are a maximum of twenty books to read, and at each competition, you compete against other schools to buzz in and simply answer questions on those books. Like a book quiz read aloud. I competed in Reading Bowl in fourth grade and because I moved schools after the competition deadline, I couldn’t compete fifth grade. Yet, in sixth grade, I came back full force as of the seven members of the team, six were sixth graders. Our Reading Bowl coach (the media specialist, Ms. Godfrey) grew to love us…I’ll cover that throughout the rest of the chapter.

Long story short, it was the beginning of a reign that lasted for three years. We won the County Championships (first ever for Chapel Hill Middle) and achieved third place at the Region Championships through a terrible tie-breaker that ended our season in early February. Through Reading Bowl, I met my favorite “smart-icles” in Anneliese Schroer and Tahlar Bones.

In sixth grade, you can say I got my first “real” girlfriend�"or as real as one can be in middle school. Her name was Zaria White. Fast forward to today, we are both one of the top achievers in our class, both involved in Student Government, and both attend Chapel Hill High School. I promise I’ll get there soon enough but we are coming back to the relationship we had in middle school. To begin with, me and Zaria were both in the same class in fifth grade and soon became close at the end of the school year. So, that August, I asked her to be my girlfriend. We were going good for a while, but soon broke up. Then, I asked her out again the day after my birthday�"she turned me down on my birthday in fifth grade�"and she said yes. Towards the end of November though, we broke up once again. And we didn’t date again until March lasting for three weeks! That was a good length of time considering throughout the long relationships we would date for like one to nine days. But it all came to a head during standardized testing time in late April with this letter…

[insert April 24, 2013 letter]

If you’re thinking that was a nasty break-up, you are definitely right! You are smarter than a fifth grader! That was the last time we ever dated as Zaria really hit me hard with her low level of “care”. As you’ll see during the time of seventh grade, that hit me WAY harder than I wanted to explain in that time. Now in this day and time, Zaria and I are like best friends. We still continue to annoy each other, but care and depend on each other in the same. Reflecting on it, me and Zaria should have held off on dating until later down the line (my mom agrees) as you can see it seems like we went through some pretty teenage things at the time we were eleven and twelve. It was so bad then that some of our friends felt they needed to choose between us when we were arguing and her brother still doesn’t like me after five whole years (i.e. he got my number from Zaria, texted my phone, and called me out my name by calling me “gay”. The dude was in eighth grade at the time. Again though, another story for another day).

Like I said in “2011,” I almost drowned twice. Like how most people say: “I almost saw the light.” So when my mom caught wind of what happened, she determined that I should learn how to swim. In America today, many black people don’t know to swim and my mom told me, “You are not going to fall into that stereotype, you will learn how to swim…even if you’re the only one there.”

In March 2013, I started my first swimming lesson; I was in the Level One class which was just basic swimming that consisted of six lessons. We only paid for the Level One class in March, but one of the local swim coaches there saw me backstroking and yelled out, “Where is his mom?! He is a natural!” He talked to my mom and they signed me up for the Level Three class in April (where the swimmers are in the deep end) and towards the end of April, I joined the Piranhas, our local swim club.

When I first found out I was I was on the swim team, I was elated. But as the season went on through the summer, it was such routine work to point where I was feeling like I was getting depressed. I know right, a sixth grader feeling depressed? Crazy, right? But it’s real in some people’s lives. By the grace of God, that spirit of depression was rebuked out of my life by my guardian angel because anyone that has been depressed or knows someone who is depressed know that is a STRONG spirit. Anyways, I mustered up the courage and candidly told my mom how I was feeling. I guess she really felt me on a deeper, spiritual level because she was going to let me stop, but after the current season. You know black parents hate wasting money and they are the ones to say, “I already paid for it, therefore you’re gonna finish it.” At the Area Championships, I sucked and my season was over.

No, I didn’t suck on purpose. I really sucked in swimming all together. It just wasn’t my sport; it was the first sport I ever competed in in my life. I wasn’t passionate about it, however I found my passion through my current sport.

Then, on May 31, 2013, my sixth grade year was over. I ended the year with all A’s (of course, nothing lower) and was officially a seventh grader. Reflecting back on sixth-grade, it showed me that stuff was starting to get real and I was subliminally always in drama. I don’t like how I was in sixth grade because I had no mental toughness; I let everything get to me and I always had to talk about it. I remember coming home every other day, calling my cousin Destiny to just vent and let out all my frustrations and she says today, “Jayden, I don’t know what you were going through back then. You had a new story every day,” with a chuckle. Which I really did for the fact everything got under my skin. But baby now, it takes a lot to get me out of my character.

Back then, my mom and I began to argue a lot. It is usually that time when teenagers start trying to combat their parent(s) with a reply or an answer that may come off as being a “Smart Alec.” I was such an angry soul back then in partially because people judged me a lot where I felt had to defend myself in almost every encounter, I was being called “gay” and asked if I was gay at least three to four times a week and after being sexually assaulted by a dude one to two years prior, it made me feel nasty inside. Like when victims of rape and sexual assault feel like they brought that evil event on themselves, that’s how I felt every time someone called me gay (especially when those I was close with were calling me that). I am one to tell you guys, it doesn’t last long. Some people don’t know they extent of their words and how much they carry, but no one knew what I went through by that age. Some people still don’t, so me writing this autobiography is really going to put myself out there. Yet it’s okay because I am okay now.

You may be thinking why I loved Chapel Hill though, it did get better from there, like I said.