sjsprWriting

I was six years old, one of the youngest in the class, when i entered the second grade. It was the first year i entered the classroom the first day of school without crying. Score! I was in 2-D with Ms. Guzman. It was the second year in the row with my best friend Diego in the class. That was a terrible mistake made by the school. Diego and I were a disaster. No matter how apart they put us in the classroom something between us always happened and we’d get in trouble. I remember Diego as being a tattle tale most of the time. We were once laughing really hard while the teacher was talking to a parent and he told on me because i “supposedly” spit in his mouth. In fact, in the 2nd grade, Diego had one of those abnormally big pink erasers in which we would make holes with our pencils. He still had that eraser before he left to Colorado or Seattle,or wherever he is, and he gave it to me the day he left. Besides Diego, I clearly remember Emilio every. single. day of the week bragging about his multiplication skills and some video game he would play on his computer. It made me feel so stupid and inferior in the class, but then again, I never really liked him so I quickly learned to ignore it.

Besides a long lasting friendship being formed, I think it was the first time I ever liked a girl. The first time a girl actually liked me back. Katia was in my second grade classroom and I don't really remember how it all started but we ended up liking each other. The whole grade was invited into Ms. Feliciano’s classroom to watch” March of the Penguins” and I sat next to Katia. I got all nervous and shaky with Diego behind me bothering me. We tried to hide it from our friends that we were holding hands but now that I think of it, we could not have made it more obvious. I was an extremely shy kid so it was basically just holding hands, not even talking.

During this time, my passion for basketball began. It was my first year going to Caparra Country Club to play intramural tournaments. My first year, I was part of the Suns and we finished off 2nd place. During the last quarter of the final game, when I realized my team was going to lose, I acted like I couldn't breathe and did not feel well in order to give an excuse for losing. My parents believed the first fifteen minutes of my acting and then completely ignored me. The sport became a really big part of my life and I would practice any chance I got.

Academically, I proved to myself during the first grade that I was capable of getting all A’s. Therefore, I was so accustomed to getting straight A’s that a C in my spelling test was a punch in the face. It was a 10 word test and i got 3 words wrong. I remember clearly the night before studying with my mom and getting the word “flower” wrong when she quizzed me. She made me copy it down 15 times in order to not forget it. I guess that was not enough because when the test came, I wrote “flower” with an “a” and got it wrong. That first C really got me down and made me cry for a little bit. Then it got worse. The Spelling Bee. I had passed the first stage in Mrs.Feliciano’s Classroom and went on to the second stage in my classroom. Most of my classmates were part of the second stage yetI lasted until the final three. Emilio, David San Miguel, and I. The teacher said “spell the word a”. That completely threw me off because, what the hell, that just simply should not be allowed. “Can you use it in a sentence?”. She looked at me with her eyes completely open and said “ A cat jumped over a box”. Well great, she used the same word TWICE in the same sentence. I had to make a decision. Capital A or just a. I said “Capital A”. I was then disqualified from the round and David San Miguel had to spell “a”. He then went on to say “ a a a a a”. To this day I still think my spelling was closer than his but the teacher seemed to find his amusing and let him pass on to the next round. That completely scarred me for the rest of my life, since I still repeat the spelling bee in my head very often.

The second grade, in general, was a big slap in the face by reality and I’m glad it happened at such a young age. I created a great friendship, liked someone for the first time, found a passion, and realized it was not always about perfect grades. I don’t think I’ve been that productive in my life ever since.