Fourth Grade

      The autumn after my parents got divorced, my mom, my brother, my sister and I moved to El Paso. I started the fourth grade at Alta Vista Elementary the week after we moved. There was only one big, beige building, about a hundred years old. The hallways had that distinctive smell of books that makes me say “ It smells like school”. The grass on the field was hard and yellow, and every day was cloudy and cold. I felt sad most of the time. For an eight-year-old, my life had turned pretty complicated. I didn’t know anyone and I couldn’t speak English.
       I found it hard to socialize with my new classmates since all they did was sing songs from High School Musical and Hannah Montana and talk about unimportant things. Considering my the friends I had in the past, and the fact that I listened to Aerosmith and Wu Tang, everyone seemed cheesy and innocent. I felt older and wiser. I didn’t feel like one of them, so I didn't know how to start conversations. However, everyone talked to me and everyone acted extremely friendly, so we all ended up becoming friends.
       After about a month or two, we had Drug-Free presentation at school, and people came to our classrooms to warn us about the usage of drugs. Later, they made some sort of Drug-Free poster contest and everyone had to make one. I decided to make mine a realistic scenario of what actually happens, very detailed and with a lot of color. I drew a little girl saying “No! drugs are bad” to a drug addict on a sidewalk. I spent the whole night drawing it and coloring it. The day the posters were due, everyone walked in with generic drawings of cigarettes crossed with red Xs and the words “be drug free”. For a moment I felt insulted, then I thought I had missed specific drawing instructions, but then I just felt like laughing at everyone. I felt superior. If anyone had turned in a poster like theirs at my old school, they would’ve automatically failed. I was surprised to see that the teacher gave us all hundreds and that he was pleased with all our effort. What surprised me the most was one girl who expected to win because she did the words on her poster with pink glittery ink. I laughed.
       That same day right before school was over, the teacher made me stand up in the front of the class and told everyone that my poster was “the chosen one” to be taped on the wall by the front office. According to the other teachers I had a “colorful imagination” and described my poster as very creative. I received a red pencil as a prize. For a moment I felt insulted, then I thought I had missed the prize description, but then I just felt like laughing at everyone. I felt superior.
The rest of that year remained good. I found it extremely easy to learn English, and most of the math and science lessons had already been taught to me in the third grade at my other school in Mexico. I got perfect scores on my TAKS tests, I got a trophy for A honor roll, and I was student of the month of February. For the first time I felt important. After elementary school, I took a lot of advanced placement classes and my life pretty much revolved around school and homework.
        Looking back, I feel like I didn’t experience a real childhood. I was always ahead, doing high school work in middle school, and even now, college work in high school. I still had that feeling of superiority and matureness. Maybe that affected the way that I behaved. Teachers used to tell me      “You don’t act like a freshman” during my ninth grade year, and since I never had a stage where I changed from child to young adult, I remained silly and weird.