Part
10
February 17, 2004
iranian.com
The first day of school in a new town is horrible
regardless of the circumstances. Now imagine being in a new
country for a week and then immediately having to go
to school. Add a dash of spice (the kind
that horror movies are made out of) and make sure you
don't speak a word of English. And finally to top it
off, make it a junior high.
Junior high is probably the
most awkward time in a kid's life since you are not
really a kid anymore but not yet an adult. It's a
very strange and uncomfortable transition period. It's hard enough
fitting in under normal circumstances but throw my set of facts
in there and you have a
recipe for disaster.
Ah yes, I can still remember that
first day of junior high with great detail. Day one
at Lakeside Middle School was my first day of 7th
grade. The only thing going for me was the fact that
my grandparents' house was on the same street and it
was comforting to know that my family was close by.
I arrived at Lakeside around 7:30 in the morning
figuring that I could pick up my schedule and locate
my class before the first bell. Noticing that
everyone was standing in a line by our gym, my
instincts from Iran kicked in and I quickly joined one
of the lines figuring that it must be important. I
randomly picked a line and joined the herd of cattle
as we slowly moved forward.
Upon my arrival at the
promised land, or more precisely, the front of the
line, I was asked for my last name. At that point I
realized that the lines were set alphabetically and I
was standing in the wrong line. Luckily I was in the
H-I line and the lady in charge of Js was sitting next
to her and was more than happy to hand me my schedule.
I was thankful that I had dodged my first hurdle
of
the day given that I had the competence of a 5-year-old child.
I took the paper from the lady and started walking to a quieter
location so I could
figure out what was going on and where I was supposed
to go. I had been practicing a little basic reading
and writing with my uncle but was completely
ill-equipped to deal with the situation I was in.
To
my horror, I found out that due to my late
registration, they had hand-written my schedule. Even
worse was the fact that they had used cursive writing
and I could not decipher any of it for the life of me. At this
point, I only knew how to say basic words like "hello", "goodbye"
and whatever else I had
learned from Sesame Street. I was completely
unequipped to deal with such high level stuff as
cursive writing.
I looked around in desperation for
an Iranian face in the crowd and found my cousin
standing there looking over her schedule. I was both
shocked and relieved at finding a familiar face in the
crowd. Shocked to find out my cousin was going to the
same school and had opted not to tell me; and relieved
that I managed to locate her in the sea of students. I grabbed my stuff
and ran up to her.
Given that
it was 7th grade and everyone was trying their hardest to
look cool and impress everyone else in the hopes of
establishing their reputation for the upcoming years,
I'm sure she appreciated her fresh off the boat cousin
running up to her and frantically speaking Farsi to
her. She probably wanted to melt away and pretend
that she didn't know me, but instead, was very nice and helpful.
I was quite proud of myself to have escaped the
second hurdle of the day unscathed. Apparently my cousin and
I were in the same first class so she escorted me to
the room. The class began and the teacher took roll
and of course, when she got to my name, there was a
long pause. My cousin who had encountered this
situation before offered our names, thinking it had to
be one of us that was causing the long pause. She was
correct and my third hurdle of the day was handled
smoothly.
I was starting to feel quite confident of
my ability to survive the school day without incident
but within 20 minutes my dreams were summarily
shattered. Just as I had started to feel a bit
comfortable in my surroundings and situation, the bell
rang and everyone jumped out of their seats in search
of their next class (later I found out that this
was merely our home room and not a class). In Iran,
we would sit in one classroom and the teachers would
rotate but that was not the case for my classes in
U.S.
My cousin joined the crowd and left me on my
own. There I was standing alone in the room with my
schedule in hand trying to figure out where to go when
the teacher noticed my distressed look. She came by
and asked if there was anything wrong (I am assuming
this part since I didn't understand English at the
time but she looked like a nice lady so that's
probably what she was asking. She could have been
saying "get the hell out of my room" and I wouldn't
have known the difference).
I took out a piece of
paper that my uncle Mehrdad had written for me. It
was my life raft off the Titanic and my last true hope
of survival in this unforgiving ocean of a middle
school. It read, "I don't speak English, can you
please help me?" I saw a smile on her face and she
took my schedule from my hand and looked it over. She
then took me to my next class and introduced me to the
teacher. I made sure to memorize every detail so that
I could get there the next day. The routine of
teachers taking me to my next class continued for the
rest of the day. I am eternally thankful to them and
my uncle's note.
My fourth period class was physical education, which
normally would have been great. No talking was
necessary and I could show off how good I was (or
thought I was) at soccer. Sports are probably the
best way for kids to assimilate into new surroundings.
Sports are universal and if you're actually good, you
can get the respect of your fellow classmates without
speaking their language. I think this is probably why
my younger brother cruised through the whole
assimilation process with relative ease.
Two events happened, however, that traumatized me
during the physical education period. First, while
standing in line, a huge blond guy came up to me and
told me to go home. It took me a couple of minutes
to translate the sentence in my head. Of course, I
also misunderstood what he was meant by "home". I thought he was
telling me to go home for lunch. Since lunch period wasn't
for another
hour, I thought he figured if we all went home now the
teachers could not do anything about it so I smiled at
him to try to portray my approval at his clever
thought process.
Sadly, that was not what he meant. He
got angry and then pointed at me and fired off the
same sentence. I started to think that this guy
was trying to tell me something about my clothes
(like they were dirty or something) and I should go
home and change. Not knowing what to say, I just
smiled at him again. This upset him even more and to
illustrate his point, he punched me. Ah ha! A light
bulb flashed above my head and I finally understood. Violence -- the international
language.
There's nothing like good old fashioned violence
to get your point across. The teacher saw the punch and told
him to apologize to me and shake my hand. I had no
intention of shaking his hand fearing the worst but
the teacher encouraged me to do so. We started to
shake hands and he started squeezing harder and
harder. Eventually he let go and I was set on
avoiding him and his skin head friend for as long as
possible.
Being wholly traumatized by getting punched on my
first day at a new school in a new country, I was
relieved that the day was almost over. Physical
education period ended and at the end of our class we
came back to the locker room to change. At that point
we were informed that we had to take communal showers! Everyone at that age
is in their awkward stage of growing, or more frighteningly not
growing, depending
on your particular position in the race to puberty.
My jaw dropped at the thought of having to get naked
in front of so many people. So I slipped out of the
back of the room and pretended to be sick for the next
two weeks until the mandatory showers ended >>> To
be continued >>> Index
Comedy & Satire in San Jose on
February 27 >>> Details
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