Week 1 at a New School: A Rocky Start
My 13-year old son Anders had just started at his new middle school. I was there to pick him up on that first Friday of the school year, anxious to hear how week 1 went.
“Mom, I made a ton of cool friends today!” my son exclaimed as he hopped in the car and gave me a hug, “thank you for moving us to Alaska!”
“I told you being new could be fun!” I said, prying his arms off me so we could give each other high fives.
Wait, that didn’t happen.
This did though:
“Mom, I hate this school! And I hate Alaska!” my son said as he got in the car and threw his backpack onto the floor. “Why did we have to move here?! This is so stupid! I just want to go back home!”
Sensing he wasn’t happy, I asked Anders if something in particular had happened. That’s when he told me that one of the “bad boys” at school told my son that he looks like a lizard.
“And what did you say?” I asked.
“I said, “Thank you, I get that a lot.”
“Good one.”
“But mom, now those boys are calling me “Lizard Boy” and I hate it!”
“Maybe they’re just trying to joke around with you?”
“Trust me, they’re not.”
I wasn’t expecting this. Unless the name “Lizard Boy” came with a set of superpowers I could see why he’d be upset, especially given that he’s the new kid just trying to make friends and fit in. My heart broke as I looked over at my son who had tears welling in his large, reptile-like eyes.
Anders is not used to being picked on, in part because at home he was always flanked by cousins and friends he’d known his whole childhood. Now he was bottom of the social food chain, and he was on his own.
“It’ll get better,” I promised.
“What if it doesn’t?” he asked.
“It always does. You’ve seen this movie.”
My son is big into making “movies,” or at least he is big into filming himself making Jim Carey-esque faces.
Prior to our move we began watching all the films that start with a new kid starting at a new school, and there are many: Karate Kid, Mean Girls, Twilight, Goosebumps, Back to the Future, Bring it On, Grease, Inside Out…this last one Anders watched over and over, it hit home.
(If you have any more “new kid” movies let me know!)
It made Anders feel better watching these movies because they always end well. Kid forced to go to a new school where he/she encounters obstacles before eventually finding greater wisdom, confidence, and friends. Its a classic storyline.
The one movie I didn’t show him was, “Carrie.”
I forgot John Travolta was one of the bullies in the movie!
Ultimately, week 1 wasn’t the school start I had envisioned for Anders, but I knew he would survive being the new kid and ultimately have a greater capacity to empathize, which I told him would be useful as a movie-maker, or whatever industry he eventually chooses. Of course a 13-year-old boy doesn’t really care about having greater empathy, so my teachable moment was a big fail.
I did a search on the effects of switching schools as a teen. Many authors warn that being uprooted, especially in your teen years, could cause lasting trauma, increased anxiety, and destroy confidence. Especially if switching schools happens more than once. But I went to 3 different high schools and look at me, I’m totally well adjusted and sane if you don’t include the times I’m not.
I actually found changing schools made my high school years more fun and interesting. And new perspectives certainly makes you realize that what is right in front of you isn’t that important. Too many kids don’t realize there is a whole world beyond the hallways of their hometown schools.
Of course when it comes to switching schools, no child, or circumstance, or experience is ever the same. I got lucky. And, at least in the case of the first high school I went to, which was a boarding school, the friends I still talk from that school say it was one of the best experiences of their lives.
Like my son, the start of my new school year there was a little, or a lot, awkward.
The Boarding School Abroad
When I was 14, I stopped wearing baby pink. For my mother, my evolution into wearing jeans and darker clothes was a particular hallmark of juvenile delinquency. She was so concerned she felt she had no choice but to send me to a boarding school in Switzerland.
Or, perhaps I sent myself. One day my mom suggested we fly to San Francisco for a shopping spree and to visit one of her dear old friends. I should have known something was up when she didn’t argue as I selected an array of black sweaters to try on, or when later that afternoon her dear old friend opened the front door and asked, “Are you Mrs. Rutherford?’
We entered this woman’s living room and splayed out on a large coffee table were all kinds of boarding school brochures. By the time we had to leave for the airport, I was signed up for one.
That night we returned home and my dad, who was always out of the loop (and I suspect he preferred it that way), was surprised to hear we had spent the day in San Francisco. He was even more surprised to hear I was going to a school in Europe. When he dared ask one too many questions, which was probably 3 total, my mom’s impatient response was for him to mind his own business, after first signing a check.
My mom was certain that at my “finishing school” as she optimistically called it, I would be trained in all matters of refinement, and that within a year I would evolve into a young lady whose poise and worldly charm could one day land her a doctor.
Success!
Apparently, other school attendees went on to marry princes, oh and the French president. I just looked up “Finishing School” on wikipedia and the one I attended, Chateau Mont-Choisi, was listed as one of the most famous ones (it closed in 1995). Two Chateau Mont-Choisi Alums include Princess Elena of Romania and Carla Bruni-Zarcozy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finishing_school
Certainly, as you’d expect, there was a lot of money at the school. I suspect my parent’s home, where they still live today, looked very different than any other student’s parent’s house. My parents have always been funny with how and where they spend money, the general rule was money was spent on experiences, not stuff. My dad had a used car he bought for $500. Except for a Laz-y-Boy chair, their furniture is at least 40-years-old. When two of the four burners stopped working on the kitchen stove my mom didn’t care. “I don’t need four burners anyway,” she would say as if she got lucky. It was only a decade later that the stove was replaced and after a third burner broke. And I remember for almost a year my dad routinely replaced a big bowl in the basement to catch a trickle of water from a cracked pipe in the ceiling because he didn’t want to pay for repairs. Paying a plumber a few hundred dollars to keep the house from collapsing into the basement was a unneeded extravagance. A girls “finishing school” in Switzerland was not.
The day I arrived at Chateau Mont-Choisi, I was the first in my room to arrive. I selected a bed by the window and immediately set up framed photos of friends and my cat, and I put my clothes in the adjacent closet. Then my dad and I went to lunch.
When we returned, my second of three roommates had arrived. And, she had moved all my stuff to another bed. She had also moved my clothes out of the closet, and hung hers inside. Bold move.
She was Swiss-German, I’ll call her Ann. Ann was tall, had shorn red hair except for a long thin braided tail. She often kept a pack of cigarettes in her white tee like James Dean. And on that first day she wore a yellow and black polka-dot poodle skirt. She wore this skirt every day afterwards as well. I can’t think of Ann without thinking of that skirt.
Ann didn’t speak english, and she pretended not to understand when we mimed the situation, that being that she had switched out my things. I was intimidated, I just wanted to make friends, and so I was about to just let it go. But my dad wasn’t having it, and he got the headmistress involved. And yes, she was called the “headmistress.”
I got the window bed back and, as a result, launched a war. Our third roommate eventually arrived, and to my relief she spoke english. She was Canadian. Because she seemed to get along with me, she was included on Ann’s, “sweet-revenge-for-not-giving-me-the-window-bed” list. Ann would “accidentally” throw away our stuff, or just flat out steal our things, including our underwear. In return, we would accidentally drop her new bottles of nail polish off the balcony, which made a colorful splash.
The dynamic at our school was one made up of cliques defined by nationality.
There were just a handful of us in the U.S. gang, and we were referred to as, “Les Americans.” Included was my Canadian roommate. She campaigned to have the other girls at least say, “Les nordamericans.” It didn’t stick.
Not that we didn’t all mix it up, we did live together after all.
At some point during the first semester, Ann had been ostracized by the Swiss-German gang. And the Germans wouldn’t take her (Swiss-German and German social circles were separate). So, in the end, Ann’s roommates turned out to be her only friends. We had long ago called a truce realizing our “war” wasn’t sustainable, or fun. The truth was we were all away from our families. It was lonely enough without having to go to bed at night feeling like you had an enemy 4 feet away, sleeping in the better bed by the window.
One day, only a few months into the school year, Ann begged me and another girl to help run away in the middle of the night. I don’t want to incriminate the other helper so I will just say she was one of, “Les Nordamericans.”
We helped her pack, kept watch, and I locked the front door behind Ann when she left. There wasn’t exactly high security. I remember looking through the old stained glass in the door as Ann’s poodle skirt scurried up the steep driveway, and disappeared into the night.
On reflection, helping her run away wasn’t the loyal or wise thing to let her do. I didn’t have the experience or maturity to recognize it then, but I’m certain Ann had several issues that needed professional attention, but sending your kid to therapy just wasn’t the thing to do then.
Fortunately, Ann survived, and made one last appearance. She returned for the rest of her stuff about a week later with someone who was family friend, I think. I don’t know, we were still mostly miming to each other. I stuck around to give her one final, smokey hug (I swear that’s all it took for the cigarette smoke to transfer permanently onto my clothes). I also stuck around to keep an eye on my stuff. Fool me once…
I do remember, in a sentimental moment, giving her one of my favorite music tapes. One she had always asked to borrow. It was my A-ha cassette tape and giving it away hurt. “Take on Me” was the number one song and the coolest video in 1985. When the sun was out and we all laid out on the deck, not quite frying in the alpine air, “Take On Me” practically played on a loop.
There couldn’t possibly be anyone on the planet who doesn’t remember, but this is for old times sake, and for my Chateau Mont-Choisi friends who actually read my blog sometimes:
So, what loose point was I making in all this? I have no idea, sorry let me look back. Ah, okay, so, bad first impressions and bad school starts don’t determine how things will eventually play out.
Week 20 at a New School – Are Things Any Better?
So, is my son’s real life movie of being the new kid going to conclude in a positive way?
That’s what I wanted to know, but stopped asking. My kids would get annoyed by my desperate inquiries.
“Are those boy still calling you “Lizard Boy?” I asked for the last time.
“What? No! That was so long ago. How do you even remember that?”
Oh, a mom never forgets!
“I was just wondering.”
“Mom, you’re so random.”
I had been hearing names of friends, and Anders has been playing videos on-line with a handful of them. I guess that counts as out of school socializing. But still wanted to see how he was integrating for myself. We had made him sign up for his middle school’s nordic ski team as we had heard that was a popular sport, and a great way to make friends.
My Son’s First Nordic Ski Race:
A huge eagle soared overhead as I hurried down the hill to my son’s first race against Seward. I had brought my big camera to mark the event. Despite being in a hurry, I stopped and tried to take an action shot of the eagle. Will I ever get used to seeing Alaska’s amazing wildlife?
I made it to the starting line just in time, Anders saw me and waved. My presence had been noted, phew. He was in one of the multiple long lines of skiers in team jackets. The race was about to start, so no one was socializing. This made it hard to tell how well Anders was getting along with his school peers, and I was dying to know.
Another eagle soared overhead and landed in a tree as the buzzer sounded.
They kids were off. Anders was somewhere in the middle as the skiers poled it uphill towards the woods. Inside those woods are the town’s well known Tsalteshi Trails. It is a pretty cool set of trails that thread throughout the wood, and most trails have overhead lights so you can ski day or night, or on days that look like night.
I stopped thinking about Anders and whether or not he getting along with other kids when my eyes wandered up towards the tree tops.
It was a little startling looking up to see all these eagles. Spooky even.
It made me wonder…what would it have been like if the birds Alfred Hitchcock went with in “The Birds” weren’t crows, but eagles? Because I’m all about tangents…
An American crow weighs 0.7-1.4 lbs and is about 17 inches long.
An American eagle weighs 6.6- 15lbs and has a wing span of up to 8ft.
The greatest weight on record for what an eagle can carry in flight was a 14lb mule deer. A bird like that could do more than muss Tippi Hedrin’s bouffant.
I start to take a lot of photos, none of which do the birds any justice, when I spot a dad standing near me. He looks curious as to why I’m taking a bunch of photos.
“That’s like, a lot of eagles, right?” I ask him.
He look up and nods, but clearly he isn’t as impressed.
I feel the need to further explain.
“I just moved here from Colorado,” I tell him, “and we spot eagles there every once in awhile, but definitely not like this.”
“Wait,” the man says, suddenly excited to talk to me, “are you the wife of the new doctor?”
In keeping with my apparent need to reference movies in this post, remember that movie “Doc Hollywood?”
We chat a bit and then I see the skiers starting to come out of the woods. I eventually excuse myself and make my way to the finish line, Anders will want to see me there.
But Anders doesn’t even look for me. Just past the finish line a bunch of boys have gathered to compare times. A couple of them look in Anders’s direction as he get his number, “dude, what did you place!?”
At first I think they are probably calling out to someone past Anders, but then I realize they aren’t. They are talking to my son who heads their way, and is subsequently pulled into the fold. I hear a lot of laughter and joking around. And it was just a lot of joking around, like friends do.
“I was 37,” Anders says.
“Dude, I beat you, by a lot!” says one.
“Dude, 37?! I got 28!” says another, “you suck!”
And they all start “duding” each other, and Anders says something and they all laugh. His teammates seem to really like him, like, really like him. Nearby, I stand and watch with what must surely be a creepy Joker grin on my face.
One of them grabs Anders’s arm, and points to a table being set up by some parents. Bags of chips and cookies are being opened, and Anders and his friends look like they’re trying to qualify for the olympics as they ski past me to the table of rewards.
https://giphy.com/gifs/4sOZwdFKatZCw/html5