A story about my life from younger me perspective

     In my own life, I haven't nearly ever experienced anything as bad as what Jennette McCurdy has experienced.  No single event, occasion, or single person traumatized me the way that Jennette was in her childhood.  Although my life isn't nearly comparable to hers, I can write about how similar I can try to make it.  

    In fourth grade, I was attending school at The Mount Washington School.  This was not Boy's Latin by any means, but I had no idea what the difference would be.  

STORY FROM YOUNG POV: Jonah's 5th Grade math meltdown 

    It's the same as every day of school.  At about 7:45 in the morning, I finally get to school.  It's not quite summer yet, but spring is in full swing. Just like every other day, I meet my friends on the blacktop, where they have us wait until 7:55 when we can go into the building.  I love these ten minutes because the air is fresh from the morning, and about 65 degrees.  It's the perfect time to run races in front of the girls to show off my speed.  In elementary school, the fastest guy gets the girl, period, end of story,  

    The bell rings, and we're herded inside.  There's no switching classes, just one teacher for math, English and Science.  My teacher is Ms. Worley.  Ms. Worley might be the single most incredible woman I have ever met.  I've had her before when she taught me in second grade, and now I have her again in fourth grade too.  What's different this year is that my class is a split 4th grade and 5th grade class.  Instead of splitting her time half and half, and putting one part of class on busy work, Ms. Worley manages to keep both ends of the class completely engaged the entire time.  

    Prior to every unit in math, Ms Worley has us take a pretest.  Today happened to be one of those days.  The fourth grade side and fifth grade side each took their pretests.  This math is easy.  It was something about lemonade, but it really just felt like common sense to me.  She said that once we finish, I can head to lunch, so I rushed the test and got it in as soon as I could.  I snarfed the school provided cardboard mozzarella sticks and gloppy Mac'n cheese, and waited to go back to class.  

    Ms. Worley meets me, Isabella, and Bryan outside of the room before we reenter for the English portion of the day.  She tells us that we did well enough on our pretests to jump into the unit that the fifth graders were doing.  

    Eat shit Noah JB, do that.  This is the ultimate flex.  I am basically a fifth grader.  Being in fifth grade math is going to be the best thing that ever happened to me.  Wrong 

                                                                            **********

    Day one of fifth grade math begins.  Day one of fifth grade math is some shit.  Ms. Worley isn't even speaking words.  Volumes, coordinate planes, and something about "of" meaning multiplication in the word problems all gets thrown at me.  

    It'll probably be easy on the homework though.  Wrong.  This is the worst night of my life.  There's a problem about how much spray paint jimmy will need, but I can't focus because Jimmy's spray paint problem is taking more than two lines of memorization and about 30 seconds more of thinking than I should.  The more I think, the less it makes sense.  By 6:30, I've tried and erased at this stupid worksheet until the paper begins to rip.  Tears well up in my eyes and I have an all out screaming fit.  

    I hate Ms. Worley, why would she do this to me?! My once privilege became a curse in two days, I'm never trying on a pretest again.  

                                                                            **********

Looking back on it now, this was the first real challenge I had ever experienced.  It was about thirty minutes of actually applying myself.  At the time, it felt like the end of the world, but it showed who I was.  I was bound to shoot for perfection every time.  This holds true to this day as I am currently stumped by a concept in calc...I'm just not having a meltdown this time.  

  

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