Shawna ran up to me,
eyes glittering.
“Leah's dad bought
her new scissors. The sharp ones.
The ones without the
rounded edges!” Judging by her look of satisfaction, I must have
looked as elated as I felt.
“Have
her go to the back and cut there. Those vines are huge!” Shawna
nodded and ran off, orders memorized.
I
stepped back for a moment, surveying our progress so far. Impressive,
but not yet complete. It would take several months' worth of recesses
to reach our goal, and that was if we didn't get rained out most
days—which we did. But still, victory was close. We could smell it.
Smell it in the rotting blackberries beneath our feet. Smell it in
the green, sticky sap of the fresh-cut vines and in the sun-warmed
leaves above our small heads. This was the fourth grade, and this was
our freedom.
Before
the planning, before the work, before the multitude of stinging
scratches covering our arms, legs and faces, there was a fence. Not a
particularly unusual fence, to the untrained eye. To teachers,
parents, and anyone else over the age of eight, it was just a long,
low, chain-link fence that surrounded the school yard, corralling
those of us who soon grew bored with tire swings and picking out
quartz from the playground gravel. There was a narrow gap, just where
the two ends of the chain-link met, but (due to poor planning on the
part of some half-cocked engineer) did not line up. The poles they
had used to stabilize the fence were placed close together—too
close for someone to escape, perhaps, but far enough apart to stick a
daring arm or leg through, if one were so inclined. The breeze in the
forest was cool and soft. The hairs on our arms stood up as it kissed
us, reaching out desperately as we were, and we inhaled deeply,
breathing past the metal scent of the fence and inhaling the scents
of moss and fresh, growing trees.
Beyond
the fence were the woods. Tall, dark pines and fir trees crowded up
against each other, choking the warm sunny days down to little more
than a shady grove. There were things in those woods, bad things.
Ian's brother said so, and he was a year older than us. Things like
“bear traps” and “wild dogs” and “pedophiles.” We
surmised the last one to be some sort of robber, garbed in black and
white-striped pajamas with a sack of money over his back. Whatever
they were, they were all in that forest. And we wanted out.
The
Seventh Day Adventist church—to which our school
belonged—encouraged a life of modesty and veganism. Women wore
dresses, jewelry was strongly discouraged, and the land of milk and
honey is roughly translated into something like the land of Boca
Burgers and tofu. Carob was a daily tragedy. Once a week, we would
walk to the church across the street and listen to a sermon. Daily
class activities included bible-based based board games, and it was
here that I was subjected to Veggie Tales instead of classroom
movies.
Obedience
and placidity were enforced above all else, save God. Once, when the
younger students had started to become “too rowdy” on the bus,
the driver went from class to class, preaching about the dangers of
distracting the bus driver and not sitting quietly in your seat. He
was armed with a double chin, the vice-principal's blessing, and a
PSA-style VHS that showed multiple reenactments of students causing
their entire school to crash tragically into the swampy abyss—if
only they had just
read their book and waited for their stop!
At
home, situations were similarly restrictive. Parents who send their
children to private school expect a certain type of behavior, not
the kind typically seen in
children who attended public school.
The term itself was nearly filth in your mouth, after all. When a
school bully—who proudly referred to himself as “Bubba”—refused
to stop teasing me, I told him God didn't love him, so when He made
him, he put his head between his legs so he could kiss his own ass.
He was in the eighth grade, and he cried. I was kicked off the bus
and grounded for two weeks.
Many
of us accepted our fates with the kind of weary patience seen only in
prisoners and the elderly. Day in, day out, do our time and just get
out of there. A few, however, were not subdued so easily.
Eventually,
we devised a plan. A dirty, mischievous, stupid little plan that only
fourth graders or failed supervillains could come up with. Along one
part of the fence, there was a section of overgrown blackberry
bushes. An invasive species, these monsters quickly overtook any open
space available, turning fields into endless brambles, and fences
into walls of thorns and snapping vines. The logic was that, since
the woods had always been there, the bushes had, too, so the fence
must have been built around them. If we could find some way to cut
through the vines, we could eventually reach through to the other
side, and travel that magical land of bear traps and pedophiles. Our
own secret tunnels, just like in Mexico!
Implementation
didn't take long. All that was required for our plan were scissors
and a willingness to become bruised, scratched, and mildly
dehydrated. It started out small, but quickly gained steam. Five,
sometimes six of us at a time would spend their recess feverishly
hacking away at the vines, with two or three (usually new recruits)
being forced to carry away and dispose of the debris. Such
determination seemed to be frowned upon, however, so the rest of us
set out to distract the teachers—pulling hair, starting fights,
flattering their egos. Soon we had a cave of vines big enough to hide
almost all of us, and still we kept cutting.
The
teachers grew suspicious that this was more than just a passing fad.
This was no “members only club” that lasted for a week and was
based off of your love of horses and hatred of Matt Formby. No, we
meant business, and this time, we little bastards were organized.
They began cracking down on our plans, hoping to avoid parental
involvement (and potentially a lawsuit). They chased us away, we'd
quietly sneak back. They'd pat us down for scissors, we began hiding
them in the bushes before we left. Eventually, they stationed a
teacher by the bushes,
but by then we had recruited the third graders, and their recess was
on a different schedule than ours.
At
this point, our parents had started asking us how the hell we were
going through scissors so fast., and where were we getting all of
those scratches from? We lied. For a bunch of elementary-schooled
kids stuffed into a private school without their consent, this was
our best chance at independence. From school to the bus to home to
back to school again, our lives were rarely our own. Even church was
not an escape, as the school belonged to the Seventh Day Adventists.
While we were nowhere near physically capable of taking care of
ourselves, none of us really cared. This was our
dream, this was our project,
and it was so much more than a game.
Finally,
the teachers struck their killing blow. “Recess is a privilege, not
a right,” they told us, and those who abused the privilege were to
be punished by having it taken away.
We
weren't hard to spot: grass-stained clothes, peppered with minor
flesh wounds, and guilty, terrified looks plastered on our faces
whenever the topic of scissors was broached. The other, more
“well-behaved” children would be allowed to go out and play,
while the rest of us stayed inside, organized our desks (books from
tallest to shortest, they told us) and twiddled our green-stained
thumbs. There is always weakness within the resistance, and the
teachers were able to pick out the weaker ones in the class with
startling ease, manipulating them with sweet, toxic bribes of
extra-long recess and volumes of praise. Soon, our forces had
dwindled, until only Shawna and myself were left. When we had finally
“earned” back the privilege of recess, the ravenous blackberries
had grown back to nearly their full glory, and their knotted traps
were even too much for most grown men to handle on their own, let
alone two small girls.
A
few feeble attempts at revival were made: we tried to build a fort
out of old grass clippings by the runner's track. Escape was no
longer an option, but perhaps we could hide ourselves, glean some
privacy even as we gleaned the freshly-cut soccer field. We were
scolded and the clippings were removed. After a while, the dream had
caged itself, giving up on any chance of success or escape to the
world beyond our own. Sometimes, though, we would wander back to the
chain-link fence, slipping our arms through the gap, relishing the
cool forest breeze, and wondering about bear traps and pedophiles.
