7 years ago (the day I met him)

Another first day of school, another day when people try and show off their clothes that they got during the scorching summer months, and another day when people are forced to make and decorate stupid nametags to introduce themselves to the other classmates. The few new students were somewhat welcomed into the fifth grade student body, me being one of them. I was not previously homeschooled, nor did I move halfway across the continent, but for some reason, I was still nervous about meeting people. It might have been the fact that the classrooms did not have doors, or it might have been the fact that my fifth grade teacher was giving me such a creepy gummy smile, that I knew that there was definitely something wrong with her. Well whatever, this is ultimately not about me, it is about him.

I met him on the first day of school. 2008 August, the start of fifth grade, the year when elementary school kids can finally feel like seniors since they were leaving for middle school the next year. Me being the nervous yet pompous person that I was, decided to sit next to a quiet kid. So while the teacher made us all write our names on tags, and tried to explain to us that we were now “big kids,” (whatever that meant) I glanced over at my desk buddy’s tag, and was shocked. I used to think that I had really good handwriting, but his print writing put my skills to shame. That was when I decided to take a good look at him. From first impression, he seemed like a really skinny quiet kid who looked like he just played outside by himself most of the time. Well, I guess that had explained the really great handwriting. Little did I know that he was going to be very influential in the rest of my school years….

A week later

The teacher decided to give the good student participation award of the week, and since I was the only new kid in my class, I was granted with the piece of printed paper. Yay -_-. Throughout the week, I was able to learn about these small things about the quiet boy with the great handwriting. First things first, I found out his name, (I know that I said I looked at his nametag, but honestly I was too distracted by the handwriting to actually read what he wrote), and I also found out that he was a mini genius. So much for stereotypes but wow, that boy knew his way around Legos and cars and science and history, and pretty much everything after that. However, he was not the only person that caught my eye. There was this one girl in my class, and she was so smart that she had to skip to a middle school in order to take her math class. She seemed perfect in pretty much every single way, and boy, that got me wanting to become better myself. Being surrounded by these hardworking fifth graders had actually motivated me to become better. Eventually I got used to the new school and the peculiar shape of the classrooms (no doors!) and like most other fifth graders, I started to look forward to my favorite time of the day, RECCESS!

A month later

So we had the first test of the school year, and we had to trade papers and grade them. Guess who got my paper? No other than Miss Perfect student, who I had no doubt was judging me sooo hard by looking at my test answers. I ended up having to grade the genius boy’s test. That combination had completely diminished my self-esteem, and while I was tallying up how many questions the boy got right, I was mentally counting how many questions I got wrong. Wow, the history test was hard, and the boy only ended up missing one question, which tied him for the highest grade on the test. Meanwhile I was there with a total of 5 questions wrong. Wow, I needed to study more.

2 months later

The teacher had decided to move the classroom around, and now I have a new seatmate who likes to keep acorns in his desk. Well, he seems fine, and he is really good friends with the quiet boy as well. However, today I am not in a good mood. I was drawing a beautiful bird, and I had shaded in the wings and made the beak look sharper, and when I was finally satisfied with the result, I had nudged my seatmate, and asked for his opinion on my masterpiece.

He looked at the drawing, then looked at me, and then back at the drawing, and he had this deadpan expression on his face. What came out of his mouth was the worst.

With the same uninterested look on his face, he looked at me and asked very seriously, “Why did you draw a flying pig with a beak?”

…. -___- ….

WHATTTTTT? I mean the drawing was very clearly of a bird! I look back at my drawing, but I just could not understand from which angle the beautiful sketch looked like a flying pig with a beak. I urged him to take another look at the sketch, and then he started laughing, “Showing me a sketch of a flying pig with a beak again will not change the fact that you drew a FLYING PIG WITH A BEAK!” To make matters worse, he called over his so-called bestie (aka quiet genius boy) and asked about his opinion about the drawing. What the genius boy said had just irritated me even more. He started laughing as well and asked me if I tried while drawing, and I responded with an offended “of course!” I asked him what he thought about it, and I guess I should not have done that in the first place. “It looks like a flying black pig with a beak.” At that moment I knew that the two friends were in on this together, and ever since that day, they continued to refer to my birds as flying pigs with beaks.