Life is Hard, But I Get By

                                                                                     Octavain A. Davis

                                                                                                                 09/26/17

                                                                                                                 English 2

                                                                                                    Essay Assignment

                                                                          System: Blatant Disrespect

I raised my hand in class.

“Yes, Octavian?” Ms. Pahomov called on me.

I waited for the class to get quiet. There was a little bit of talking. When they didn’t get quiet right away, I began to feel so disrespected.

I put my hand back down. “That’s ok.”

Jayden’s hand was also raised as he was the next person to be called on by Ms. Pahomov. He asked,

“Can you include slang in the essay, or naw?”

That was my question! Of course I had to remember that this was a new environment with new inhabitants for me. It wasn’t nearly as horrible as my past experiences which made me take this small issue to heart in the past, when I was extremely shy and much more humble. I would often experience things that no one my age should experience. This included physical destruction, sexual exposure, and horrific attitudes.

As usual, I was considered the weird kid. The one that nobody really knew until speaking with me. This is actually the reason for me making lifelong friends, of course things such as this will always have its cons. Charles, an old classmate of mine, he’s wild, obnoxious, and takes nothing serious. From the day I’ve started school, I would always end up sitting with the wild kid, need it be mentally corrupted or just plain down disrespectful.

“Yo, bro, look,” He said.

I looked down just to see him gripping his penis from the outside of his pants. Mind you, the uniforms were mandatory for school acknowledgement and their pants were sometimes thin. At this time I was extremely humble, shy, and a little afraid of authority. There would be times my teacher wouldn’t know I was there until he saw me eating alone on floors that were absolutely off limits to students. I raised my hand, but wasn’t satisfied with her seeing my handup and still just passing over me so I got her attention the only other way I knew how.

“Ms. Legan!”

She never liked me. She was what you considered a “ghetto” teacher. To this day I wish I had never met Ms. Legan. She plays a small part in why I'm a little angry at most things. I was embarrassed by her sometimes, and trust me, she’s not the only teacher. Literally, she would embarrass me. Mind you, some of the kids are still talking and this was actually my first time getting loud in school as well.

“Who you screaming at!” She said

“Ms. Legan, you need to get him!”

“You better sit down!”

“He’s over there playing with himself!”

“So! You don’t like it, then go tell the principal!”

Confused, I sat back down calling my mother soon after. I could hear the others talking in the background about me. My mom, being the awesome person she is, called up to the school's front office and talked to a few staff  members.

“Yeah baby, I talked to some of the security gua…”

My phone was hung up by two others near me. I was pissed! That's when I sort of let loose and gained a much more bolder, slightly negative attitude. I was able to get my mother back on the phone, but she could hear the anger in my voice.

“Calm down Platinum, don’t let them get to you. If nothing's done, then I'm coming up in that ____ !”

This wasn't the first time my mother had to come up, and more of a sense that we were tired of playing by the rules. We wanted something to be done, and done it was. Turns out my mom didn’t have to come up to the school, there was a security guard in there that knew me very well. He knew I wasn’t trouble, he also knew that Charles was. By him knowing this, he didn’t hesitate not one bit to handle him. I didn't see him for the rest of the day, but the security guard told me that he was taken care of. If I’m correct, I think I remember seeing him in the front office? After many experiences and many observations, the truth is, I lack true friends and I’m very unsure when it comes to happiness. I’m now highly picky with who I call “friend” and who I go places with. I actually have some seniors now that I call “friend,” but this is probably the last year I see them so when you think about it, they’re really just associates! I do believe in making others happy, just because I had bad experiences doesn't mean they should, right?  I do want to take this time to provide you with another event to kind of give you a better idea of how Ms. Legan was. I never went on class trips for your information because I was afraid of three things that would happen. I could get into conflicts with the other students, I could get disrespected to the maximum (this isn’t foreign), and possibly get embarrassed by my teacher. But me being the kind hearted fool I was, I let one of what I thought was a friend persuade me to go. A lot happened during the trip but the real action happens after, the teachers got our attention.

“Almost time to go, get y’all stuff together y’all!” She said.

I got my stuff together and I saw what looked to be our bus. Was it our bus? I don’t remember, but what I do remember is her jumping in front of me.

“Where ya going! Where ya going! You better back up!”

I backed up, but of course I had a confused look on my face. She saw that and I guess thought that was the perfect opportunity to strike. She moved her face as close as four inches to mine.

“What ya gonna do, huh! What ya gonna do?! You ain’t nothing special, you better back up! Hmm, what you think this is.”

This was one of the many times I felt a little streak of negativity retaliation and violence in me, but this time it was here to stay. I’m so glad I had self control, because believe it or not, I was really considering getting disrespectful and possibly physical with the women (age 35). Also, she had her two kids and her husband right down the street. So I guess by that being so, I guess she thought she had backup if needed. You know what’s so funny to me though, because I wasn’t like the others in my class I guess, she messed with me a lot. Oh! Did I mention her and Charles were close, she loved him. Why!? Because in her eyes he was funny! I guess you could say in her class it's bad to have your own mind, but now I’m in SLA. Yeah there are others that call me weird, but it’s to the point now I just…

I guess you can say I'm used to it, not to mention now I actually do act a bit weird. But it makes others day much brighter than mine, laughter is always needed and luckily I'm able to provide just that.