Year 11

Eleven years old. In this year you play basketball every day. You keep stats like you're all headed for the NBA. This was your original dream, you only came up short by about ten inches in height and 3x in skill. It's akin to reaching for the clouds from like the second story of a row house. You're not all that close.

If you look uncomfortable in the pictures it's for two reasons. One, your shorts are a little north of the knee and pushing towards thigh. The upper male thigh is (particularly on white guys) is not regarded as the aesthetic height of beauty, and you were perhaps aware of that. The other is the presence of your brother's massive forearm on your knee. No doubt he was crushing your scrawny and already balky knees. I blame you for the knees David. If you can't blame your parents blame an older sibling.

You don't remember sixth grade very well. Your teacher, was a very strict middle-aged man who liked you and your best friend. Some days, when he was really feeling comfortable with you guys, he would have you sit on his knee. The whole thing changes if I say lap. You remember in the middle of the year, a student complaining to the principal, and your teacher saying, "I never had you guys sit on my lap," and you all nodded even though it wasn't true. You know that it wasn't like that, but we don't live in times like that anymore. Everyone is guilty before proven innocent. You now sound like you're ready to be thirty.

You remember the room always being quiet and whispering to your best friend. The teacher's always let you get away with stuff when they like you. You remember going to your teacher's house at the end of the school year, looking at all the exotic items he had collected with his wife over years of travel. He was probably a really interesting guy, probably pissed to be teaching sixth graders. Who knows? You don't know anything about your teachers at that age. They aren't really people. You imagine teaching some day yourself, being just one more thing in a classroom full of things to a student. No better than a piece of chalk or the dry erase board. No wonder so many teachers take to drinking.

You remember forgetting your homework for the first time in your life and standing on the wall during recess as punishment. You remember watching all the other kids, throw bouncy balls against the wall, or shooting hoops and feeling really and truly alone.

Here's the thing. You remember playing basketball and one more thing. You remember not ever talking to girls. You remember that you started desiring them starting in sixth grade in a way that could be described as something less pleasant than a stroll in the park hand in hand. But you don't every talk to them. They might as well be on another planet.

And maybe that's why you remember this one other thing from that year. You won student of the month, and the prize was to go to Chuck E. Cheese. You remember walking around for a bit and then ending up starting to play all the games with the other sixth grader there, a girl. Someone who you thought was cute, in the way that a sixth grader can. The two of you didn't say much, just wandered from game to game, with the voice of Chuck E. coming from the main room. You don't remember if you let her win at the games or what. You probably weren't that smart yet. Years later you will take at least two other girls to Chuck E. Cheese on dates. You've said, "it always works" without ever really remembering this day, your first date in a way.

The day ended and you went back to school and back to your separate classrooms. That night you were lying awake in bed, thinking of the way that her hair curled just a little. The word started to make sense in a new way. The two of you never really talked again that year, nor did you start striking up a bunch of convos. with other girls. You just remember that day at Chuck E. Cheese so clearly that you can almost still hear the air hockey puck slamming off the walls.

Positives-I don't know. You're not quite a teen, but the angst is beginning. I suppose on the bright side you're not quite thrust whole heartedly into the underbelly of middle school.

Negatives-You're headed for a very dark place and you just don't know it yet. You can't drive yet. Nobody's quite sure what's going on with you, least of all yourself.

Positives-Back in my day (good start) the real math hadn't stared yet. One of the positives of eleven was not sitting and starting blankly at an equation, thinking, "What the hell is that?" So, plus, school is still easy. Other positives: You are at the top of the school food chain. It only happens every three years, and it's nice to be at the top, a thing to treasure.

Negatives-You are about to head back down to the bottom of the food chain and be called a Sevvie. Sevvie (sp) a derogatory term from the early nineteen nineties used to deride a person who was entering middle school. A seventh grader.

Positives-It's your last year to enjoy elementary school. You kind of think you're ready to leave because you don't realize how good you've got it. They give you recess! Recess Mfer's!! When you're 30 the closest you can get to having recess would be to take up smoking so you get the breaks.

Positives-People still like you. Hell, you still kind of like you. You're starting to feel a bit of that teenage pull, but you still kind of trust yourself. Sure you can't do any pull-ups on the Presidential Fitness test, but you'll make up for that by spending hours in the gym later in life. Enjoy your youth!

Special Note: As I was logging out the ad on my blog was, "How to treat meniscus pain." Awesome.
Second Editorial Note: The housewarming party is set for March 13. I expect to see all of you there. If you attend, I'll give you an autographed copy of my blog and a picture of a monkey.