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The metaphor for my childhood was my chair bag. A seat bag (in case you didn’t go to school in Brisbane, Australia) is a bag that hangs from the back of your chair with all your school supplies in it, kind of like a locker-meets-a-backpack.
It is intended to be a neatly organized house for your teaching tools from which you can grab your pen, pencil, ruler or glue from the conveniently allocated section. This is not how my seat bag functioned.
Every time the teacher, Mr. Drake (a towering tree of a man), bellowed, “Class, please get out your scissors!” I would get a hopeful one burst of adrenaline. The kind you get when it’s life or death, and you think you can make it.
As the neat girl sitting next to me unzipped a small side pocket and pulled out her smug scissors, I reached into my homemade à la “Coat of Many Colors” seat bag. I was like a deep-sea diver launching into utter darkness on a mad mission of faith – confident that I wouldn’t be mauled by an eyeless shark down there. I heroically dodged the protruding metal of wandering spiral notebooks, upward-pointing pencil points like an exploded porcupine, and strangely sticky wrappers.
By the time I pulled the scissors from my bag and raised them triumphantly like a fisherman without a worm unexpectedly catching a catch – beaming proudly even as it writhed, half-opened and blunt – the rest of the class would be almost done with the activity. I always was out of step because of that damn seat bag.
It wasn’t just the seat bag. Everything about me was dirty. I was always covered in dust, mud, bruises, snot and blood. If someone farted in class, I was the person they blamed. I don’t know if they were right or not, I can’t remember. It seems unlikely that I farted more often than others? But… maybe?
It wasn’t just the kids. Every few weeks, Mr. Drake would stand over me. He made me stand up and asked the class to look at my seat bag embarrass me. Again, I don’t remember exactly, but he roared, “Joshua Thomas! Joshua Thomas!’
I would get up, the world would go dark, the playground equipment would screech to a stop and the magpies would congregate.
“Do you think this is an appropriate mess?” he asked, as if the answer was up to me.
“Um, no?”
I wasn’t foolish.
“Do you think you’re above the rules?”
“No.”
“Then what makes you think you’re an exception?”
“I tried to clean it…”
“I don’t want to hear your trials. Trials are lies. The truth is you’re lazy and think you’re better.’
I could never understand why adults thought I was lying. I had never told a lie in my life. I don’t know what he wanted with this exchange. Maybe he thought so teach me a lessonbut it felt like he wanted to see tears. I never gave them to him.
I think if I had cried the first time he did that, he would have stopped, because he had successfully broken my messy mind and made me an example of what not are. Instead, I just stood there and looked at him curiously.
Why would a grown man want to humiliate a child? I would wonder.
I looked at the situation from the outside. I look at myself, see how the class thinks, He thinks I’m doing this on purpose. He thinks it’s arrogance.
I could tell my life was harder because of the messy chair bag. But I don’t know how I could have a neater seat bag.
Mine nursery bedroom was like my chair bag, but bigger, with a more diverse portfolio of stuff. Essential board games, uneaten school lunches and favorite clothes all had a swamp-like effect on my bedroom floor. And while my mother didn’t want to break my spirit as much as Mr. Drake, she took my messy room personally.
Excerpted from Let’s Tidy Up: The Book by Josh Thomas. Copyright 2024 by Josh Thomas. Published by Everand Originals, a division of Scribd, Inc. All rights reserved.
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