Assignment #1: Write about school

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I never thought about Congdon when I was a student at Congdon Park Elementary in Duluth, I only thought about Kevin.

Congdon is in a very austere, old building, and it was named after an even older Duluth businessman. It’s the rich kids’ public school in Duluth, in the east part of town. It’s north of the mansions on the shore of Lake Superior and south of “Pill Hill,” where all the doctors lived.

The red brick and imposing features of the building were lost on me, though. I met a boy in second grade who lent me his markers. Kevin had a whole grimy handful of them. He leaned over his desk to mine on one of the first days of school, and told me I could share them.

Congdon tried very hard to be an innovative school, so that year we had a split class of second- and third-grade students. Our desks were arranged in clumps of five, so I spent most of the year gazing across my desk and trying to decide whether Kevin’s brown hair reminded me more of Joey from New Kids on the Block or Tom Cruise in Top Gun.

Our teacher that year was Mrs. R. She had blonde, curly hair and wore the kind of teacher-pattern jumpsuit that I still make fun of my mom for wearing. She was nice, too. She went on to be the principal of another elementary school in Duluth, but when I was in high school she was arrested for shoplifting from a department store in town.

As if it were some sort of curse to punish me for my feelings of unrequited love, Kevin and I were in the same class for the entirety of elementary school. One day, I even heard him shout his phone number to a classmate leaving on a school bus. It was only one digit different from mine.

Surely, that was a sign.

My best friend at Congdon was a girl named Sara. She was adopted from Korea, which was totally fascinating to me because I had never met someone who wasn’t white. Her eyes looked weird to me, but I got over it ‘cause she was really nice. (Apparently I hadn’t yet realized that my Dad, my sister and I were biracial).

In third grade, Sara and I were talking one day while lifting up the top of our desks and storing our textbooks inside. Sara knew about my obsession with Kevin’s dimples and was usually kind to me about it, saying that there was always a chance.

Classes were almost over for the day, so I walked out the classroom door and started taking my winter gear from my light-brown metal locker. I lived only three blocks from Congdon, but Duluthwinters are brutal and the chances of getting thrown in a snowbank were high, so I had a big blue jacket and black snowpants to put on.

Bundled up, I walked into the classroom to wait for dismissal. Sara came to talk to me while I was standing only feet behind Kevin. Mrs. Peterson saw that I had already put my snow clothes on, and told me to take them off until class was officially over.

See, I thought I had put my snowpants on. I didn’t realize I had forgotten them in my locker. Seemingly following Mrs. Peterson’s orders, I pulled my pants down.

Sara gasped, and Kevin turned around and saw me standing there in my underwear. Confusion ensued, until Sara told me to pull my pants up.

Only those two classmates saw it, but I was hearbroken.

I’m not sure how close I came to planting that kiss on him during the last two years of elementary school. I remember passing notes on the playground, and swooning when he and the other hockey players saw how high they could get on the swings and then jumped off.

I remember him dating a girl named Ashley, though, as much as fourth-graders can date. She was popular blond girl who caused me a considerable amount of pain once we reached adolescence.

But I do remember that I saw Kevin cry. We were in fifth-grade together, in Mr. B’s class. It was our last year in elementary school, we were supposed to grow up and get ready to move on.

Mr. B was diagnosed with cancer in the middle of the school year. He had to wear a black leather Chicago Bulls baseball hat to cover his bald head. We had a long-term substitute teacher who was really mean to us even though Mr. B. was in the hospital. Two days after the end of school, Mr. B died.

His funeral was held at St. Paul’s Episcopalian Church on Superior Street. It’s this big, cold, stone building where everybody was serious all the time. They had all the kids from Mr. B’s class sit in the same row at the funeral. And when they played Bette Midler’s “Wind Beneath My Wings,” I saw him cry. We all cried.

I left Congdon depressed at the end of fifth-grade, never having known anyone that died before. But I knew Kevin was going to Marshall, where I was going too for sixth-grade. So our future held infinite possibilities.