Halfway To Somewhere: Entry Eight

2nd grade. wow, do i look at it with fondness. that year, i had Mrs. Merica as a teacher. she was the MOST BADASS COOLEST SICKEST MOST AWESOME BEST PERSON IN THE WORLD. actually, she could be the most evil person in the world, but she was an amazing teacher. she was able to deal with my autism soooooooo well, and off the top of my head, i can only imagine one time i had a meltdown and she was like "everyone just ignore her keep learning" and i went through her desk and she kinda just let me. i found these toy frogs where if you pushed the middle down it would "hop". she let me keep one. i didnt view it as a reward either, i felt guilty for going through her desk during a meltdown. i was so upset trying to find a phone to call my mom and got so distracted by the frogs that i calmed down, and she just. let me. and i went back to my desk, and i got back to work. 

i went to Sandia Base. theyre remodeling the school currently, so just know, if you attended this school past 2025 you did NOT go to the "same" school as me. im not gonna talk about its layout because even if its gone, that feels like a security risk and i was just taught to not speak about things on base relating to the security of children. what i will say is that SANDIA BASE SUUUUUUCKED IF YOU WERE MENTALLY ILL LIKE GOOD DAMN. youll learn about that 10x more in the next chapter, but take this as your prelude. the only good that game from that school was it's teachers. except one, which you will also learn about next chapter. 

my first memory of 2nd grade, or, age 7, was Mrs. Merice teaching us how money worked by introducing The Bank Of Merice, which was a play on words of bank of America. very cute i love her so much. my second memory, and something that also in my therapy files because its such a core memory for me, was a spelling bee Mrs. Merice set up for us, and i won because i spelled the word "photosynthesis" which clearly i still know to this day so woohoo. the next thing i remember is, in the SIMPLEST OF TERMS, learning how to mask my autism when reading. i genuinely cant figure out what else this was. she taught me that when reading, you should never be monotone, you shouldn't rush through, and taught me all the other rules to follow. she's lowkey the reason i became an author if i think about it. love that woman.

there was this one time i got pretty sick, and just couldnt stop coughing. real real bad, every 5 seconds i was hacking up a lung, if you read my earlier chapters youll remember i had croup (and or whooping cough i can never remember which) and ever since then, my coughs have been very "bark"y and aggressive. so Mrs. Merice didn't even send me to the nurses office, she instantly called my mom and was like "hey ur daughters sick come get her ass" and thank the lord because i did not want to be at school that day i just Wanted My Mommy. 

sometimes when i was really good, Mrs. Merice had it set up so i could go back to Mrs. Roybals class and volunteer as a helper. in hindsight, she was giving me goals for my good behavior. i loved helping the younger kids. unrelated to Mrs. Merice, i remember having my first kiss in 2nd grade! we were playing out on the playground, and Memphis (named after the place in Texas) and i were playing and i asked if he like liked me and he said yes and i asked if he wanted to kiss and he said yes so we went behind the playset where the teachers couldn't see us and we kissed and held hands the entire rest of the day. we weren't dating either like in my head we weren't a couple we JUST kissed and that was my friend. asexual from the very start i see. 

another time playing at the playground, and i was doing pull ups on the gymnastics bars, and climbing around on it. I also played on the zip line thing, and once, i fell and had an out of body experience. i was too short to ride, and so a bigger kid lifted me up and put me on, and my grasp was slipping so when i rocketed to the other side and it hit the end, it didn't bounce (like it usually did if you weighed enough) it just FORCEFULLY SHOT ME OFF and i fell backwards, and i don't know if i was knocked out or what but i had an out of body experience where i was floating above the zip line thing, and i could see me laying there, and people started to surround me, and then i was back in my body and CRYING BECAUSE IT FUCKING HURT BRO.