Elementary School
Migration
An identity crisis in a boy’s life
Collin Turner
11/4/2013
ENGL 2010
Salt Lake Community College
Here is a boy who is for the first time in his childhood, getting in trouble from his
teachers at elementary school repeatedly. Whether the trouble he got into was from making crude
hieroglyphics highlighting the features of the female form, or from making clay sculptures of
everyone’s favorite fecal hero, Mr. Hanky: The Christmas Poo, these would be young Collin
Turner’s first visits to the principal’s office. Normally Collin was a well behaved boy, but
because he was in a new school environment he did act menacingly to get attention from his
peers. After all, it can be tough to make new friends when all the ones you knew went to another
school. Ultimately, a struggle to find his own identity and to fit in with the crowd would define
Collin not only in elementary school, but throughout his entire life. However, this story doesn’t
begin with the visits to the principal’s office it starts two summers previous, when a green Mr.
Turner transfers from Rose Park Elementary to Newman Elementary.
The move from school to another was not far in distance, in fact Collin didn’t even have
to relocate, but the migration from Rose Park elementary felt like Columbus’ journey across the
oceans into a new world. Everything felt brand new in the eyes of Collin, from the school having
a new reward system for students, to the style of mathematics the new school began to
implement, to even the time class began, a dramatic thirty minutes earlier than he was familiar
with.
Every day after school Collin would share the same conversations with his mother,
“Collin, how was school today?” she would ask. “It was… alright, I guess.” replied Collin. “Did
you make any new friends?” His mother would follow up. “No… not yet,” the boy would sadly
respond. Collin’s sadness in turn made his mother sad, it was just as hard for her to adapt to the
new school as it was for Collin. This trend would continue for a couple of weeks, with no new
friends or anyone else in his classes to relate to, and so every morning the boy was not eager to
wake up, just simply going through the motions.
Though Collin had no newly acquired friends at Newman elementary, he always been
good at and loved to play sports, and had noticed that the kids were always played basketball
before school and during recess. So on a cold, breath chilling October morning Collin crawled
out of bed anticipating showing up early for school. “Why are you going to school early today?”
his mother asked surprised. “I am going to see if the other kids will let me play basketball, I’m
pretty good don’t you think?” he shot back with anxiety. A smile rushed across Collin’s mother’s
face, “Yes, you are pretty good, as long as you try your best.”
Once Collin had arrived on school grounds no one acknowledged him, until he reached
the basketball court, where the kids were selecting captains for the teams. The other kids stared
subjectively as if to say “You’re out of place here.” Collin had noticed one of the girls, Rikki,
was the best basketball player there, so he approached her very meekly and nervously, “…Can I
join in?” Rikki glanced around to the other kids as if to look for some kind of verdict, after no
indication from the rest of the basketball squad she replied, “… I guess.” That was all Collin
wanted! A chance to prove that he could play and keep up with all the other kids, and that he
could showcase some moves he learned from Michael Jordan in Space Jam.
Despite being included in the morning games, he did not have the best start at making
new friends. Collin was always picked last to join a team, and the captains chose all the other
kids like it was the Kentucky derby to avoid having to end up with Collin on their team. One of
the basketball players even made it a point to embarrass Collin before a game, “Look at his
shoes, where did you get those, Payless?” Even at the age of eleven, elementary kids had
standards regarding which shoes he wore. The worst part about it was that the shoes were in fact
from Payless, Collin could do no more then to try and act as if the comments didn’t affect him,
as much as they did. When the games were played at recess, he was told “This is five on five,
we already have enough players.” So Collin was left to practice shooting by himself on the other
courts while, the games were going on adjacently. During recess, he could hear all the kids
laughing with one another while playing, which added to his feelings of aspiring to join the cool
kids.
Then during a game on yet another very frigid, cold morning, Collin would get the
opportunity to become accepted not only on the court but in the classes too. During most games
the teammates of Collin would not pass the ball to him, regardless of the fact that he was wide
open, they just didn’t trust him to make the basket. “Ding! Ding! Ding!” the 5 minute warning
bell for school to start, erupted loudly over the intercom system. When that bell sounded off, the
score was disregarded and who ever made the last basket would win the game. These were surely
the most exciting moments of any game. The other team had the ball at this point and they were
running down the court like dogs that had caught the scent of an escaped convict, looking to find
the open guy to make a shot. But Collin’s team was just as aggressive not letting anyone get
unguarded. A pass then came flying towards the boy who Collin was assigned to, he knew it was
a poor decision on the other team’s part. Collin then threw his arm in the direction of the ball,
and intercepted it. An intense rush came across Collin as he proceeded to break down the court
with the ball imitating his hero Michael Jordan. All he had to do was maintain possession and
make the wide open basket. Running and jumping like there was no tomorrow, Collin gracefully
threw the ball onto the square, where it bounced into the basket scoring the game winning shot.
“Yeah!” Collin roared like a lion, with excitement and pure joy. His teammates then showered
him with the ultimate sign of approval, the high five. As Collin walked to class to begin school,
Rikki peddled towards him and cordially said “You should play with us at recess.”
A ginormous smile filled Collin’s face, “Alright I will, thanks.”
From this single moment of scoring just one basket when it mattered, Collin had become
somebody at Newman Elementary. The inability to make new friends was a thing of the past,
soon the kids who played basketball told Collin that he could sit next to them in lunch, and even
arranged to play even more basketball after school. These would be the first friends he had since
switching from Rose Park to Newman. After becoming friends, the other kids found that Collin
had very much the same type of interests as they did, and not just basketball. Whether it was very
awful popular rap music of 2002, playing video games on PlayStation 2, or the shenanigans of
“doorbell ditching,” the new found similarities between classmates made Collin feel accepted
once again.
And so Collin entered into his next grade level, with his new found friends, who seemed
to have a particular influence on him. Not wanting to disappoint his clique, Collin would partake
in mischievous activities which would bring attention to him from the class and teachers. The
teachers found it inappropriate as you might expect, and wasted no time letting the principal and
Collin’s parents know about his disruptive behavior. His parents were caught off guard, for this
would be the first time that they had to speak to the principal about Collin being a bad student.
And so his parents came to the conclusion that he only acted this way as a way to garner more
recognition from his friends, like it was the group’s own special way of initiation.
Collin then found himself moving onto middle school, which was similar to the
elementary school transfer. Although he would know some students there was no guarantee that
they would be in the same classes, or see one another in the hall and lunch. So once again the
feeling of isolation was again present, and the pursuit to make new friends was taking launch.
Collin would find himself in these predicaments every time he changed schools, and then once
again when he would eventually graduate from high school. However at this point he had begun
to develop his own identity, so he did no leach onto others for approval. One day Collin would
hopefully find it unnecessary to conform to the demands of others, and to just be himself.