(This essay was originally written as a spoken word piece performed at a middle school talent show. It was/is intended to be similar to the It Gets Better resources found at http://www.itgetsbetter.org/)
My number one goal in middle school was to go unnoticed. Despite my wishes to the contrary, it was clear from early on that I didn’t fit in with the rest of my classmates. My family didn’t have the same social status as others in the community. We couldn’t afford the name-brand clothes and footwear most of my classmates seemed to be sporting on a daily basis. And to top it all off, I had little to no athletic prowess. So I decided that my best bet for any sort of social success in middle school and high school was to make sure I didn’t do anything to stand out.
At the time, my hometown only had one middle school containing 7th and 8th grade. Five or six elementary schools fed into this one middle school, creating an interesting dynamic for setting the social order. The building itself was the old high school: a two-story brick box similar to those often seen in establishing shots for sit-coms or movies. Along with an outdated-but-not-yet-vintage decor, it had a pretty hard-core industrial arts classroom. The space looked like it had been cut out of a post-war factory, complete with two-story ceiling, a large bank of factory-style windows, a greenish-gray concrete floor dotted with stationary pieces of heavy-duty machinery: your drill press, your table saw, and, the queen of them all, the belt sander.
For those not familiar, a belt sander is a machine that features a loop of 1-foot-wide sandpaper rotated around two drums by a motor at a high rate of speed. It allows a person to do 20 to 30 minutes of serious hand sanding in a few seconds. Not an instrument to be trifled with. This particular one liked to let everyone know that it meant business by letting out a loud roar when it was fired up.
I can’t remember what unit we were in - cutting board, picture frame, CO2 car, whatever - but I needed to use the belt sander. On this particular day, I was wearing one of my favorite shirts - a baggy green knit sweater. To try to compensate for my lack of designer clothes, I had taken to wearing knit sweaters that I thought (or hoped) were similar to ones worn by some of my favorite pop groups at the time: Boyz II Men, Bel Biv Devoe, Heavy D, etc. You know, the types of groups a white kids in the suburbs can really relate to. This one was so baggy that the sleeves came down over my hands causing me to consistently pushing them back up over my elbows, a move that, while somewhat annoying, I felt had a certain caché to it.
As I started to sand, I realized that I had a problem. The sleeves of my sweater decided now was the time to increase their forays into the coveted lower-forearm world, coming dangerously close to the belt of the sander. Unfortunately, there did not seem to be a viable solution. Taking off my sweater was not an option as, even with an undershirt, it would have brought unwanted attention. Rolling up the sleeves was out, too, as it seemed uncool. Thus, I resigned myself to a dance of sanding for a little bit while my sleeve slowly crept down my arm before being caught and returned to the starting spot. On and on the dance continued.
Sand-sand-sand, creep-creep-creep, catch
Sand-sand-sand, creep-creep-creep, catch
Sand-sand-sand, creep-creep-creep, catch
Sand-sand-sand, creep-creep-creep, ...
What followed was one of those moments where something so sudden and jarring happens, like a car accident or a large explosion, that it seems to bring the world into a higher level of focus, like your senses went from standard definition to HD. That’s how it felt when I failed to catch my left sleeve and the belt sander gladly grabbed hold of it for me. I can’t remember if the belt sander shut off on its own or if I had to reach over and hit the emergency stop button. I would like to think that by that time concern for student safety had reached a level where someone might have said “Maybe we should install some sensors on these pieces of industrial machinery,” but I’m not sure if that was the case. What I do know is that the belt sander had grabbed my sleeve with such authority that it had not only pulled it inside of the machine, but threads of it were returning to me on the other side, crawling out from inside of the machine with the same terror-filled look a cat has when it pulls itself out of a swimming pool, as if it can’t believe such a frightening experience exists in this world.
My initial reaction was relief. Relief that my arm was still attached to my body. Relief that no layers of skin had been lost. But relief faded quickly to horror at the realization of what had just happened: I had done something to be remembered for. Not something cool or brave, but something embarrassing and incredibly stupid. No longer would I be “Nick Saeger? Who’s he again?” or “Nick Saeger? I that he’s that quiet kid in my English class.” Now I would be “Nick Saeger? Oh yeah, he’s the guy who got his sweater stuck in the belt sander. Sweater Boy! Hey Sweater Boy, how’s the sweater? Wearing another sweater today?” You know how witty bullies can be.
For a kid already feeling like he was on the outside looking in, that he didn’t fit, this was devastating. It felt impossible to come back from. For someone already dealing with the difficulties and issues that middle school already brings, struggling with added external issues of a split home and negative influences, internal issues of perfectionism, anxiety, depression. For someone finding himself at times have deep, dark thoughts that he was too scared to share with anyone else. This could have been the tipping point, an event that pushed me to a permanent solution.
I’m glad to say that I made through that day and that year. I made through middle school and, in some sort of mystical joke, decided to make living through middle school my career by becoming a middle school teacher. And while that would be far from the last time I would struggle with something, the one truth I would find is that it gets better. No matter where you are, I can promise you that: it gets better. Never perfect, but better.
