The Class Trip

The Class Trip

by Kelp

Here’s what I’ve learned about love.

It’s all about attention.

If you are in love with someone, you want to have all of her attention.

If someone is in love with you, she wants all of your attention.

The surest way to frustrate someone who is in love with you is to not pay any attention to her.

The purest expression of love – that is, if you want to show her that you love her: give her your attention.

Of course, I didn’t know any of this when I was a kid. Eight years old, grade three. I was a favorite among the girls in my class. Huddled together in small groups, they talked about me. They giggled. They made up stories about me. They vied for my attention. Sometimes I would get kissed on the cheek against my will. Occasionally on the lips. Always, they would kiss and run. Run away. Leaving me in bewilderment. They were acts of volition, but not my volition. For me it was more like violation than volition.

A few years earlier, in grades 1 or 2, it would have been cooties, but now it wasn’t quite cooties anymore. Not in grade 3. There was still embarrassment (a blushing face and an expression of perplexity), but it was accompanied by a tinge of excitement, as yet unfamiliar and unnamed. A thumping of the heart, an electricity in the spine, perspiration under the arms.

Also, I had my own favorites. The smart ones, the pretty ones. I had no designs to kiss them myself -- that was kind of unthinkable -- but I liked to make them smile. I liked to make them laugh. Make a goofy face and make them laugh. I guess it was my way of getting their attention.

There was one girl that I really did not like. I tried to stay away from her, but she always found me. A string bean of a girl, with long hair and a long droopy face, she really bugged me. Her name was Judith. Judith, not Judy. Jud-ith. The name itself evokes stiffness, formality, inflexibility. There was nothing playful about her. She meant business. And all she apparently wanted was my attention. Which I refused to give her. I was never sure – and I am not sure to this day -- if she really liked me or really disliked me. Or whether she initially really liked me but it warped into a very strong dislike. It was in any case a kind of obsession for her. It seemed like her goal in life was to drive me crazy. Every day, all through the third grade. Whether we were standing in line, or out on recess, or eating lunch, she had a way of coming up very close to me, and would either touch me with her moist hands, or hit me, or kick me, or bump into me, or worst of all, every so often, either kiss or lick me on my cheek. There was very little I could do. You couldn’t hit girls back. I could tell the teacher, but that never helped the situation, it just made things worse, because Judith just got angrier and more vindictive. And none of my friends seemed to notice or care. I had no outside support. She was like a private demon, needling away at me, making my life miserable.

It all came to a head on the class trip. To the Statue of Liberty. When she sat next to me on the bus going downtown, I tried to get up to change seats, but the teacher told me to stay in my seat. So I was

stuck next to Judith for an hour. She never said much. She tended to express herself physically. I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep, but she kept hitting her leg up against my leg. “Stop it,” I said. But she just smiled and kept swinging her leg back and forth like a pendulum. When it was time to get up and out of the bus, she poked her bony elbow into my ribs, and smiling while I grimaced, she poked me again.

On the ferry boat, she played a game of stepping on my feet. I kept walking away from her and she kept pursuing me. “Stop stepping on my feet!” I shouted. But she just smiled and closed her eyes, savoring the idea of my misery. “You know if you keep this up, I’m going to hit you back,” I said. “Yes,” she said. “Please hit me.”

Going up the steps of the Statue, she was right behind me in line. She played another game where she stepped on the backs of my shoes, causing me, more than once, to trip on the stairs. The teacher finally noticed what was happening and separated us. To my great relief.

At the top of the Statue, I remember looking out from the crown to the city skyline, but constantly looking back over my shoulder to make sure she wasn’t coming close to me.

Then it was the end of the day. After the gift shop. After the return trip on the ferry and on the bus. Thankfully, she was instructed by the teacher to sit next to someone else. And then we were back in school, going up the stairs to our classroom, when I saw her over my shoulder, right behind me in line, and I could feel her starting in again, stepping on the backs of my shoes. I thought I was rid of her, but here she was back again like a fly buzzing around an open wound. She called my name and stepped with a savage force on the back of my right shoe. I fell hard onto my knee, but got up immediately, whirled around and pushed back at her. It wasn’t the most elegant push; it was improvised, unpracticed, raw. It was a raw push. She moved to the side, so I didn’t wind up pushing her exactly, but she had something in her hand – a square box -- and my push dislodged it from her hand. The box tumbled down the staircase, gathering momentum step by step. She ran to the bottom of the staircase after it. The box had opened, and what had been in it was now broken at the bottom of the stairs. It was a souvenir globe with the Statue of Liberty inside, the kind that had water and white flakes inside so that when you shook it, it looked like it was snowing. The globe was broken. The water and the “snowflakes” were splattered on the bottom stair.

There was a moment of complete silence. Then Judith let out a shriek and started crying. Loud and angry. Like crying and growling at the same time.

I didn’t feel bad for her. I felt like she got what was coming to her. In fact, I was proud of myself for finally standing up to her. But I knew I was “in trouble”. With the teacher, and probably the principal. I knew my parents wouldn’t be happy. All the other kids were looking at me as if I had committed a crime. No one spoke. All you could hear was Judith’s wailing.

I remember standing there at the top of the stairs, looking down. That broken snow globe symbolized something for me, a loss of innocence.

In the end, I had to explain myself to the principal, and to my parents. To defend myself. But there really was no defense. I had to pay for the globe, out of my own money. After that day, though, Judith never bothered me again.

Many years later, when I told this story to my wife, she said: “I feel bad for you, but I feel even worse for that girl who didn’t seem to know how to express her feelings”. We sat in solemnity, by the window, watching the snow accumulate on the sidewalk outside.