The Solos - The Bottom Caste in Church School Blues

I'm Jade in Church School Blues, the kid who was under the bottom of the bottom of the heap.  All Solo kids suffer, but I was focused on the most by the mean kids.  To this day, I'm not certain what it was about me that made them so angry.  Perhaps it was that I failed to respond to them, failed to cry, to scream, to run, and they weren't going to give up until they got a reaction, even if it took years.

Well, as I've said in a previous post, I haven't had a problem finding forgiveness for the Dodos.  The problem was finding forgiveness for myself for being vulnerable.  Writing Church School Blues was a way back to embrace the kid whom I treated worse than a Dodo ever did.  It was a way to get in touch with a kid who was a silent warrior.  She couldn't take up for herself with the flashing swords of the spoken word, yet she never backed down either.  Here are some passages from Church School Blues about Solos.

Even though, being eleven years of age, I am a lot younger than the other Solos in the room, we share too much ill fortune not to strike up a bit of a camaraderie, although I have to tell you that Solos tend to avoid each other. Sometimes I think that we Solos should band into our own Solo gang and be loyal to each other, and then it wouldn't be so bad, but the terrible thing is that nobody wants to be seen with a Solo—not even another Solo! Think about it. You hang out with the kid who is duck walking, or whose glasses are steaming, or who keeps touching the edges of stuff, and people start looking at you to see what you have in common with that person, and that's the sad truth --Church School Blues

She is one of those kids who is obviously a Solo on sight. It's the way she ducks her blonde head and slumps as if trying to be invisible. It's in the way that she doesn't seem to have the hang of walking, standing or sitting. Every movement looks awkward and unnatural. She is a silent kid.

--Church School Blues

The So-So's - Characters in Church School Blues

I think most of us are probably So-So's.  Reluctant to take a stand, lest we lose the little bit of ground we're standing upon. Avoiding confrontation if at all possible, looking the other way when we see injustice.

I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking that I'm going to sermonize about how being a So-So is wrong.  I'm not.  Being a So-So is sometimes necessary for survival, physically or mentally, in school, in the work place, wherever differences clash and intolerance intrudes.  Chameleons are So-So's in the animal kingdom, as are animals that change the color of their fur with the change of seasons, and those that blend into the barks of trees, or appear to be part of a plant.  Not everyone is equipped for direct confrontation, but as we mature we find that there are other ways to address injustice and intolerance.  As adults, we gain more tools to deal with our lives and the life we see happening around us.  That is the message of Church School Blues -- a kid may be stuck in a caste while at school, but it isn't a life sentence.

An underdog -- in the caste called Solo in Church School Blues -- isn't doomed to be a Solo forever, and neither are So-So's, or even Dodos.  As we grow up, we outgrow the small world of school.  We even discover that there aren't just three castes, but many types of people that we didn't even meet in school.  Or, if we're really creative, we can create our own caste.

The Dodos - Characters in Church School Blues

I don't think I could have written Church School Blues if I couldn't draw.  Drawing drew the old me out.  Back then, drawing was a refuge away from the scenes described in Blues and now drawing was the vehicle I used to come back to them.

I have given a lot of thought to what motivated the kids that I called the Dodos.  I have concluded that bored personalities had a lot to do with it. Though they seemed of average intelligence there was a certain dullness of mind that made them unable to create or experience wonder.  Mischief wasn't enough to break the monotony for them.  They had to go beyond mischief to cruelty in order to feel alive.

Elder Hargis's Seating Chart & The Caste System

In Church School Blues, there is a definite caste system, which the narrator secretly names and defines.  The three castes are the Dodos, the So-So's, and the Solos. Elder Hargis, the teacher, uses the caste system to his advantage with his seating chart.

From Church School Blues:

"The main requirement for a kid to be a Dodo is to be bored to meanness. This type of kid craves excitement. Obviously they have never lived in a Roach Ranch next door to Catholics, kleptomaniacs and tomato-throwing boozers. Not to mention they've not come here from the Green Swamp where they would have known all sorts of unusual things and amazing people, most of whom Mother doesn't want me to mention to anyone since it would give the impression that we came from the back woods. The Dodos have lived pretty ordinary lives in comparison, as far as I can tell. The only way they get any thrills is by bullying the Solos.

The kids in between the Solos and the Dodos are in the caste I call the So-Sos. The main requirement to be a So-So is to naturally blend in with your environment so that you don't stand out as prey. Think white rabbit in snow, think turtle among rocks, and you'll get the picture. The So-Sos are good students, and usually polite to everybody. They aren't bored to meanness because they often have talents and hobbies (which they don't flaunt so that nobody notices too much.) The only time they act mean is when they laugh along with the Dodos at the Solos. They can't really help that. It's part of their camouflage.

Then there are the Solos. I have pondered at length what makes a kid a Solo instead of a So-So. (It isn't hard to figure out why someone isn't a Dodo, but it isn't always so apparent how a person fell down so far that they became a Solo.).

There are four of us Solo kids....

...Since Elder Hargis is the principal of our school as well as the seventh and eighth grade teacher, you'd think he'd know how to handle eight students. Yes, I said eight. The other nine of us don't need handling, but the Dodos can hardly sit still in between recess breaks. Sometimes I suspect Elder Hargis is afraid of the Dodos, but that can't be the simple truth or they'd have devoured him by now like a Solo. I think that the truth is not simple in this case, and that the non-simple truth is that Elder Hargis is bored to meanness just like the Dodos. But don't take my word for it. Let me give some examples.

Here's how he has handled the problem of the Dodos talking through class. Instead of giving out some teacherly punishment—like having to stay after school or write 100 times on the board, I will not talk out of order—Elder Hargis has resorted to strategy.

His strategy is a seating chart.

He has strategically placed each Solo kid so that they form a barrier separating the Dodos so they can't put their heads together and carry on a class-long conversation with each other. But you know what that means, right? Each Solo kid is completely surrounded by Dodos, which I assure you is not a pleasant position to be in if you're a Solo.

The seating chart is an example of why I say that Elder Hargis has a mean streak. He doesn't care that the Solos are tormented in his seating arrangement, as long as it keeps the overall noise level down. Since conversations between Dodos and Solos tend to be one-sided, you can see why the noise is less."

Ever seen or experienced a seating chart like Elder Hargis's Seating Chart?

   

Full Circle

Today I have a full-circle sort of feeling.  I rode a bicycle for the first time in many years, and my father rode with me through the streets of a small Carolina town.  In Church School Blues, my younger self is a bike riding kid who uses her bike to grab a sense of freedom even as she feels herself trapped behind an invisible chain-link fence of silence, far away from the Carolina home she yearns for.

From Church School Blues:

"I feel like my life has become a Salvador Dali painting.

And another thing I've recently learned—I can stand persecution. I've mentioned already about how we Adventists have to be ready for the Great Persecution when The World will turn on us for being a Peculiar People. Well, I am being persecuted for being a Peculiar Person, so I am getting plenty practice in bearing up.

As soon as I'm away from that school, back on my bike in the afternoons, I start fitting back into my skin. I merge with the wind and let it take all that awful hairspray right out of my hair and lift me up so I feel like I am flying. I can really ride that bike. I cross my arms and steer with no hands, making the turns and everything just by shifting my weight a tiny bit. As long as I'm on my bike, I am still keen."  

Mother's Ingenious Compromise

One of the underlying themes of Church School Blues is the conflict between Jade and her mother.  Her mother is very concerned with external appearances and rising socially, while Jade prefers the rustic ways she learned from her grandfather.  "I see crumbling elegance where Mother sees shabbiness, I hear music where she hears noise."

Sometimes, Mother comes through in the narrative with an "Ingenious Compromise" that allows her to keep things picture perfect while allowing Jade some of the rustic things she craves.  In chapter one, as they prepare to leave the swamp country for a new life in the city, Jade is allowed to take with her a piece of driftwood she had found on the wild shores of Lake Waccamaw:

"I get to bring a few treasures with me to Chattanooga. My bicycle is of practical use as it will be my ride to school there just as it is here. More frivolous is the inclusion of a large piece of driftwood that I triumphantly dragged home from the shore of Lake Waccamaw a year ago. Mother thought it was a horrid rustic piece, but rather than make me get rid of it, she came up with one of her Ingenious Compromises. You never know with her. Her way almost always rules because she is the adult and has all the votes while I am supposed to grow up before I have the right to vote. But sometimes she comes up with an Ingenious Compromise that blows me plum off my feet.

While I was at school, she varnished and shellacked my driftwood until the wood grains shone with as much luxury and depth as the mahogany woodwork of her stereo cabinet, which is also loaded into the U-Haul. I was appalled to see my driftwood thus transformed, but I have come to see that she has created a conversation piece. I have yet to see another one like it."

I still have the driftwood, still with some of the shine that Mother added to it.  Trying to decide if it needs a new coat...

Church School Blues will be available on Amazon.com this week!

A Sense of Place

This post comes to you from Columbus County, North Carolina, land of Rhoda Bell in Fireflies, the winter's haven of the travel-weary family in Precious Jewels, and the lost home of a bullied child in Church School Blues.  It is official.  I have come home.  As I listened to the voice of my younger self narrate to me how she would never ever give up her Green Swamp no matter what, I was finally able to call to her across time, "I finally made it home."

Church School Blues will be released in a few weeks, perhaps less.  We are still in the process of all the activities related to moving, which is one of my excuses for the long break in posting.  The other excuse is that once I convinced my younger self to tell what happened in church school, she couldn't shut up.