It’s back-to-school time, and in our town, especially, being the “new kid” is, well, nothing new.
As families come and go along the military highway, it’s very commonplace for the halls of our schools to be graced with lots of unfamiliar faces at the beginning of each year, and if you’re like me and have ever been the “new kid,” you know that it ain’t exactly easy.
I left the middle school with which I was familiar, and a passel of friends and classmates I’d known since kindergarten to attend a new school for 7th grade. The only thing more trying than being a middle-school girl in general is being a middle-school girl with coke bottle glasses and unfortunate bangs who knows almost no one at her new school.
Needless to say, I was a ball of nerves on that first day of school morning in 1998. I vividly remember angsting over my outfit before finally selecting a Limited Too T-shirt emblazoned with a huge sunflower, purple denim shorts, white scrunch socks, and Adidas Ozweego sneakers. There was another seemingly minor detail of my morning’s preparations that day that has stayed with me all these years because of the role it would ultimately play in helping cure my new kid jitters — I tucked a sheet of Mr. Bubble stickers (a silly free promotional item that had come attached to the back of a bottle of bubble bath) into my Trapper Keeper.
After my mom dropped me at the entrance of my new school, I made my way to the middle-school hallway and double-checked my schedule to find the number of my homeroom. As I entered the classroom, I found that many students had already settled in and taken their seats. I can still see the layout of that classroom in my mind.
I made a beeline for the first empty desk I could reach, in the back row of the room closest to the door, and opposite from the crowd of girls who had gathered together in a cluster of desks at the front. They were chatting and giggling amongst themselves, waiting for class to begin. I remember not knowing what to do, and killing time by making myself look busy with unloading and organizing my school supplies. I remember opening my Trapper Keeper and mindlessly shuffling around the looseleaf paper that was inside.
As I lined No. 2 pencils up on my desk, slowly wrote my name on my notebook, and looped my backpack straps on the back of my chair, I watched the gang of girls out of the corner of my eye. I imagined they were probably talking about their summers, catching up on life since they’d last seen each other in May. I remember feeling a pit in my stomach and missing my own girl gang who was probably currently doing the exact same thing at my old school.
And then, one of those girls in the front row stood up and walked toward the back of the class, I assumed maybe to sharpen her pencil or toss something in the wastebasket. But no, she came straight for me. I’ll never forget the moment that the first person at my new school talked to me and exactly, verbatim, what she said. She looked down at my desk, and the open Trapper Keeper with the sheet of Mr. Bubble stickers on top and said, “Hey! I’m Meredith. Those are pretty cool stickers. You can hang out with us if you want to.”
Just like that, the “new kid” feeling that felt a lot like a bad stomach ache began to dissipate. It only took one person making one kind gesture — that to her was probably not much of anything at all — to change the course of my first day as the new kid in a new place in a really big way and also to teach me a life lesson that I still carry with me to this day.
It turned out that I would come to love my new school and be welcomed into a mix of kind souls who would become lifelong friends. I have told my children the “pretty cool stickers” story enough times that they now moan, “Moooom, we already know this one!”, but I tell it to them in hopes that it might inspire them to be the ones willing to reach out to the new kids who they will inevitably encounter along the way.
I would like to send good vibes and great wishes to anyone who is entering this school year as the “new kid.” It’s going to be just fine if the Meredith Boyettes’ of the world have anything to do with it.
Read CityView Magazine’s “Back to School” August 2024 e-edition here.