A Second Chance in the Seventh Grade

…in which Uncle Duke goes back to school.

I am being required to retake the 7th grade this year. There are a number of reasons. One of the most prominent of which is that during most of my adolescence, I suffered from an attention deficit. This was not so much a certifiable disorder as it was a protective condition. I can still recall the sound of adults talking to me. I saw their lips move very clearly, but what came out of their mouths was muffled and garbled. I could hear my friends well enough; but with grown ups, it was like one of us was under water. I suppose that would have been me. My brain seemed surrounded by a semi-permeable, viscous cushion. As I look back, it was there to provide a barrier, an effective baffle, between me and a lot of confusing, contradictory stuff.

In case you’ve forgotten, there is an overwhelming amount of information out there for 12 year olds. Everybody has information for you to absorb, rules for you to memorize, lessons to teach you and things for you to remember. Most of it is redundant, but nevermind. It’s all terribly important stuff, and it will most certainly ruin your life if you don’t remember it.

The brain, we know, is an amazing organism, capable of incredible feats of calculation and absorption. But it has its limits. There are things it refuses to do. The first time we are exposed to information or facts, particularly when we are not ready for them, our brains reject them like some alien, invading organism. It protects itself from overload, particularly in our formative years, by blocking out extraneous, unnecessary information. In my case, this was History, Geography and most areas of Science.

However, it turns out that one cannot be exposed to words and phrases dozens of times without them being reluctantly imprinted in some backwater node of the brain. As a result there are loose pieces of information which rattle around in our brains for years, like pebbles in a hubcap. What was that Magna Charta thing? Who the hell was Cardinal Richelieu and why does he pop into my head more often than truly significant historical figures like The Big Bopper and Little Eva? We wander around most of our lives with something called the Hawley-Smoot Tariff tucked into our brains and no support information. It doesn’t keep us awake at night, but it is a significant void.

Let me say here that I think I know enough stuff. I have accumulated quite a lot of information already in one lifetime and am just about as smart as I care to be. I’m not really all that interested in the Internet and the information explosion. They tend to give me way more information than I need. I just need to fill in the gaps of the stuff that’s already in my brain and I will be just-smart-enough.

I am not, at this point, interested in scholarly works. I was always a Cliffnotes kind of guy anyway. Historically, one five or six page chapter for every 20 years or so is about right. I don’t want to be weighted down with the specifics of one generation of history or one scientific phenomenon or another. I know that’s how grant money is distributed, but I find it makes people lumpy and short sighted. I want The Big Picture. I want a real Liberal Arts education. I want the Seventh Grade.

Well it turns out, to my wonderful surprise, that information is tastier and more compelling the 2nd time around. It turns out that this is terribly interesting stuff. World War I was an intricate series of political, ethnic, geographical and economic events with subplots of greed, vanity and lust. Who knew? All of a sudden, in my middle years, a history textbook reads like a novel. Somehow I involuntarily absorbed enough information over the years to provide a solid framework for 7th grade class work. I get it! Having struggled against gravity, friction and inertia all these years, suddenly the elementary laws of physics and the accompanying equations make sense. Why of course Force=mass x acceleration! I knew that! The study of mountain ranges and tectonic plates may be dull and slow moving, but hey!--- dull and slow moving is my preferred pace. The Classics may be moldy, but I like moldy. It’s a perfect match!

But of course the real reason I’m retaking 7th grade is to walk it with Caleb. I recognize that it’s not easy being 12. Twelve year olds are still learning how to comb their hair and spit properly. Their bodies require a lot of their brains’ attention as they pull and stretch and spurt in multiple directions at once. They are paying a lot of attention to chemistry, but it is internal chemistry, not the theoretical kind. The exact formulas are irrelevant.

They are determining how the world works, how to maneuver, go through the gears, get respect, get food, get whatever else they need. This is pretty much a full-time job. To expect them to concentrate on abstract issues and dead people is asking an awful lot. Dead stuff does not register a blip on their screen. Everything is alive and in front of them. This is why they grasp computer technology so readily. It is living, breathing and changing and is basically the same age they are. We ask them to learn LATIN, a language no longer spoken? This is adult logic, which is to say it makes no immediate sense.

No sir, 7th grade is not easy. Our memories may distort and rosify it, but there is a lot of new stuff coming at you. A lot of requirements. And they’re not always laid out terribly clearly for you. It can be very confusing, even overwhelming. I know Caleb feels trapped and tricked and under-informed on a pretty regular basis. It is the adults’ job to help explain the details---what’s important, what’s not. More importantly, it is our job to supply perspective. Why is it important? Since I wasn’t paying much attention the first time through, I don’t really know. There’s a lot I have to relearn.

He asked me recently to read an assigned novel along with him. The book was Where the Red Fern Grows, and it is about a boy and his two coon dogs. The dogs are of course intelligent and loyal, brave and fierce and play a central role in the boy’s adolescent life. They get into trouble, charm everyone, win contests. They learn from him. He learns from them. They save his life. He saves theirs. Eventually, the one is killed by a cougar. And shortly thereafter, the other dies of a broken heart. As we both nearly did. The book had become real, as good literature is supposed to do. We had grown to love those hounds, and we were both terribly saddened by their demise. It was real enough pain. We held each other hard.

But I couldn’t think of anyplace else I would rather be. Or should be. At that moment, I belonged in the 7th grade. There were some lessons I didn’t learn the first time around. How to hold tight to a friend and cry when I needed to was not the least of which.