grant, jason, and the car

Lately I’ve been going down a rabbit hole of remembering childhood things. For instance:

In kindergarten and first grade, the coolest and funniest kid in class was Grant. He had this gimmick where he pretended to faint anytime someone said the word “apple.” People would say it to him at lunch and he would faceplant into his sandwich. Hilarious every time.

Grant was usually with Jason, who was basically his sidekick. In the latter half of first grade, I hung around them enough that I kinda became Grant’s secondary sidekick, which was exciting and cool.

A girl in class, Marissa, decided to build a car. (A cardboard box suitable for sitting in, with a steering wheel, buttons, etc.) Grant decided we would build a car too. Or maybe our car came first? Not sure. Anyway, we built it, though with minimal input from me since I didn’t know much about cars.

Marissa’s car got much more praise from the teachers. I remember thinking they only favored her because she was a girl (derogatory), and Grant’s car was way better. I thought this out of loyalty. But perhaps a part of me was more objective, because my feeling/suspicion in retrospect is that Marissa’s car was genuinely of higher quality. But Grant’s car was nice too. We worked hard on it.

After first grade, Grant and I went to different schools, and I didn’t see him again. But after a year apart, Jason and I wound up in the same third grade class. In fact, we were sitting together. The desks were all arranged in groups of four, except Jason and I were the two leftover people, so our group was just us. We were best friends all year. But we never got to play at recess together because Jason was constantly on the “late work” board and wasn’t allowed to go outside. Kind of a bummer for me, but I didn’t overly mind playing alone; but a much bigger bummer for Jason being cooped up all day. This is why they say the educational system fails boys.