Raimy Sporl
Pop Cross
A 6th grade heathen realizes she’s going to Hell.
We've got three things at Baytuckey middle school: your farmers, your over-the-top Christians, and your goody-two-shoes. All of which, I’m not.
Put yourself in my shoes, I've been in this school system since preschool. I've literally been surrounded by, you know, these sheep fields and these Confederate flags hanging off of big pickup trucks- since preschool! Now I'm in sixth grade, and I'm surrounded by all of this mayhem, everyone bein’ like: “You want to sign up for the Sunday school activity? Oh wait you aren’t in my church” or “You can't hang out with my daughter because she's Christian and you're not”. All these kind of crazy outside ideals piling up in this little girl's head, this little girl being me.
However, there was one saving grace out of this entire school and we're going to call her... Shampoo, and she was the most bubbly girl you will ever know. She had all the same views as me, she was such a perfect friend, and we were, you know, closer than two babes in a hot tub. We had a lot of fun and stuff, you know, but there were some things about Shampoo that really did bother me.
I still remember the day so clearly, we were sitting in biology class, of course, next to each other because we were so close like that we shared pretty much everything. You know, we shared our science papers, shared our pencils, we even shared our own backpack! Like one day she would carry it, then one day I would. It was a little thing we did and it was kind of cute.
So in biology, I remember it was the same day that gum got stuck in my retainer and we started breeding the box elder beetles, so they're clicking in the background while we are having this conversation, and we just watched a movie; it was a good day to say the least.
Yet in my little mind, the only thing I could think about this entire period was Wouldn’t it be so rad to date Hercules? Like what if you were just dating him? and so that's what I thought. But if I want to be dating Hercules I gotta follow Greek mythology as my religion, so naturally, I wanted to share this mind-blowing observation with Shampoo! But when I told her, she just made this weird face. Then, you know, she looks at me. She looks at her backpack. She looks back at me. She looks at her bag.
I think I broke Shampoo.
However, she then pulls out this golden thing from her bag. It was a golden popsicle stick cross she probably made during Sunday School. Then she literally holds it up to my arm like she's branding me with Jesus Christ!
She's goes, “You know you’re going to hell right, you know you're going to hell?”
Oh boy, let me tell you, I was pretty scared.
I thought I was already in hell, I thought I was like there, I can see the fire coming up from nowhere, I was like there's the devil there is what I'm going to run into when I die. I was scared and of course, hell was like the worst curse words for a sixth grader.
Naturally, as a sixth grader, I did burst into tears and I started freaking the heck out. I was very sensitive back in sixth grade. The whole deal actually started a fight between us and we had completely gone to the opposite sides of the room. She was crossing her arms all snooty and mad like “she’s being a baby about it”. What a punk.
Class ended, and I had no one. I didn't know where to go during the two periods before lunch. I had no one else, as you can see I'm kind of an outsider at this school; I didn't follow what other people were doing. I had one friend, and she was mad at me. I had nobody else, I don't know who to sit next to. She even had my backpack, she literally had all my stuff!
I was going through these two periods like it was millions of years and it took forever until that lunch bell rang. I went up to my little locker and I was just opening it up and then I remember feeling these, like, two-inch-long hot pink nails go into my shoulders. I wanted to turn around and see Shampoo standing there. I wanted to see her so bad, but no, the owner of these hot pink nails was a girl named Evie.
Evie was your stereotypical gal, acting just like she lived in Jersey. She had these super long nails and you know she would cut you open if you looked at her sixth-grade boyfriend. Word had spread and she's was like “I heard what’s happin’ with you and Shampoo, I be heardin’ what happened like I did. I’ll help you doll.” (Her grammar was atrocious.) You know, I couldn't even speak again and she was like, “I help you. I'm going to help you.”
Before I could say no she grabbed my hands takes me out to the football field where we ate lunch and here we were walking out into the grass. I remember having this really sick feeling in my gut, like I was crying, I looked the garbage because I had been crying, I didn’t want to go into this giant football field with all these people. We got your Katies, your Jessicas, showing off too much skin in sixth grade. And of course, we got your Blake.
Now Blake is a wonderful person, you know, he was one of my favorite kids back in middle school. He would always run around acting like the Wolverine every single day. During recess he would run around, you know, with his claws out and just doing some totally wonderful stuff, but his favorite person to play was a Power Ranger. I don't know which one -they were all very important to him- he could be the red one, the yellow one, he could be the pink one for all that mattered. No matter what, he was a Power Ranger and he was doing his duties out there, running around in the field.
We walked past him and Eviewas just dragging me towards this figure standing in the corner of this field. It was Shampoo… and I was thinking, They're going to kill me they're going to crucify me on the football goal, I’m going to die. However, they didn't kill me I'm here right now, so we just sat down in the circle and started talking about our feelings.
Evie was acting like she was like she was a qualified therapist for sixth graders and she like turned to shampoo, “How do you feel Shampoo, what you feelin’?”
Shampoo’s like, “She's being the baby about it, she's a baby about it.” I started to cry.
Then Evie goes, “Raimy, what you feelin’? What do you feel?”
At that moment time seemed to freeze and the only thing I could hear was grass crunching under Blake's feet as he came up running. He held his fist in front of my face in our little circle and he goes, in his deepest Power Ranger voice “Do you feel pain?!”
I remember just falling back to laughing, and Shampoo started laughing and we both started crying and it was just such a wonderful way to make up with somebody, over comedy.
So after this, I want you to raise up your yarmulke, raise up your popsicle stick crosses, raise up your Power Ranger gloves. For the thing that's holding all these up… is a human hand.
Put yourself in my shoes, I've been in this school system since preschool. I've literally been surrounded by, you know, these sheep fields and these Confederate flags hanging off of big pickup trucks- since preschool! Now I'm in sixth grade, and I'm surrounded by all of this mayhem, everyone bein’ like: “You want to sign up for the Sunday school activity? Oh wait you aren’t in my church” or “You can't hang out with my daughter because she's Christian and you're not”. All these kind of crazy outside ideals piling up in this little girl's head, this little girl being me.
However, there was one saving grace out of this entire school and we're going to call her... Shampoo, and she was the most bubbly girl you will ever know. She had all the same views as me, she was such a perfect friend, and we were, you know, closer than two babes in a hot tub. We had a lot of fun and stuff, you know, but there were some things about Shampoo that really did bother me.
I still remember the day so clearly, we were sitting in biology class, of course, next to each other because we were so close like that we shared pretty much everything. You know, we shared our science papers, shared our pencils, we even shared our own backpack! Like one day she would carry it, then one day I would. It was a little thing we did and it was kind of cute.
So in biology, I remember it was the same day that gum got stuck in my retainer and we started breeding the box elder beetles, so they're clicking in the background while we are having this conversation, and we just watched a movie; it was a good day to say the least.
Yet in my little mind, the only thing I could think about this entire period was Wouldn’t it be so rad to date Hercules? Like what if you were just dating him? and so that's what I thought. But if I want to be dating Hercules I gotta follow Greek mythology as my religion, so naturally, I wanted to share this mind-blowing observation with Shampoo! But when I told her, she just made this weird face. Then, you know, she looks at me. She looks at her backpack. She looks back at me. She looks at her bag.
I think I broke Shampoo.
However, she then pulls out this golden thing from her bag. It was a golden popsicle stick cross she probably made during Sunday School. Then she literally holds it up to my arm like she's branding me with Jesus Christ!
She's goes, “You know you’re going to hell right, you know you're going to hell?”
Oh boy, let me tell you, I was pretty scared.
I thought I was already in hell, I thought I was like there, I can see the fire coming up from nowhere, I was like there's the devil there is what I'm going to run into when I die. I was scared and of course, hell was like the worst curse words for a sixth grader.
Naturally, as a sixth grader, I did burst into tears and I started freaking the heck out. I was very sensitive back in sixth grade. The whole deal actually started a fight between us and we had completely gone to the opposite sides of the room. She was crossing her arms all snooty and mad like “she’s being a baby about it”. What a punk.
Class ended, and I had no one. I didn't know where to go during the two periods before lunch. I had no one else, as you can see I'm kind of an outsider at this school; I didn't follow what other people were doing. I had one friend, and she was mad at me. I had nobody else, I don't know who to sit next to. She even had my backpack, she literally had all my stuff!
I was going through these two periods like it was millions of years and it took forever until that lunch bell rang. I went up to my little locker and I was just opening it up and then I remember feeling these, like, two-inch-long hot pink nails go into my shoulders. I wanted to turn around and see Shampoo standing there. I wanted to see her so bad, but no, the owner of these hot pink nails was a girl named Evie.
Evie was your stereotypical gal, acting just like she lived in Jersey. She had these super long nails and you know she would cut you open if you looked at her sixth-grade boyfriend. Word had spread and she's was like “I heard what’s happin’ with you and Shampoo, I be heardin’ what happened like I did. I’ll help you doll.” (Her grammar was atrocious.) You know, I couldn't even speak again and she was like, “I help you. I'm going to help you.”
Before I could say no she grabbed my hands takes me out to the football field where we ate lunch and here we were walking out into the grass. I remember having this really sick feeling in my gut, like I was crying, I looked the garbage because I had been crying, I didn’t want to go into this giant football field with all these people. We got your Katies, your Jessicas, showing off too much skin in sixth grade. And of course, we got your Blake.
Now Blake is a wonderful person, you know, he was one of my favorite kids back in middle school. He would always run around acting like the Wolverine every single day. During recess he would run around, you know, with his claws out and just doing some totally wonderful stuff, but his favorite person to play was a Power Ranger. I don't know which one -they were all very important to him- he could be the red one, the yellow one, he could be the pink one for all that mattered. No matter what, he was a Power Ranger and he was doing his duties out there, running around in the field.
We walked past him and Eviewas just dragging me towards this figure standing in the corner of this field. It was Shampoo… and I was thinking, They're going to kill me they're going to crucify me on the football goal, I’m going to die. However, they didn't kill me I'm here right now, so we just sat down in the circle and started talking about our feelings.
Evie was acting like she was like she was a qualified therapist for sixth graders and she like turned to shampoo, “How do you feel Shampoo, what you feelin’?”
Shampoo’s like, “She's being the baby about it, she's a baby about it.” I started to cry.
Then Evie goes, “Raimy, what you feelin’? What do you feel?”
At that moment time seemed to freeze and the only thing I could hear was grass crunching under Blake's feet as he came up running. He held his fist in front of my face in our little circle and he goes, in his deepest Power Ranger voice “Do you feel pain?!”
I remember just falling back to laughing, and Shampoo started laughing and we both started crying and it was just such a wonderful way to make up with somebody, over comedy.
So after this, I want you to raise up your yarmulke, raise up your popsicle stick crosses, raise up your Power Ranger gloves. For the thing that's holding all these up… is a human hand.