like scotch...

My favorite quote from a pretty decent NYTimes series on middle schools:

“Middle school is like Scotch,” she reflected in the teachers’ lounge one afternoon. “At first you try to get it down. Then you get used to it. Then it’s all you order.”

Dae and Gecko told me yesterday that Cyrus stole my wallet, that Dae saw him and Cyrus confessed it to him. When I asked Cyrus about it, he almost flipped out. I don't know whether he was more upset that he was accused of it or that I might believe it. I don't, though. If Cyrus actually stole it, and gave the credit card to someone who racked up $200 (at Rite-Aid, of all places...), I would pretty close to losing faith in everything I do. As much as I love the other kids, I wouldn't necessarily put it past all of them. Dae, for example, has stolen from me before, but generally only stupid stuff like candy (M pointed out that candy isn't stupid, but you can also buy a whole lot more candy with a credit card than I had in my desk for them to take). He's really the only kid in my class that I know steals on a regular basis, but it's generally just stupid stuff, and I usually deal with it by calling him out on it in subtle ways that just make him really embarassed, so he knows I know, and knows it means I trust him less, but gives him room to make it up to me by displaying really good behavior in other ways. But this would just be miles beyond whatever I thought he was capable of. Cyrus, on the other hand... I can think of fewer things that would break my heart faster or harder than finding out that he, in particular, did something like that to me. This is the kid that asked me to go with him to the Mother-Son Valentine's Day dance, after all.

I actually don't think Jay did it, after all- I brought it up very casually in front of him in conversation to another student, and he seemed genuinely surprised. So either he's a really practiced liar (which is totally possible) or he just doesn't know anything about it. But that begs the question... who did it? Maybe Sidekick... given another three months with him, he wouldn't, but he barely knows me. It's so hard... the way to get trust from these kids is to give it, and this makes it so hard to do that...

When I told S about it, she was pretty shocked. She flat out refused to believe Cyrus did it.

"Not him. Maybe Dae. Not Cyrus. You're like a mom to him. There's just no way. I wouldn't put it past him to do something like that in general, to someone else maybe, even me, but there's just no way he would do that to you. Your class in general, I can't see anyone doing that you. Somebody else, but not you. You're not there for five minutes, they freak out. 'Where's Ms. A? Is she coming? Why isn't she here yet? Where'd she go? Is she coming back?' There's just no way they did it, especially Cyrus."

I keep going back to Jay and Sidekick... I just don't know who else, but it seems less and less likely. When I called Jay's homeroom teacher on Friday, she told me if he made it through a full week the building would explode. He walked in minutes later. I called her back to tell her to mark him present:
"The building's about to explode. We should evacuate. We could go home early."

His kick of following my directions ended, though. He doesn't actually care, generally speaking, about Sidekick being there, but I noticed he did way more for me Thursday when Sidekick was absent than on Friday when he was there. Friday he refused to do a damn thing. And Sidekick left fifteen minutes before the test started to go get a pretzel and then disappeared. I called the office fifteen minutes later to have them put a lookout for him on the security walkies. Twenty minutes after that the seventh grade coordinator walked him in, holding him by the arm.

"He got in a fight."

I looked at him in disbelief.

"Already? You went to go get a pretzel!"

He then proceeded to be a pain in the butt for the next hour and a half. Jay refused to do anything but talk about his tattoo, going driving the previous night in a Chrysler (I mistakenly called it a Chevy once. From their facial expressions you would've thought I just talked trash about their moms), some girl he wanted to get with in his class, or his car (not the Chrysler... his car is a Civic. He wanted to bond over us both having Hondas...). I asked him where he got the money to pay for the car (it's evidently in a friend's name so it could be registered) and he told me he worked at his dad's corner store, which may at least be partial truth. At one point when he and Sidekick had left the room, all the other kids looked at me and one of them said,

"You know he's a drug dealer, right?"

They all watched my face to see if I got it. They really think adults are completely clueless, and it makes me kind of wonder how clueless I actually am to what's going on in their world. They tell me stuff all the time and then seem shocked when I know about it, and act like I know everything in their whole little social world ("How you know all that, Ms. A? You a stalker or somethin?" "No, your best friends just told me all of that..."), but I wonder how much I would be completely oblivious to if they didn't confess it to me every three minutes.

Definite tolerance points for Jay: in the middle of the test, no warning, he turns around and looks at Angel.

"Hey, are you gay?"

Angel, who's obviously been asked this a hundred times, started to roll his eyes, but stopped in consideration of the relative scariness of the kid asking. He shook his head a little timidly. I started to get defensive for Angel.

"Why would you ask him that? Is that any of your business?"
"You're not? Yo, chill, I'm just curious. Some kids were saying it, and I just wanted to know."
Angel was shrinking in his chair.
"Well, would you have a problem with it if he was?"
"Naw, man. I don't care if people are gay or not, or who is gay. That's cool. I just wanted to see if it was true."

I was impressed, and told him. "Good for you. That's mature. I like that."

Actually both he and Sidekick have completely stopped cursing in my presence. It's sort of interesting, what they think of as acceptable around me versus around other adults. From what Sidekick says, despite his asinine antics in my class he's better for me than he is for his mom. And Jay actually started to curse, stopped himself, and then apologized to me. That doesn't stop them from fighting, or cutting the rest of their classes, or dealing drugs, or trying to have sex... but maybe it's a start.