The Chronicles of Taylor Cecelia Brook
2nd Grade
Please read the article above before reading this post, if this is your first read in my series! I promise it will make this seem way less crazy.
******Trigger Warning: Talk About Disturbing Events********
So i kind of messed this up because like i forgot that i was actually 5 for most of kindergarten. So first grade was mostly 6 lol so then my 7ish one was wrong too lol so NOW i’m actually 7ish and i was in 2nd grade. 2nd grade was a fucking WILD year. So much happened that year. But i think if anyone actually knows how old i am i was in 2nd grade when 9/11 happened. I was so so naive.
That whole day was wild. My mom watched the TODAY show every morning while we got ready. As she was brushing my hair we were watching the show and all of a sudden Katie Currik gasps and the camera turns to what shes gasping at and we just watched as the first tower burned and the 2nd plane fly into the 2nd tower. I had no idea what was going on except plane in a building = bad. But my mom was just silent and i said “what’s wrong” and she said “some very very bad people did some very bad things”. It only got more weird from there. While I know it seems like this impacted me given that I have pretty vivid memory from that day, it actually didn’t? I know a lot of people who were deeply affected by the attacks on 9/11. But I do remember a lot from that day even if i had no fucking understanding of what was actually happening.
I got to school and it was weird. We were putting multiple classes into one classroom because we only had so many TVs for the school and then we spent most of the day watching the news, which was hella boring after a while for a 2nd grader. While i’ve always been pretty smart, until about 6 months ago, I had zero self awareness and kind of lived with my head in the clouds (that popped before my self awareness… when lily came lol), but I didn’t understand why this was such a big deal outside of it being a plane crash. We also had an assembly outside around the flag; again I didn’t get it. But I did see my crush crying and I went over to talk to him and ask him why he was upset and he said because his dad is in the military. I didn’t get it. I just kind of looked at him. I had no fucking clue that he was saying that he was terrified now because his dad is probably going to have to go to war and might die. Turns out my crush was right for half of it, his dad did end up going over as most did during that time, but he didn’t die thankfully. Unfortunately i was probably insensitive as I didn’t really understand why he was crying plus it made me uncomfortable to see people cry plus, BOYS DON”T CRY (haha so fucking stupid). So ya. That was a weird day as I’m sure it was for many many many people in this country.
2nd grade was when i gained my first “frenemy” that would be my frenemy until 6th grade and she still tried to talk to me after i moved halfway across the country. Any way for privacy protection i’m not saying her name obvs. But lets just call her Bailey, for story purposes. Bailey was so fucking confusing to my sweet innocent soul. Up until that point i grew up pretty sheltered, not in a crazy way but mom def protected me from a lot. So she was SO COOL because she knew about how babies were made and she liked to antagonize the boys at recess like i did. But then she would turn around and tell on me. Even though i didnt always do something, side note… I definitely did shit i wasn’t supposed to, but i got away with it. What always confused me is 99% of the time that she would tattle on me, i didn’t even do said thing she did. But anyway, she spent the whole year doing that shit and because all my other friends were in the other class i latched onto her because I’m assuming i needed to feel included. I don’t really remember having many like school friends before second grade that i actually played with that was a girl that was in my class. But that would make sense because I hardly knew anyone. Ok back to second grade. So bailey was mean, i drew a strong opinion on my clothes. I didn’t want to be dressed anymore… I wanted to wear comfy pants and big tshirts. Can you guess why? Because I had sensory issues with tight clothing because they made me feel fat…. It was so greatttttttt. NOT.
We were supposed to learn to read that year but oddly enough, i couldnt really read. And Phonics was SOOOOOO boring. And i could get away with doing well in class because I could regurgitate things well at that age. But i didn’t actually understand it i just would be a parrot. I also didn’t actually realize that i should think about what i was learning and maybe try and apply it to the books. But oh well such life. I still mispronounce SO many words because I still don’t know phonics and I do fine without it so what’s the point lol So I couldn’t read nor could I pay attention in class.
There was all sorts of drama between me and my teacher. She did. Not. like. Me. at. All. And I still didn’t understand why. My mom thinks it’s because she just hates girls but i have no clue. But why become a teacher? I do believe this was when we first started music class and i fell in love. I loved singing so much. My parents were super into music. It was always playing at our house. And then i LOVED the recorder lol turns out i just like playing most instruments. But i latched onto my music teacher… even if she was slightly stern. But she helped coach me on my first musical performance… I got too scared at my audition and sang in my chest voice, which at the time was much less pretty compared to my head voice, but my head voice was sooooo quiet (still haven’t fixed this… if anyone reading this is a vocal coach or singer or knows why, I would love to understand it) so I didn’t get the part that I wanted. But I was still in the musical. And it was so much fun. I didn’t make any friends there, it was pretty cliquey, but I still had so much fun. That was around the time i believe my parents told me i needed to choose between gymnastics and horse riding. And while i enjoyed horse riding, i didn’t love it as much as gymnastics. At that point i was competing a little bit and still wasn’t doing that well. I really didn’t have coaches who knew how to encourage me. But that’s ok. Anyway, I loved music and that was the moment it became my escaped. From that moment on, music became a way for me to express and feel freely. Our brain remembers more bad stuff than good and so unfortunately this year I remember a lot of bad and not much good. Except I WAS GETTING A BABY SISTER!!!!!!!! Ya 2nd grade was when I found out I was having a sister. I was so so pumped. Which i was right to be because shes my best friend now. Fucking love that girl. But that was one of the few positive memories I had. OOOO also, all the phelps went to my school. But i didn’t understand any of what they did so when one was in my class and she was nice i talked to her. We eventually became pretty good friends in 4th and 5th grade and she’s doing really well now and detached from the phelps.
We didn’t go to the cottage this summer because mom was too far along in her pregnancy by the time summer rolled around. So we went to saint louis and that was SUCH A COOL TRIP. Like i’m definitely taking my girls to some of these places this summer. We went to the zoo, which is awesome I got to feed a bunch of parokeets, then the gateway arch, then we went to the childrens science museum and holy shittttt it was so cool. I’m still bummed with myself that i didn’t ride the tether rope bike. I would have been perfectly safe, but I was too scared. But there were so many other amazing and cool things. We built robots, and got to keep them and they worked. My lil brain was exploding with all of the knowledge (cue serious dopamine high). But ya if you have kids, st louis has a cool ass kids science museum. We also went to a cardinals game, fun fact, i got to see a game in the OG cardinal stadium, which is hella cool now. My dad and I love watching baseball together, but not on tv… ewe. But also that was the year my mom accidentally left her really special neck pillow at the hotel and never saw it again, to quote my mom she was “devestated” and now as an adult i feel that devestation to my soul because it was prescribed to her with special magnets… she wasn’t getting another one without so much insane work and effort that could result in nothing. SO ya that sucked a lot for my mom and i feel for her.
Ok i think that is everything that happened that year.