school as laboratory – Muddled Soma

365 Day Coming of Age Prompt Project/Theme 3 - School as a Laboratory

Square Pizza & Neutral Ground – Day 27

January 21, 2026January 22, 2026 ljandkariLeave a comment

Prompt – Lunchroom politics

Through the fifth grade, the lunchroom was neutral ground. It required only a basic understanding of a single-file line, eighty-five cents, and the know-how to choose wisely from the menu. The homemade square pizza made by Carol the Lunch Lady reigned supreme, folding in half but never breaking thanks to a level of grease that functioned as both flavor and structural support. The sloppy joe, held together by far more ketchup than beef, tested gravity and came in a respectable second, especially when paired with tater tots that counted as a vegetable because everyone agreed to pretend they were potatoes. Then there was the taco, which had never heard Spanish and knew no spice at all. Finished off with a carton of chocolate milk and the meal was complete. That was it. No strategy was required, nor was any understanding of complex human hierarchical structures necessary. The menu told everything that needed to be known.

Sixth grade changed the terms. The lunchroom acquired borders much like invisible fences that everyone pretended not to see while obeying their “Posted” notices perfectly. Rules appeared, not published ones, but learned ones. Seats were no longer neutral. Placement mattered, and choice was often an illusion, as belonging did the choosing long before anyone sat down. Jocks clustered loud and confident, already rehearsing for futures that assumed space. Band kids gathered with instrument cases leaned against their legs like shields. Nerds formed tight constellations around shared intelligence and inside jokes. Religious kids bowed their heads before eating, not so much for God as for each other. Floaters drifted from table to table, fluent in small talk and practiced exits. Loners learned how to sit with a book and make it look intentional.

The food did not change. The square pizza never left. What changed was the audience and, with it, the purpose. Lunch became a daily referendum on who was permitted to be seen together and who was better off unseen. Seats mattered. Laughter mattered more, because laughter signaled togetherness and safety. Silence could be read as arrogance or fear, depending on who was watching and what they needed it to mean that day. Some seats had to be earned, while others came with unspoken warnings to stay away. The politics were efficient and selectively cruel, enforced mostly through looks, although words were occasionally deployed when looks failed.

The lunchroom became my first real lesson in social cartography, a place that taught where power sat and where safety might be found if one looked closely enough. What I did not understand then was that everyone else was learning the same lesson at the same time, each of us convinced of being the only one studying the map so desperately. The tables felt permanent, the labels felt fixed, and the consequences felt endless.

Looking back now, the comedy of it all lands harder than the fear ever did. Grease-soaked pizza and ketchup-heavy sloppy joes were never really the point. The lunchroom was a training ground, rehearsing adult versions of conference rooms, waiting rooms, and dinner tables where the same invisible fences still exist. The difference is that, with time, the map becomes easier to read, and the borders begin to look less international and more domestic. That realization does not erase the lesson, but it does soften it, allowing the memory to sit where it belongs, alongside the chocolate milk and the understanding that belonging was always more fragile, and more negotiable, than it first appeared.

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365 Day Coming of Age Prompt Project/Theme 3 - School as a Laboratory

Maps of Exposure – Day 26

January 20, 2026 ljandkariLeave a comment

Prompt – Where you sat, and what that said about you.

School desks were small. I was never small after the third grade. So, I sat wherever I thought I would be seen the least, both because my body had to be crammed into a tiny desk and because I wanted, metaphorically, to be small. It was not always the back. Sometimes teachers watched the those seats more closely than other seats, and the front row was never safe. The middle was impossible. The rule was simple. Find the fringe. That choice said everything about me in school.

Classrooms were maps of exposure. Desks were not neutral furniture. They were declarations. The front row signaled confidence or compliance. The back row suggested resistance or disappearance. Corners belonged to those who understood angles and sightlines, who learned early that bodies are measured long before words are heard.

I was fat. I do not mean that as confession or insult. I mean it as fact, the kind that preceded me into rooms and sat down before I did. Fatness was not something I carried. It was something assigned meaning by others. The room knew this before it knew my name.

So I chose seats strategically. I sat behind taller kids, near the wall, and close to exits. I learned how to fold myself inward, shoulders forward and spine curved just enough to suggest apology. I sat where teachers would scan past me while taking roll. I did not want to be called on, not because I did not know the answer, but because answers came with eyes, and eyes came with judgment.

The seating chart never asked why I sat where I did, but it enforced the order with precision. That structure was almost a relief because the cafeteria was different. Seating there required social currency. Tables formed tribes with unspoken rules. Athletes claimed space with backpacks and elbows. Beautiful people took up room without consequence. I sat where there was an empty chair that no one would miss if I disappeared, often with the other island-of-misfit-toy kids. Sometimes I chose solitude on purpose, but even that came with risk. You did not want to be that kid for too long.

Assemblies were worse. Bleachers turned bodies into sound. There was no hiding when the seat itself complained. Metal creaked and plastic bent. I learned to sit carefully, distributing weight and moving slowly, as if gentleness could erase mass. I learned to arrive early so no one would watch me navigate the row.

Teachers often said things like, sit anywhere or choose your own seat, as if freedom were evenly distributed. It was not.

Where I sat became where I learned to observe. From the edges, patterns reveal themselves. You notice who gets interrupted and who gets forgiven. You hear shifts in tone. You learn that authority prefers neat rows and quiet bodies, and that some children are allowed to sprawl into themselves while others must shrink to earn tolerance.

I became good at being small, not physically but socially. I learned to take up intellectual space while minimizing bodily presence. I learned to be useful, funny, compliant, insightful, anything that might justify the space my body occupied. Somewhere along the way, that strategy stopped being situational and started feeling like identity.

Years later, I still notice where I sit in meetings, restaurants, and waiting rooms. I still scan for sightlines and exits. I still choose chairs that feel forgiving. Healing has not erased this instinct. It has taught me to name it, to see the trade I was making. Safety over visibility. Shame over power. Survival over learning.

But hell, at least I was paying attention!

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365 Day Coming of Age Prompt Project/Theme 3 - School as a Laboratory

Fear and the Motherfucker – Day 22

January 16, 2026January 20, 2026 ljandkariLeave a comment

Prompt – Your first day of school that you truly remember.

The first day of school that I truly remember was fourth grade, and the memory was all due to Mrs. Blue, my new teacher. I came into that year riding the high of third grade with Ms. Mullings, a teacher who made the classroom feel alive and safe at the same time. Learning had felt expansive. Mistakes were part of the process. Curiosity was welcomed. And I am sure she was a witch – both a real witch and a good witch. There were big shoes to fill, but Mrs. Blue arrived wearing none of them. She could not find the stride, the rhythm, or the balance required to lead a room full of children. What she brought instead was pain, grief, and an atmosphere so tight with fear that it pressed against my chest before the first recess of the year.

Her classroom had rules. Rules stacked on rules. Rules with no context and no grace. On the first morning, we were seated quickly and told to listen. This was not an invitation. It was a warning. She began listing expectations of the classroom as if reading a rap sheet of a lifetime criminal. Sit this way. Speak this way. Do not do this. Do not do that. The room grew smaller with every sentence.

Then she introduced the concept of “bad words.” Words we were never to say. She told us there would be zero tolerance for language that did not belong in her classroom. What counted as a bad word, however, was not left to interpretation. She turned to the board and began writing them out in chalk, one by one, with a precision that felt practiced. Fuck. Shit. Ass. Asshole. Bastard. Bitch. Damn. Piss. Dick. Cock. Motherfucker. Prick. Douchebag. Jackass. The list kept growing, long past the point of instruction and well into spectacle. Even sailors would have felt seen.

I sat there stunned. My house rarely swore. My father believed swearing disrespected the uniform, whatever the fuck that meant. Hearing those words written so boldly on a school chalkboard felt illicit and dangerous, like being handed contraband and told not to touch it.

When her imagination finally ran dry, she turned back to us and asked if anyone wanted to volunteer additional bad words she might have missed. She reminded us we were not supposed to say them, which meant no one moved. Fear had already done its work. Eventually, a few hands went up, tentative and shaking, offering words like they were confessions.

Then I raised my hand.

When she called on me, I volunteered “rat bastard.” Mrs. Blue wrote it on the board just as she had with the other words.

That was the first day of school I remember clearly.

Now, as an educator, I think back to what Ms. Blue taught me, even if she never meant to. She taught me how fear shuts down learning. She taught me how control masquerades as structure. She taught me that classrooms are laboratories, and what we model becomes the experiment. I did not learn fourth grade content that day. I learned how not to teach. And some lessons, once learned, never fucking leave.

Tag: school as laboratory