On the morning of December 12, I walked into my office at the MacArthur School for Prodigious Children. I love my job and love my students, but oftentimes I find myself at the end of my rope when disciplining some of the boys. On that particular morning, my secretary Mrs. Barri had given me a note just as I walked in that a parent was already on the phone for me. Usually I like to have a few minutes to myself to wake up in the morning, but I knew this couldn’t wait. I got on the line as soon as I sat down. It was Mrs. Riley. Her son, Peter, was a Special education Student at the school, but he was the most optimistic and determined boy I knew. So I was all the more surprised when Mrs. Riley said she was enrolling Peter in another school effective immediately. I said why and if there was anything I could do to make her and her son feel more comfortable at my school, but she said it was beyond my control. So I asked her for her reason for moving Peter, and she told me her son was being bullied by the PE kids. She said she didn’t know how long this had been going on for exactly but Peter had come home the day before covered in blood and with a black eye, and once his parents saw him they immediately starting pressing him for answers. He said it was nothing at first but eventually he told them when they didn’t drop it. The PE kids had bullied him in the locker room. They had called him names and hid his clothes at the bottom of the trash while he was showering. The day before, one of the boys started punching him in the face once he stepped out of the shower. I asked why didn’t he say anything before, but his mother said he didn’t want to rat out any of his friends. I apologized and said that I will deal with the boys immediately. Mrs. Riley said that I should’ve had a better hand on them and she would be contacting the school board. Once PE period came I had the gym coach sit them in a classroom. They immediately went silent when I walked in. And I told them what his mother had said, that the boy they tormented was not coming back. I yelled at them for about 10 minutes. I don’t remember exactly what I said because I was just yelling the words as they came to be. I was furious. I expect better of my students. MacArthur students are expected better of. We pride ourselves on excellence and compassion, and we try to preach those values to our students. Clearly we did not do enough. I asked them if they knew better and if they were ashamed. I certainly was. I was furious at them for torturing a special needs student like that. But I was mostly furious at myself for letting it happen.

I choose to use “Varsity” for two reasons. 1) it sounds like I write. I really related to the narrator in the story because it sounded just like me (no I would not torment a kid like that, I’m not saying I AM the narrator). Maybe it wasn’t the best choice for a project where I had to change the voice of the narrator, but I think I managed well. 2) I understood what was happening. Some of these stories and poems made no sense or were really vague, so I decided to choose a story where I understood perfectly what was happening so I could accurately recreate it from a different perspective. And this was pretty much the only one that checked that box completely. Since I had to write the story in a different voice than what is basically my own, I had to fight my natural instincts a little. I decided to imitate my dad. A lot of times he comes home from work and tells my mom funny and interesting stories from the office, so I tried to act like he was telling the story to my mom. I didn’t copy his form exactly, I changed some things. For example, he uses quotes sometimes, whereas I say “he said (not exact quote but the general idea)”. So I added a little bit of myself in there. I added in the voice of mine that tells my friends funny stories and anecdotes. And sometimes I misremember things, so I added that in the story too. Some of the quotes are intentionally misquoted. Sometimes I forget exactly what was said and just say the general idea. That’s in the story too. It doesn’t line up exactly with what is said in the original. And some details are left out because I felt that the mother would not tell a principal some of the things that actually happened, assuming she even knew. So no the story’s details don’t perfectly match, but that is intended because I believe that is how things would actually play out in reality. I think I changed the voice quite well. Instead of my writing voice, I used mine and my dad’s verbally-retelling-a-story voice, which, again, is different. It’s mostly first person peripheral, although we do have a part to play in the stories, but I wouldn’t classify that as central. I’ve learned that the voice is very important. I always knew it was, and lots of times when I’m reading a story I imagine how I would write it (it has a much different feel to it, oftentimes more laid back). But when I imagine that it’s never with a story that uses my voice already, and I never put pen to paper and rewrite it. Now I have, and it REALLY changes the feel of things. You could copy the same story but add a different voice and I’m pretty sure 99% of people would like it if they found the right voice, even if the plot is not their kind of story.