I Always Hated Partner Projects

This morning, I cleaned out my closet to create space, and I discovered a plastic bin filled with childhood memories. Being sentimental, I removed the bin and began searching through it. The bin mostly contained artwork from my elementary school years, and the majority of them were scribbles or fingerpaintings on bright construction paper. In particular, a crayon drawing of my entire 3rd grade class drew my attention. I have to say that I must have been quite the artist back in the day because I actually recognized some of my classmates. It helped that I had tried to spell their names next to each stick figure, even if I misspelled them horribly. It just gave me that warm and fuzzy feeling inside, being able to cherish memories like this. I was about to move onto some more crafts when something in that drawing caught my eye. That’s when I remembered everything.

When I was young, I went to this really small, Lutheran school. The school offered kindergarten through fifth grade, and the larger classes would typically have ten to twelve students in them. That’s usually because two grades were often combined in one class. Kindergarten and 1st grade were stand alone classes. However, 2nd and 3rd grade were lumped together and the same for 4th and 5th grade which was taught by the principal. Also, this school was very open-minded. They were the type of school to let children dream and be imaginative. Let’s say you wanted to grow up and become a power ranger. That was alright! Let’s say, you wanted to become an astronaut and traverse the galaxy. That’s outstanding! Or even, let’s say that you wanted to grow up and raise a ranch of unicorns. That was the perfect dream! I can’t recall having a specific dream like that. It’s not like I wasn’t an imaginative kid – not at all. Something else just consumed my memories.

There was this kid name Greg that I never felt comfortable around. We just never connected for whatever reason, and it always bothered me because I was a social butterfly. Greg appeared during the beginning of my 3rd grade year with this other kid named Bobby. Now, Bobby was this sickly looking kid who was ashen and had dark circles under his eyes like a raccoon. I got along with Bobby pretty well, as did everyone else in my class, but like I said, I never felt comfortable around his best friend, Greg. Here’s the reason why. Greg was not real.

From what I could gather, Greg was Bobby’s imaginary friend. Instead of crushing Bobby’s imagination, the school just played along with it. That’s how Greg became one of my classmates. Greg was given his own desk, his own assignments, and he even had to take tests like the rest of us. I only say this because one time I remember him getting a higher grade on a spelling test than I did. I had no idea who filled out the tests for him because Greg certainly didn’t. The test just laid on his desk with a sharp pencil resting beside it, waiting to be used. It must have been my teacher. I don’t understand why she would have gone to all the trouble though.

Every day, I’d sit at my desk in the back of the room and watch Bobby and Greg walk in. Bobby would be carrying two backpacks and two lunchboxes, and the weight always seemed to be too much for him to bear. Greg must have been a pretty lousy friend if he made Bobby carry everything for him. It was the same for assignments too. Bobby would always help Greg pack all of his homework away, and he’d be there to turn in Greg’s assignments as well. This made me think that Bobby did twice the homework, and it was really strange when Greg would excel on assignments and Bobby’s homework would be lackluster by comparison.

Another thing that I remember is that everyone hated Bobby and Greg when it came to kickball. We always had an odd number, and it wouldn’t be fair if another team had an extra player. After picking teams, Bobby and Greg would always be the last two. That’s only because Bobby was the worst kickball player ever, and nobody wanted Greg near their team because he couldn’t do anything. Bobby would always forfeit his position for Greg, so someone always got stuck with Greg on their team. If Greg was on your team, it was a lost cause from the get-go. By teacher’s rules, everyone on the team had to participate, and so Greg always struck out when it was his turn to kick. That’s right. Every time we played kickball, we’d be pitching to an empty home plate and expecting something to happen. Nothing spectacular ever did. The strange part is that we never questioned this. We were so young that we never thought anything of it.

Sometime around October, we entered our big project unit which would involve the world’s various environments. I don’t remember the exact details about the project, but I do know that it involved a partner. As my teacher read off the pairs, my heart sunk as I was paired off with Greg. I just remember sitting there in surprise and glancing over to the lonely desk with a project packet sitting on top. I was really confused. How was I supposed to do a project with Greg? My teacher’s words rang through my head. After she read off the list of partners, she wanted us to go meet with our partners to select an environment to research. Instead of going over to the empty desk, I retreated to my teacher and asked what I was supposed to do. She simply told me to focus on my part of the project, and Greg would do his part. I really had no idea what to make of that. It either meant that my teacher would do half of the project for me, or I would be forced to do the entire thing myself. Needless to say every time we were told to meet with our enviro. partners, I just stayed at my seat and stared over at Greg’s desk. Sometimes, I caught my teacher staring at me as if she expected me to actually go over to Greg and discuss our project. I just could never understand how I was supposed to talk to someone that wasn’t real.

My mother eventually found out about the project, and I had waited until the last minute to start on it. I tried to explain the situation to her, but she didn’t believe me, especially since my partner, Greg, was listed as being apart of my class. She took all of my stuff away and grounded me until I finished the project.

I didn’t like that. I became so frustrated that I crumpled up the instructions and threw it across my room. I went into a childlike rage and began calling the project, my teacher, and Greg stupid. That’s where everything went horribly wrong. Before I could get another insult out, I was snatched off my bed and was dangling six feet in the air. There was a chilly, vice-like grip around my throat and cutting off my airway. My small legs were kicking uselessly beneath me as I turned blue in the face. Everything around me seemed to stop, and black dots were appearing in my vision. I couldn’t tell if it’s because I almost passed out or what, but I remember seeing two icy dots amongst all the black ones. Before those dots could consume my vision, I was harshly dropped to the ground. I laid on the floor of my room for what felt like hours, paralyzed with fear and waiting for something to happen, but nothing did. There was no evidence that I had been attacked or had levitated inches from my ceiling. There wasn’t even a mark around my throat which felt extremely sore afterward.

I pulled all of the tricks in the book, trying my best to stay home from school, yet I had no choice in the matter. When I entered class late the next day, all eyes were on me, and I couldn’t help but imagine something sinister sitting at that empty desk for every day afterward. I couldn’t explain what happened to me. Nobody was willing to listen to me either. So, it was no surprise that I cracked one evening and had a complete and utter emotional breakdown at the dinner table, begging my parents to let me transfer to a public school. They agreed, but I had to finish up the semester at my current school, or I wouldn’t get credit for it.

It was tortuous going to school every day. I was terrified. I almost didn’t take notice when Bobby stopped coming to school entirely. My teacher insisted that he would be back soon, yet I never saw Bobby again. I always assumed that he had some medical issues that prevented him from attending. In a way, Bobby’s absence created a slight problem in my classroom. Who would help Greg every day? It turned into a class job. For one week, one student was tasked with helping Greg, and then, Greg would go home with them that day. Each week, the task would alternate to someone else. It was really just a sick leadership exercise that the staff thought up. Before the job could alternate to me, the semester had finished, and I had never been more thankful in my entire life. I transferred to my local public school after that.

So, when I was searching through that plastic bin, I also found some of my old yearbooks. Greg actually had his own entry. The photo was the same background as all the other photos, and below the blank picture simply read Greg. He had no last name. When I discovered the yearbook, it gave me an idea. I would try my best to contact my old classmates and ask them about Greg. Surely, they would remember something this crazy. I sat at my computer and punched each of their names into search engines and social media – nothing. Absolutely nothing came up. I tried all night to track at least one of them down, but I had no leads. To some extent, it was like they never existed. It was the middle of the night when I decided to put this all behind me. I packed all the artwork and yearbooks back into the bin and gave the memories a safer location in the attic.

What gets me is that I chose the wrong time to hash all of this up. Both of my kids are in the imaginary friend stage of their childhood, and it’s really starting to unnerve me.