The entire class, all 30 of us, were squabbling and calling out to the teacher. She had inadvertently let loose the news that one person in the class had scored 100% in the final school test, the results from which went forward to what we all referred to as 'Big School'. We were all eight and nine years old - it was not a decorous hubbub. The teacher had to raise her voice in order to hush everyone.
When she said my name there was a hot staring silence in the room. And I have to say, I loved that feeling.
When we all took what seemed to be the terrifiying step and turned up on our first days at middle school, there were hundreds of children, some of them as old as 13 who seemed enormous.
And other clever children.
From other schools.
But we all worked (or were made to), and another order emerged, and the order only emerged because it was part of the structure imposed by the school in order for them to judge performance, but even inside that structure, there were areas where I considered myself to be the best.
Then there was another step - to High School were there were a thousand pupils and we shrimpish thirteen year olds were towered over by post-adolescent 18 year olds who drove cars and smoked legally in the school grounds.
And there were other clever children.
From other schools.
Now each of these steps are exactly the kinds of moments in life that people point and start talking about fish, ponds, and their relative sizes.
Big fish, small pond, little fish, big pond...
And at each stage within the boundaries of the schools, that was the pond. It was scarily large, but you could see the edge, even if it was a long way away.
Each time that a step was taken from one pond to another, a question was asked that each of us answered in our own way, and the result of that answer was manifest in the way we grew up in those spaces.
What you gonna do about it, huh?
Many of us don't see the edges any more. There might not be an edge.
But still.
What you gonna do about it?
