The First Day of Fifth Grade

It happened to be Colin's first day in fifth grade. Before the class began, there was a lot of horsing around, but there were also a lot of conversations about whether Magic Johnson had AIDS or just HIV and whether someone falling in a pool of blood from a cut of his would get the disease. These jolts of sobriety in the midst of frank goofiness are a ten-year-old's specialty. Each one comes as a fresh, hard surprise, like finding a razor blade in a candy apple. One day, colin and I had been discussing horses or something, and out of the blue he said, "What do you think is better, to dump garbage in the ocean, to dump it on land, or to burn it?" Another time, he asked me if I planned to have children. I had just spent an evening with him and his friend Japeth, during which they put every small, movable object in the house into Japeth's slingshot and fire it at me, so I told him I wanted children but that I hoped they would be all girls, and he said, "Will you have an abortion if you find out you have a boy?"

The paragraphs leading up to this one were essentially mild and tamed. They convey a conscious young boy well aware of complexities in life that people do not typically assume children recognize, much less ponder. Yet the reader does not fully grasp just how cognizant Colin and his friends are until Orlean presents Colin’s most crude conversations and notions by casually paralleling blissful innocence with bitter adult concerns.  The shock value escalates in a manner that makes this scene all encompassing of the nature of children and reinforces her articulation of their mental process, “The collision of his mind, of what he understands, what he hears, what he figures out, what popular culture pours into him, what he knows, what he pretends to know, and what he imagines, makes an interesting mess. The mess often has the form of what he will probably think like when he is a grown man, but the content of what he is like as a little boy.”  She begins by relaying conversations overheard at the first day of fifth grade about Magic Johnson’s HIV, the distinction between HIV and AIDS, and possible means of contracting the disease. The subject matter and how informed these children are about it calls the reader’s attention enough to directly think about how precocious these children are.  Then, within the paragraph itself, Orlean provides another parallel to childhood innocence with writing in the same manner a ten-year-old would speak, “One day, Colin and I had been discussing horses or dogs or something” The next topic addressed by Colin is successful means of depositing waste; not exactly shocking as it is surprising and impressive, yet it still maintains the reader’s awe at this child. The real punch is when Colin nonchalantly asks, “Will you have an abortion if you find out you have a boy?” Orlean primes the reader with rainbows and sunshine before abruptly depicting a ten-year-old child asking about abortion if she does not conceive her preferred sex. This paragraph, particularly the last sentence, is in itself a “jolt of sobriety in the midst of rank goofiness” and “like finding a razor blade in a candy apple”; Her writing of the profile so far emulates the thought process that she has observed in Colin and his friends. Not only is this style entertaining and suspenseful, it exposes deep, complex details of this child’s mind and personality. Ultimately, it makes the reader grow fond of Colin and feel as though they’ve befriended a child they have never and will never meet, leaving a nostalgic feeling when culminating their friendship with Colin.