for the kids who kill themselves because of braces

Osborne 31 Bud Osborne for the kids who kill themselves because of braces in elementary school the social studies teacher assigned seats according to test scores & the kids with the most correct answers were rewarded with seats closest to the teachers' desk the competition was intense for those first few seats & it was always between the same white middleclass kids who wore the only braces & owned the only cashmere sweaters & though all of us learned we were given many opportunities to change our individual positions in the classroom in reality there were no spectacular improvements nor unexpected failures so I was prevented from sitting beside my best friend libby lutch because test results & guilt & fear kept me in the first dozen or so seats while libby sat somewhere in the deep end distant from the teacher's desk & attention with the other poor white & mexican kids whose seats were often empty while they were stooped-over in the fields picking tomatoes for those of us nearest the teacher's desk who were discussing early slavery in the united states thirty years later cuba tells me she was always in the lowgrade sections of classrooms in every elementary school she attended & referred to kids who looked like me as "the kids with braces" envying the prominent symbols of parental love & understanding so deeply that she came to hate her strong even teeth 32 the minnesota review & I thought the braces were in my mouth to keep me quiet about the other disfiguring teeth eating me up inside ...