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The El Tulle Boys & Girls Club
There is a group of students, ranging from 13 to 18, that attend the Boys & Girls Club here in Edinburg. They are a fascinating bunch. They lounge around the Club, sitting on dusty sofas that they insist on striking the dirt out of, or play pool on a billiards table that is marked with white chalk outlines from their hands. The Club is a “positive place for kids,” where they can learn and grow as individuals. But really, this is where most of them come to make up community service hours issued by the court.
The El Tulle Boys & Girls Club is made up of students with children, or truancy charges, or even a felony or two. And their interests and conversations are all things that normal teenagers would have. One day John and Alyssa are together, and the next day-with just as much caprice-John is with Ace, or the Rubys-two girls that follow each other like plague on rats-sit in the corner and criticize everyone with the malice that only high school girls can muster. Then there is Ramon, who runs around, tackling people, or biting them, dancing his version of the Truffle Shuffle from The Goonies. And Beatrice, who professed how she enjoys skipping school with groups of students-twenty to thirty strong-to place bets on one another in a Fight Club like brawl that they record on cell phones as they run from the police on the streets of Edinburg.
They come in all shapes and sizes, with home lives and backgrounds that range from heartbreaking to the atypical two-point-five-kids-and-a-dog. They are only a few years younger than us, but they are our future. They may play dumb, but they know more about the sensitive topics that we fail to educate them on than we think. Their questions and the things they say are so shocking sometimes, they make you blush.
The Club is a microcosm of what High School is like. Their personalities and social hierarchies that are built, is a synopsis of what their lives are like in the classroom, or in the hallways. A lot of them pull on your heartstrings, like Beatrice who is flippant about having had a baby at fourteen, but reassures that it is “okay, because I turned fifteen a week later.” Some of them are funny, like Ace who looks like Olive from Popeye in human form, with the personality of a tomboy that loves to “school” the guys in pool.
Some of their reactions to college, or anything that is remotely academic, drew nothing but blank faces with the thought of, “I can’t believe I have to talk about this again,” running through their head. But on the flipside, there is also a small minority of motivated, hardworking ones that really pull from the group.
It is clear that, although they may carry the scarlet J (for juvie) on their lapels, they are good kids. They face the same things anyone who went to high school face. They are going through their first loves, or their first parties, or their first sticky fumblings in backseats of cars. You try to give them guidance when you can, but you know that they will probably ignore you because, “What can this guy know?”
Our schools down in the Valley, hold a breed of students that are entirely different than others. They have possibility, even if they are rough around the edges. The kids that attend the Boys and
Girls Club here in Edinburg, seem like a ragtag team but there is hope because you can see how they closely resemble you. They go to the same school that you went to, or they live in the same neighborhood. They make you think about how you survived high school, and your heart goes out to them, because you know how hard it was going through all those trivial things that seemed so important then.
There is a group of students, ranging from 13 to 18, that attend the Boys & Girls Club here in Edinburg. They are a fascinating bunch. They lounge around the Club, sitting on dusty sofas that they insist on striking the dirt out of, or play pool on a billiards table that is marked with white chalk outlines from their hands. The Club is a “positive place for kids,” where they can learn and grow as individuals. But really, this is where most of them come to make up community service hours issued by the court.
The El Tulle Boys & Girls Club is made up of students with children, or truancy charges, or even a felony or two. And their interests and conversations are all things that normal teenagers would have. One day John and Alyssa are together, and the next day-with just as much caprice-John is with Ace, or the Rubys-two girls that follow each other like plague on rats-sit in the corner and criticize everyone with the malice that only high school girls can muster. Then there is Ramon, who runs around, tackling people, or biting them, dancing his version of the Truffle Shuffle from The Goonies. And Beatrice, who professed how she enjoys skipping school with groups of students-twenty to thirty strong-to place bets on one another in a Fight Club like brawl that they record on cell phones as they run from the police on the streets of Edinburg.
They come in all shapes and sizes, with home lives and backgrounds that range from heartbreaking to the atypical two-point-five-kids-and-a-dog. They are only a few years younger than us, but they are our future. They may play dumb, but they know more about the sensitive topics that we fail to educate them on than we think. Their questions and the things they say are so shocking sometimes, they make you blush.
The Club is a microcosm of what High School is like. Their personalities and social hierarchies that are built, is a synopsis of what their lives are like in the classroom, or in the hallways. A lot of them pull on your heartstrings, like Beatrice who is flippant about having had a baby at fourteen, but reassures that it is “okay, because I turned fifteen a week later.” Some of them are funny, like Ace who looks like Olive from Popeye in human form, with the personality of a tomboy that loves to “school” the guys in pool.
Some of their reactions to college, or anything that is remotely academic, drew nothing but blank faces with the thought of, “I can’t believe I have to talk about this again,” running through their head. But on the flipside, there is also a small minority of motivated, hardworking ones that really pull from the group.
It is clear that, although they may carry the scarlet J (for juvie) on their lapels, they are good kids. They face the same things anyone who went to high school face. They are going through their first loves, or their first parties, or their first sticky fumblings in backseats of cars. You try to give them guidance when you can, but you know that they will probably ignore you because, “What can this guy know?”
Our schools down in the Valley, hold a breed of students that are entirely different than others. They have possibility, even if they are rough around the edges. The kids that attend the Boys and
Girls Club here in Edinburg, seem like a ragtag team but there is hope because you can see how they closely resemble you. They go to the same school that you went to, or they live in the same neighborhood. They make you think about how you survived high school, and your heart goes out to them, because you know how hard it was going through all those trivial things that seemed so important then.