Day one of a scarlet education

Scene 1: Car

I sat in the back of my parents’ car, chewing on my blue rope bracelet that my father gave to me when I was younger. I was ten years old and I was starting school. My parents said that when they were fillys, children always started school around age five or six. Looking up, I saw my father and mother exchange serious looks.

My father said, “Son, when you are in school, don´t always believe what they say. I know that we have talked about this before, but they will teach you horrible things.” Because I had heard it many times before, I started drifting off, thinking about what the kids at school where going to be like, would they be mean to me? When I started listening to my dad again, he was finishing his speech about the Crazy Crooked Canadians mate’.

“You are having to grow up fast, which wouldn’t have happened before the war,” My mother muttered, shaking her head sadly. My parents always went on about the war and it annoyed me. “When they try to teach you to not to love your parents, remember that we love you more than anything. They will teach human technology things, but they sneak propaganda into it.”

My mom reached back and touched my hoof; her hoof was wet for some reason.

“You won’t have to endure it that long,” my dad added. My mother glared at him with wide eyes.

Ignoring whatever was going on, I interrupted their exchange. “But why is the government doing this? If they wanted us as slaves, they could just build robots. They have magical sciences! The C.C.C could just have us build a couple thousand robots.”

My father, shaking his head, muttered, “They think what they are doing is good…”

We were just pulling up to the school. My parents went from looking grim to forcefully happy. The school had a large green lawn, though it was turned red with all the ponies dressed in their in C.C.C. uniform. I had never seen so many people before, except in films.

Part of the school was being rebuilt. My parents told me it was because the Campaign had bombed part of it in the war. Laborers, skinny in their red uniforms, were removing the leftover slate and replacing the roof with rusty sheets of corrugated tin.

While I was getting out of the car, my mom talked to me in a sing-song voice, “Now have a good day at school now. Obey the teachers and make friends. It was a brilliant idea to turn the old Ponyville school into an education school!” A teacher walked by smiling, obviously pleased with my mom’s behavior, shouldering her saddlebag. They were acting like they typically did when around C.C.C. officials.

“Moooom!” I groaned, even though it was an act it still embarrassed me, another kid might think that she was actually a crazy parent.

“John! Don’t forget to put on your nametag and get your room number card. Your father went through a lot of trouble getting them this morning,” she continued, causing me to look around and make sure none of my peers heard that.

My dad reached across the passenger seat, gripping my hoof silently. He let go and got ready to go again. My mom, almost breaking down into sobs, waved goodbye as I blended into the sea of red.

Carrying only my pencil bag and the note, I felt unprepared in many different ways. When I got out, I saw my peers and teachers walking around. They were all silent and tense, observing their surroundings with wide eyes.

I took the note in from my saddle bag that my mom had just given me. It read, ‘Room Fifteen’. Room fifteen? How was I going to find that?

As I walked towards a building another pony walked toward me, calmly strolling. “Yo! Do you need any help?” He had yellow short hair and black and blue ovular glasses. He had a small smile on his face which, added with the fact he was not nervous, unlike the other kids, caused him to stand out in the crowd.

He looked over my shoulder at my card and said, “Follow me, I know where it is.” He led me past the bathroom and into a classroom.

I finally catching a glance at his name tag which he had been hidden by his arm, I puzzled over his name tag, reading ‘L-U-C-I-U-S’.  Having my friend might help me ignore the Canadian communist campaign. He laughed at the way I said his name, interrupting my thoughts. “It is pronounced Lue-she-as. It is the Old-Fashion way of spelling my name. Nice to meet you Jo-hn, John! I am in your class too, lucky, lucky,” he said, talking coolly. Leading me down the hall and stopping at a door that read ‘room 15’, we walked in.

There were plenty other fillies in the class and all of them were boys, some were shouting hello to each other or punching other on the side of their LEG playfully. Others were sitting at their desks twiddling their tapping on the table. Waving hello, another kid walked up to me talking, “Hey! Nice to meet you. I’m Larry.”

“Ignore him! He just wants you to join his gang,” a small kid sitting in a chair politely, called to me.

“Ah, shut up Billy!” Larry walked away from me and Billy, greeting Lucius.

The teacher walked in, causing everyone to run to their seats. The fillies who ran, silently combed their hair with their dirty hooves to show they were behaving once they arrived.

“OK everyone, take a seat. I am Mrs. Coleman, nice to meet you. This is your first day at PV educational school, and we hope you enjoy. This will be your homeroom, a place where you go to start off your day. Let us learn about your fellow peers let us go in a circle and say our names.” Her voice was soft and gentle and she had long light brown hair. Wearing a regular uniform with a black coat overtop, she did not seem evil as my parents described.

“For our first lesson, I will tell you the rules,” Mrs. Coleman pronounced, letting the whole class hear. She wrote this on the black board:

• No talking in classes unless given permission

• Do not touch other students or teachers

• Do whatever is said over the speaker

• Do not throw things

• Speak quietly

• Always listen

• Do not undo what the teachers do, for example some disciplines

• Do not do what your parents told you, unless it is a basic order (will be described in the 3rd period)

“Class, to the tune of ‘Mary had a Little Lamb’, we have to sing the rules. Now, No tal-king in cla-as un-les gi-ven per-mis-sion…” Mrs. Coleman started, all of us singing like dying goats.  My parents taught me my letters already, like most other fillies. The fillies who didn’t know what the alphabet was had no clue what was going on, they were the orphaned. My mom and dad told me that most educated fillies under the age of six to knew the alphabet back in the past and then they would talk about how this would never happened before the war, when I was four.  Then after that we sung terribly, we learned the alphabet and learned how to spell our names. Some kids cheated and looked at their name tags that we received and just copied it onto their paper.

Mrs. Coleman started talking about the discipline for not obeying the rules. “If you break one of the rules that day your name tag will be marked yellow. You miss lunch and we will deduct points from your grade,” Mrs. Coleman said, with a smile, scaring the wits out of me.  My mom always said you should never discipline a child by not giving him food, what’s going on?

“If you break another rule, you will get a red name tag, then miss an hour after school, and we will inform your parents.”

“Wow that is haa-rrsh!”A tall skinny kid in the back exclaimed, yelling exactly what I was thinking. Looking at him, I saw it was Larry Diaz. Taking a yellow marker out of her pocket, Mrs. Coleman walked over to Larry Diaz, grabbing his arm roughly, she striped his name tag yellow.

Lucius called out to the teacher. “Mrs. Coleman, why are you marking him? He was just stating something?” Lucius had not seen what she had wrote on the board for he was looking outside. As Lucius exclaimed this, she turned around. She walked over to Lucius and marked him too.

“Because this is your first day,” she said, a small, sly smile crossed her lips and then quickly disappear. Mrs. Coleman was starting to scare me, “I need to educate my students.”