Grade Two became a year of steady growth and important lessons. Through hard work, I made significant progress in school. But I also learned that effort alone wasn't always enough to earn everyone's approval. I wasn't favored by someone I had expected to encourage me the most, and I even experienced being bullied.
But that wasn't the whole story. I also met a classmate who later introduced me to his family. To our surprise, we discovered that we were relatives. From then on, I often visited their home, where they welcomed me warmly and always made me feel like part of the family. Their kindness and generosity gave me a sense of belonging that I will always remember.
Another memorable part of Grade Two was the school garden. It introduced me to caring for plants and taught me that growth requires patience, care, and the right environment. Looking back, I realized that people need the same kind of nurturing to grow and thrive.
Here's my Grade Two journey.
Doing Well in School
In Grade Two, I was assigned to Section 3, this time in the morning session. Our classroom was in the same building as the year before, although it was located at the opposite end of the corridor. The surroundings were familiar, but I was no longer quite the same boy who had first walked into that building.
My teacher was Mrs. Fausto. I can still picture her in my mind: her eyeglasses resting neatly on her nose, her composed manner, and the quiet authority she carried without ever needing to raise her voice. By then, something within me had begun to change. The restless, easily distracted boy of Grade One was slowly growing into a student who enjoyed learning.
My memory had improved remarkably. I could recite our textbook about Dr. Jose Rizal almost word for word, from the first page to the last, without opening the book. Mathematics, which had once seemed confusing, also began to make sense. Addition and subtraction came easily, and during seatwork I often noticed classmates stealing quick glances at my paper before quietly copying my answers.
At first, I did not mind. There was a quiet satisfaction in knowing that my classmates trusted my work. But I was still, after all, a mischievous little boy. Every now and then, I would deliberately write an incorrect answer and leave it on my paper just long enough for a few classmates to copy it. Once they had finished, I would calmly erase the answer and replace it with the correct one. I never stayed around long enough to witness the consequences, though I can only imagine the puzzled looks when our papers were checked.
Looking back, I cannot help but smile, though the memory still brings a touch of embarrassment. It was an innocent prank by a child who had finally discovered that he could excel in school and, for a fleeting moment, enjoyed the small mischief that came with it. Fortunately, my sense of humor matured faster than my tricks.
A Sense of Favoritism
Despite my growing confidence and my sincere efforts in school, Mrs. Fausto never seemed to notice. There were no words of encouragement, no quiet acknowledgment, not even a small gesture to suggest that she saw how hard I was trying.
As the weeks passed, I began to feel increasingly invisible. Whether my perception was accurate or not, it seemed to me that some classmates naturally received more of her warmth and attention, while I remained quietly outside that circle.
One morning, she singled me out in front of the class. In a sharp voice, she called me dirty and disgusting, even. I froze. My face burned with embarrassment as I searched for the reason behind her words. Then I looked down and saw it: a dark stain of corn coffee had spread across the front of my shirt. I had accidentally spilled it during breakfast and, in the rush to get to school, never noticed.
It was the kind of mistake any seven-year-old could have made. Yet standing before my classmates, her words made it feel like far more than a simple accident. In that moment, I was no longer just a child with a stained shirt. I felt exposed, ashamed, and painfully small. I said nothing. I lowered my eyes, returned to my seat, and carried that quiet humiliation with me for the rest of the day.
Looking back now, I understand that teachers, like everyone else, have difficult days and have burdens their students cannot see. I cannot know what she was carrying that morning, nor whether she realized how deeply her words affected me. What I do know is that children rarely remember every lesson they are taught, but they often remember how the adults in their lives made them feel.
At seven years old, I did not have the confidence to defend myself or explain what had happened. I simply endured the moment, swallowed the hurt, and hoped that tomorrow would be kinder.
Facing My First Bully
Then there was Jose.
He was smaller than I was, thinner, and by any physical measure far less intimidating. Yet I feared him with a deep, stomach-tightening fear that I could neither understand then nor fully explain now.
Part of that fear may have come from what I perceived in the classroom. Whenever disagreements arose between us, it seemed that our teacher almost always took his side. Whether that impression was accurate or simply how it felt to a seven-year-old, it left me believing that I stood alone whenever we clashed.
One afternoon on the playground, the tension between us finally erupted. We traded punches. I cried, not quietly, not behind hidden tears, but with the uncontrollable sobs of a frightened child overwhelmed by fear and humiliation. I was so distressed that I wet my pants, and the embarrassment only made me cry harder.
My older brother, Artemio Jr., happened to be nearby with his own classmates. He saw everything. From across the schoolyard, he shouted, "Fight, you coward!" His words struck me almost as hard as the punches. Still crying, I swung back with desperate, clumsy blows that carried more fear than determination.
I can no longer remember how the fight ended. Time has erased the winner, if there ever was one. What remains is the feeling: my burning eyes, my damp clothes, my trembling hands, and the echo of my brother's voice ringing in my ears.
For many years, I thought that day marked a failure on my part, a test of boyhood, as though I had fallen short of some unspoken measure of what a boy was expected to be. Looking back now, I see something different. I was not a coward. I was simply a frightened seven-year-old, doing the best he could in a moment that felt far bigger than he was.
A Kin Among Classmates
Not everything about Grade Two was marked by embarrassment or disappointment. There was also Edgar.
Edgar Umbay was both my classmate and a relative, the son of Belinda Umbay, my father's niece. His family owned a stall in the public market, and their home stood behind a place we called Villa Tambis.
I visited them often. Each time I arrived, I was welcomed with genuine warmth. Edgar's parents would usher me straight into the kitchen and insist that I eat, offering whatever meal or snack they had prepared as though feeding me were the most natural thing in the world. Their generosity needed no special occasion. It was simply how they treated family.
In their home, I felt completely at ease. I was no longer the boy worried about disappointing a teacher or being embarrassed by small mistakes. I was simply a child among relatives, accepted without conditions and surrounded by kindness.
Only years later did I realize how much those visits meant to me. At a time when my confidence was easily shaken, Edgar's family gave me something I did not know I needed: a place where I felt valued simply because I belonged.
Looking back now, I have come to appreciate the quiet power of homes like theirs. They remind a child that even when one place leaves him feeling overlooked or misunderstood, there are always people who open their doors, set another plate at the table, and make him feel that he is exactly where he belongs.
Learning to Garden
After our morning classes ended, the afternoons were devoted to school gardening. One day, our teacher instructed each of us to bring fertilizer for the vegetable plots. I walked with Edgar to his home to collect dried horse manure. Their neighborhood had many horses, and if my memory serves me correctly, his family or a close relative owned one as well.
Carrying a small sack, I gathered what we needed without hesitation. To a seven-year-old child, it was simply another school assignment, no different from carrying books, sweeping the classroom, or completing any other task given by our teacher.
Together, Edgar and I planted onion bulbs in the soft, freshly turned soil. Day after day, I watched tiny green shoots push their way through the earth, growing slowly but steadily. I became fascinated by the process. I learned that plants needed more than just water and sunlight; they also needed healthy soil and proper nourishment. Even the dried horse manure we had collected so casually had an important purpose in helping them grow.
There was something deeply satisfying about placing something into the earth and patiently waiting for it to come alive. At the time, I could not have explained why it fascinated me so much, but the garden was quietly teaching me a lesson I would carry for the rest of my life: growth takes time. It requires patience, consistent care, and the right environment to flourish.
Looking back now, I realize that children are not so different from the plants we tended. Given encouragement, kindness, and the chance to grow, they can develop in remarkable ways. Sometimes, all they need is someone willing to care for the soil in them.
The Discovery of the Living Stones
Beside the school garden, we made one of the strangest discoveries of our childhood, perhaps of that entire school year. Half-buried in the soil were clusters of unusual crystalline stones unlike anything we had seen before. There were many of them, faintly shimmering under the afternoon sun as we dug them out and examined them. To our young eyes, they were beautiful, mysterious, and unlike anything ordinary.
We gathered around them the way children always do when they encounter something unexplainable, with excitement, curiosity, and a sense of wonder. Trying to describe what we had found, we gave them a name: the living stones. The name seemed perfectly fitting to us.
When one of the stones was cracked open and brought close to our hair, something remarkable seemed to happen. The strands would lift and move toward it, gently but noticeably, as though drawn by an invisible force. There was sometimes a faint tingling sensation, just enough to make us pull back for a moment, but never enough to overcome our curiosity.
Under the afternoon sun, we laughed and reacted with surprise as we repeated the experiment again and again, fascinated by something none of us could explain.
Even now, I have never encountered anything quite like those stones.
Were they naturally magnetic? Did they have some unusual property because of the minerals in the soil? Or were they simply one of those small wonders that seem to appear only in childhood, when the world still feels full of secrets waiting to be discovered?
I may never know the true explanation. But one thing remains certain: they were real to us. For a brief season in Grade Two, those mysterious stones belonged entirely to our little world, unquestioned, extraordinary, and unforgettable.
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