Turning memory into fiction

For the writing assignment this week, we did six five minute memory exercise, each line starting with "I remember" and then trying to write without judgement on that topic. Each time you got stuck, students were asked to just start over with "I remember" and invent if they wanted to. I did the exercise too, but it felt redundant because I've done this before, and my earliest memory is so boring (being stuck at the top of a crib), but I always like the ones about middle school, so that's the one I revised for this assignment. Students were asked to pick one of the six writing assignments from class and change the perspective from "I remember" either second or third person

Here's my piece:

Fifth grade.You are the new girl, arriving mid-year at San Jose Elementary School in Dunedin, Florida, home of the giant flying cockroaches and old people. You can already tell who the popular girls are by what they wear---designer jeans, Jordache, Gloria Vanderbilt, and how their hair is perfectly feathered and long, they also have Nike sneakers, something you long for but that are not possible when your mom makes you shop at a Payless. Back in Chicago, it didn't matter. You'd known everyone there since kindergarten, Phillip Knight, Carrie Pototnick and her younger sister Wendy, the girl who had to wear a white patch under her glasses because she had a lazy eye. You were not popular, but you were not unpopular. You were somewhere in the middle, not invisible, but not a stand out either. Not like poor Billy Hudson with his thatch of red hair and face sprinkled with freckles. 

 So, it's the first day. Why your mother let you leave the house wearing a gingham dress with lace at the collar an hem, a dress she made when you were in your Little House on the Prairie stage, why she thought it would be okay among the glittering world of day-glo sweat shirts that fall off the shoulder and skin tight jeans with horses on the butt pockets--why, mom, why?? It's beyond you. 

The morning goes okay, because you do not have to introduce yourself, but then you have to attend gym class. You've remembered your cheap sneakers and your socks, but not what they call "dress out" clothes. The gym teacher, Mrs. Hinkle, smiles at you with her cheerleader smile, only a slight wrinkle in the middle of her forehead, blows the red whistle around her neck and claps her hands together. "Jumping jacks." 

You do it. You cannot not do it. Everyone else is scissoring their arms and legs as the group stand sin an imperfect circle in the middle of a field of dead grass, jumping up and down with your braids (Laura Ingalls again) bouncing and your glasses sliding down your nose .You try very hard not to notice the crinkled expressions of Nancy Woodward and Suzanne Rodriguez in their cute little blue shorts with the white piping, but of course they are laughing at you. You would laugh at you too if you were them. It makes you hate your mother, your mother who you usually love, who you miss so much some nights that she lets you sleep with her green t-shirt under your pillow, a bit of Estee Lauder perfume sprayed on it so that it smells like her. What does she know? Nothing, you realize, hating the feel of your braids slapping against the back of your dress. 

Look up at the sky, with the moon a distant pale white orb, far away. Try to think of something, anything else besides the feel of the sweat sliding down your back, your nose. A drop lands on your lip, salty. The first taste of humiliation.