It’s always a little awkward walking into class on the first day of school, wondering where you should sit, if any of your friends are in there, or if you even have friends. You know… the usual. But this year when I walked into fourth hour Choir, I literally didn’t recognize anyone.

As I looked around the classroom, I got an uneasy feeling. It could have been that I was a foot taller than everyone, and they continued to babble about eighth grade, but I just assumed my first-day-of-school nerves were tweaking me.

When we tested our vocal ranges, which I hadn’t done since freshman year, I found that I could sing lower than the majority of the boys and with half as many voice cracks. The circle of girls in the back row chattered about that really hot senior. Come on, hadn’t they seen him strut the hallways for a quartet of years?

In days to follow, I’d find a pile of boys wrestling with each other in the back of the class like a litter of rambunctious puppies. About two weeks into school, they were all marveling over one package of Taher cookies, breaking them into pieces for everyone to share.

The strangest incident was when a few of the tenors started calling me “Mom.” At first, I brushed it off, but as the “Mom” morphed to “Mama,” “Mommy,” “Mummification,” something had to be done. I asked the tenor next to me why everyone was treating me like I was older than they. With eyebrows cocked upward, he said, “Well, you’re the only non-freshman here.”

It finally dawned on me that I was placed in the wrong choir, but I’m getting used to the tenors turning around every time I start to sing their part. And who knows? I might even like the surprised looks on their faces, questioning how a woman could possibly sing that low.

So when class color day came around, I embraced my seniority. All foggy misunderstandings dissipated, and there I stood, the brazen scarlet-clothed senior amidst the forest of freshman green.