Posts Tagged “high school”

Solveig Pederson Zarubin
Ages 6, 8, and 15ish

Scene: me, a little tomboy-looking girl, with short brown hair which was long and blond fairly recently. Sitting in a first grade classroom, with a worksheet in front of me.

I already knew how to read, and I could read well before kindergarten; it seemed like I’d been able to read forever. Many others in the class either weren’t reading or were reading much more slowly than I was. The teacher had given us a worksheet to do, and was walking around watching us work.

I had already finished the assignment. I was curious what everyone else was doing — and how did they do it? Which parts were they still working on? Nosiness that I still have today! So with nothing else to do, I was looking around…

And heard my name — and then the teacher sternly saying, “Eyes on your own paper!”

I didn’t realize she was talking to me, or what she was talking about.

“Not me!” I thought. “I was already done!” How could I be cheating? I was just looking around to see how everyone else was doing.

I’m pretty sure I got in trouble for that, and one lesson I think I unconsciously got from this was: “Getting too far ahead of the group, being too smart, or otherwise standing out from the crowd — can be trouble!”

Later on in second or third grade, we would be assigned to read a story from our reading books. It always felt like the teacher gave a humongous amount of time to read a story that was only three or four pages. I could always finish it really quickly, but then had nothing to do. Or nothing to do without calling attention that I was done so abnormally early — I thought that if I started reading or doing something else it would be so obvious that I was done way earlier than everyone else.

I didn’t want to seem different or weird. I thought that everyone must notice that I was done and think I had cheated on the reading somehow, like my first grade teacher had assumed.

“She must have been skimming, or just skipping parts. She couldn’t have read it already!”

So I would page back a page or two when I was done -– carefully checking around me to make sure I matched the page everyone else was on. I could be a bit ahead, but not too much. Then I would re-read that page, and then look around and see if I needed to re-read it again, until more people were done. I’d see people triumphantly finishing and then being happy to be “done” — yet I had been done for a long time and felt like I had needed to wait for them.

In upper elementary and moving on to middle school, I realized that raising my hand every time I knew the answer to a question could also be dangerous. I was worried about what people would think: “she’s a know-it-all” “She’s a goody-goody teacher’s pet…”

And I didn’t really want to raise my hand for every single question, that would get annoying to everyone. And isn’t it better for the others to have to answer the questions too?

Even though I knew the answers to most or all of the questions, I would try to figure out how many times I could/should raise my hand without attracting too much attention. Every third question? Once or twice per class? Just wait for the teacher to call on me?

This always felt very unnatural but also much safer.. Eventually I was thinking so much about how to spread out my participation, that I wound up just not participating most of the time in class. Safer, but also quite mind-numbing as a constant practice.

In high school, the grade in several classes, including U.S. History, was based on class participation. The history teacher was also rather intimidating, making it even harder to respond in class, although he eventually became one of my favorite teachers. Because I really wanted to keep a good grade, and I was so used to not participating, I had to really consciously plan that I would raise my hand at least once or twice every class.

Even now, as an adult, sometimes I still need to work on “raising my hand” (especially in a large group) and being comfortable with achieving and showing my talents.

Having good role models at work, joining public speaking/leadership groups like Toastmasters, and increasing my self-confidence by trying new things and succeeding at them has really helped this.

I still have trouble speaking out and expressing myself, especially with new people, but I think I’ve gotten better. (One co-worker told me after I joined Toastmasters – “When I first met you, you were really shy and you really didn’t speak up too much. But something happened – You seem
like a *real person* now!”). Um…Thanks, I think!

I really admire kids I see now, who understand that it is okay to be smart and to let your abilities show, without being afraid of being accused of cheating or “showing off.” Kids who are confident in their abilities and who have been encouraged by their parents and teachers to develop them.

Emily Willingham
Middle and High School

When I was 13 years old, I went to boarding school. My parents, fed up with the failure of their liberal social experiment that involved sending their freakish, too-young, and too-weird oldest daughter to public school for eight years, had given up and opted for a posh boarding school that promised all the best in higher ed.

Public school had been a complete misery for me, starting with a friendless stretch in elementary school that involved daily taunting from the mean girls and continuing into middle school that seemed like a daily existential nightmare that would never let me out alive.

I literally was threatened every single day — every single day — with promises that the threatener was going to “kick my ass.” People called me on the phone at home to make this threat. People left me notes in my locker, whispered it to me in class, accosted me as I emerged from my oblivious father’s car. Girls tricked me with deliberate offers of friendship, only to run away giggling with their friends at what a gullible ass I was. How dare I even believe that they would want to befriend the likes of me?

I lived in complete, daily terror. Why they wanted to kick my ass was unclear. I was small (then). I was a year younger than everyone else, having started first grade at age five because I’d been reading since age three. I was unquestionably strange, reading things no one else would or could read, thinking about things that no one in that school was anywhere near thinking about. I was socially clueless and never could figure out how other children associated with each other. I guess I do know why they wanted to kick my ass. With all that going for me, I may as well have been walking around with a big red target on it.

It wasn’t that my parents didn’t know about the bullying. I was in one of those situations where defending myself invariably got ME in trouble, and my parents got the phone calls. My father went so far as to teach me to box. I guess he thought it would be best to leave me in this godawful, godforsaken public school in Waco, Texas, a middle school so hardened that the principal was compelled to come on the PA system the first day of school to remind students not to smoke in the hallways—and I was being left there to box my way out of it.

Straight from this terrifying milieu to a boarding school full of upper-class snobs? You might think that the latter was an improvement. It’s true that I didn’t have people kicking my ass every day. These better-educated, smarter, richer people simply had slightly more clever ways of messing with me. And it was worse in the end because I actually had to live with them. My daily existential hell of middle school had become a No Exit of an entrapped freshman year, surrounded by people who seemed hell-bent on making me miserable night and day. And even 27 years later, as I look back, the only real reason I can divine, the only trigger for this systematic, targeted behavior, is that they were just cruel people. As we learned from The Simpsons, sometimes, people (and elephants) are just assholes.

I emerged from this crucible of fear and emotional torture at age 14, no longer at boarding school, back at a public school in Waco, Texas. Once again. But it was a “better” public school (i.e., full of kids from the wealthy side of town).

And somehow, from pretty much the day I started, I walked across the threshold with a new attitude best summed up as, “Bring it on. I really don’t give a s*** what you think.” I don’t know where it came from. I don’t know how it coalesced for me at age 14. I don’t know why the onset was so sudden. I wished I’d been able to adopt it much earlier. And it was this attitude that left me alone at the dance during that first homecoming my tenth-grade year at my new school.

I knew almost no one. Homecoming followed soon after school started, and in a fit of…something…independence? self-assertion? hope? … I went, alone. I dressed myself in a nice two-piece outfit. I stood alone in the stands and watched the football game, I went to the dance and sat, alone, through the entire night as my peers, some of whom had been attending school together since kindergarten, danced the night away, locked in speechless, adolescent embrace. I never spoke a word to anyone the entire night.

I held up. I told myself I was happy, it was fine, I was just looking at things, an observer, OK to be on my own. And it was true. It’s how I’d always been happiest, sitting silently with my own thoughts, watching people who were so different from me they almost seemed like aliens, observing their behaviors, feeling more aware of everything around me than any of them.

So, I was happy.

Until I got into my parents’ car after the dance, and my mother — occasionally known for not being the button on the cap of discretion — asked me irritably, “Why did you even come to this dance? You’re all alone, and everyone else has a date.”

With those pointed words, she nailed any moxy I’d mustered up about the whole thing to a cold wall of reality. I crumpled. Inwardly.

Until I remembered that sitting there in those stands, alone, watching and observing and taking mental notes, was just about the most fun I’d had in a school environment in years. Until I remembered that I hadn’t myself made any of the decisions in my life that had dragged me through the mud and terror of daily bullying and torture. Until I recalled that attending this dance alone had been my very first salvo in asserting myself as Me, as an individual, not a fearful, terrorized creature creeping into school every day, hoping to go unnoticed. Until I started saying to myself, like a mantra, “Bring it on. I don’t give a s*** what you think.”

Another great high school story from Charles Ries. Note: contains quite a lot of in-context coarse language. -Editors

Charles Ries
High School

By the fall of my senior year I’d completed all the classes I needed to apply for college and decided to explore the electives that were offered. Growing more comfortable in my identity as a member of the counterculture, I signed up for a small engine class. Other than running track drills through the far west corridor, I had never walked down this hall where classes for future piston heads and factory workers were held.

I walked into shop class on the first day and took my position at the table that would be my workstation for the next three months. It would be here that I’d learn the inner workings of the finicky one cylinder engine — commonly called “the lawnmower.” Across from me was Michael Buss. I only knew Mike to say hello to. He didn’t play sports. He kept to himself. I didn’t share any other classes with him. He was one of the invisible people.

“Ries, what are you doing here? You lost? You don’t need this s*** to go to college,” he said.

“I thought I’d learn a little about how the small engine built America. I can’t tell a piston ring from a carburetor. I figure it’s time to learn. Besides I wanted to try something different. I’m tired of hanging around with honors students,” I said, unaware that I sounded like an arrogant jerk.

“If you want to try something different, why not take Home Ec? At least they got lots of chicks to help you make your brownie batter better,” he said. We both laughed at the simple logic of his observation and, after he’d pointed this out me, I too wondered why I hadn’t signed up for baking 101.

Mike never made another mention of why I was there. He took me at my word and took me for who I was and we started fixing lawnmower engines.

We each took our engines apart while keeping a careful inventory of the parts and where they fit, and otherwise making sure we’d be able to put the damn thing back together again. I was a blaze of efficiency in dismantling my engine, but when it came to putting it together again, I began to sputter. “Ries, what kind of a mess you got there, buddy,” Mike asked, in his usual monotone manner.

“Ya, I’m having some problems getting these piston rings back. How’d you do that? I broke the last four,” I said, raising my greased hands up in a sign of surrender.

“You’ve got problems a lot bigger than your piston rings. I don’t want to stick my nose in your business, but you’ll never get that thing started. It’s a f***ing mess. You’ve killed it,” he deadpanned. “I’ve had my eye on you, Ries. Waiting for the moment you’d pull the ignition cord and it’d pee a pint of Pennzoil all over that button-down baby blue shirt of yours. You should stick to theater and politics, and let real men fix your engines,” he said.

“To hell with real men, I need help getting this thing together. For Christ sakes, I’m going to flunk an engine class. You’re right, I should have taken Home Ec.” We laughed and Mike did what he could to bring life back to my engine. When class was over we went our separate ways until following day when our worlds would meet again.

———-

The lunch hour was over and I’d stopped in the john to take a leak when a hardhead from the west corridor, Steve Dunbar, walked in with two of his pet apes, Jim Heinz and Mike Madison. The threesome smelled like cigarettes, beer, and car grease. They were incapable of being any place quietly. They walked loud, talked loud, punching each other, the bathroom door or anything else within reach of their fists. It didn’t matter the place or time of day, it was always time to hit something.

I was preparing to do my business as they entered the men’s bathroom when Dunbar came up behind me and slugged me in a little too friendly manner on the shoulder, “Hey, scrambled eggs for brains. This isn’t your f***ing pee-can. It’s time for you to go.”

At that moment, Buss walked in and while not seeing the initial blow, make a quick assessment, deciding that Dunbar wasn’t standing behind me to give me a shoulder rub and said, “F*** you, Dunbar.”

“F*** you. F*** me. F*** him,” Dunbar replied, turning and pounding my shoulder a second time.
Realizing that drastic action was required, I began to urinate and turned a 360-degree circle applying a well-placed bead of pee across the kneecaps of Dunbar and his two henchmen. Having completed my triple axle-spinning leap, I returned to my frontal pissing position and finished my business and Buss was beaming. He was in awe. He didn’t say a word as I zipped up my fly and turned to face Dunbar who was groping for the word, but could only produce a non-syllabic gasp of air.

“Oh…ffff…dam…my pants. You peed on my pants! Are you nuts?! You f***ing peed on my pants. You little balls for brains. I’ll kill you. My pants! You peed on my pants!”

I wasn’t clever enough to come up with such a disarming tactic as innovative as the 360-Degree Pee. I give full credit to Tom Wilson, one of my fellow Black Birds, who, one night after an eighth grade basketball game, demonstrated it to nine teammates who were unfortunate enough to be standing behind him. But it was only then, three years later, with a jerk breathing fire down my neck, that his brilliant move came back to me. I power-peed to save my life.

“You lay a hand on my friend and I will shove your head up your butt, Dunbar. We might never find you again, you got such a big butt,” Buss said. While Mike was a solid guy, he was no match for Dunbar. What made him scary was that he didn’t care if he lost. A much-talked-about fistfight the year before left him on the ground and beaten, but he never shed a tear and never asked for mercy. Buss was one of those mild-mannered guys who went crazy when they lost their temper. He transcended and became a swinging pain-free zone. You might win, but you would suffer and you would not get the pleasure of his asking for mercy.

The moment of reflective silence laid at the feet of these two mountain rams. Dunbar did not want to butt heads with Buss and motioned his two apes to the door snorting one final, “F*** you, Buss, good thing that putz has you to do his fighting for him,” and he left.

Mike raised his eyebrows and said, “Woo, I’m scared. In fact, I’m so scared I think I’ll take a ten-foot piss,” and proceeded to unzip, take aim, and hit the urinal with an arc of triumph. We were both laughing as we left the boys’ room, giving high fives and saying we’d see each other in small engines class tomorrow.

I didn’t get into fights, so “protection” was pretty much wasted on me, but once the word got out that messing with Ries meant you messed with Buss, a fight never came close to me. I didn’t see Mike much after our class was over and when we saw each other in the hall, he was as silent and polite as ever, just a nod of the head and a, “How’s it going, Ries? Make any good brownies lately?”

E. Hansen
High School

Two students died in car accidents during my sophomore and junior years of high school.

The first one, Stewart, was a jock. He was a football team star, from an affluent family, and wasn’t bad to look at, either. My best friend had a crush on him.

One day he drove his dad’s convertible to school, and then at lunch he and three friends went joyriding. While doing fishtails on a dirt road Stewart rolled the car, killing himself and putting two others in the hospital.

Before the day was out there were counselors visiting the classrooms, and a message over the intercom saying that overwrought students could be excused from class. We had a memorial assembly in the gym, and a poem was dedicated to Stewart during that year’s graduation ceremony. A full yearbook page was devoted to him, and a memorial plaque still sits in the rose bed by the school library.

The next casualty was Alex, and he was not a jock. He dressed in black, hung out in the “pit,” smoking with the “stoners.” I respected him greatly. He was in my art classes, and produced work that would have sold in galleries.

One night while Alex was coming home from his part-time job, a drunk driver hit his car and killed him.

Alex’s death was spread by word of mouth. No one was excused from class due to grief. His yearbook picture had a one-line caption that read “Alex **** (deceased).” The principal actively hushed any memorial efforts. One of Alex’s friends was allowed to read a poem on the air in the cafeteria “radio room,” but it was only heard by a few people.

There is no plaque for Alex; no one was allowed to speak about him at graduation. No one thought to use his death to start a “no drinking and driving” campaign.

Teachers teach that we should not be prejudiced towards others, but I saw first-hand just how prejudiced my school’s administrators were: Let’s honor the jock who killed himself being an idiot, and hide the death of the stoner killed by a drunk driver.

by Lea Hernandez
age 15 at the time.

“You turd!” I said.

The class was quiet because Ms. Hunt, least popular teacher in the school, had just walked in, and that was right when the word plopped out of my mouth and into the silence. Spoink.

The class gasped like they’d never heard that word before. They snorted and smoked and got higher than the top tier of the Cotton Bowl, used the f-word and the n-word as punctuation.

They also called Ms. Hunt a word that rhymed with “bunt” but started with a “c.”

Ms. Hunt snapped her look on me so fast I thought I could hear the sound of a whip crack. The detention for foul language came right after. Ms. Hunt didn’t care that the reason why I called the boy in front of me a turd was because I came into English class from lunch and everyone already knew I’d wrecked a driver’s ed car before lunch.

I wrecked the car because Turd and the other two students in the back seat had been bagging on my driving, teasing me until I got so nervous I bit the curb right at a storm drain and pinched the tire off the wheel. Instead of just the driver’s ed teacher and Turd and the two other students in the car knowing, everybody knew. It was worse than going to a lunch of strawberry pie and stewed tomatoes after watching the driver’s ed films of tattered flesh being pulled from mangled cars.

I got teased a lot in school because I was an easy, maladjusted target. I used big words, I’d say things that made no damn sense, and say things meant to be funny or conversational that ended up making silences like the one when Ms. Hunt walked in. I didn’t know how to own something as spectacular as wrecking a car. Instead, I went first-grade and said a first-grade word.

Ms. Hunt was by-the-book and a detention for saying “turd” was somewhere in the book; listening to me explain why I said it was not. Ms. Hunt wasn’t a bad English teacher, she was a good teacher who appeared to have no sense of humor and no heart.

The car wreck happened during football season, and was forgotten before Thanksgiving. Nine days before winter break, before Ms. Hunt came in for class, Turd stood up with an empty can and said, “Let’s collect money to buy Ms. Hunt a tube of Preparation H for Christmas because she’s such a pain in the ass!”

We laughed because it was a funny idea and it was true. Ms. Hunt was a pain in the ass. She deserved it.

Turd was daring, and would sometimes pass the can while Ms. Hunt stepped out of the room. We were about to die from glee by the day before our last day of school before break.

On the last day of English class before Christmas, Turd showed us the present. A nice big box, wrapped nicely and with a bow. Ms. Hunt came in, and the shiny faces and kindergarten-folded hands made her look at us suspiciously as she walked to her desk. We probably never looked that excited to see her before. Turd gave her the present.

“We collected money and got you something.”

“Oh,” Ms. Hunt said. It was the shortest word and sentence she’d say all year.

Ms. Hunt had a look on her face I’d never seen on her face before. I suddenly felt incredibly awful. The look on her face was like the one on my face when someone called my name and I thought this time it might be because I would be included, but knew I wouldn’t be.

The gift was accepted. The Moment was here and the reality was that giving Ms. Hunt a tube of Preparation H wasn’t funny. The idea was funny when the present was a can of change. Now it was a box being opened by a someone who could be a grown-up me, who was about to experience a nuclear hurt.

The card was read.

The bow came off. The ribbon. The paper.

Ms. Hunt reached into the box.

Ms. Hunt pulled a bundle of tissue from the box.

I wanted so much to roll back ten days and tell Turd he was the pain in the ass.

I hated myself for not thinking of I’d feel if I was Ms. Hunt. I was such a … turd.

The tissue fell away, and there was a mushroom-shaped cannister. Nested inside of it were two more. A set of not-Preparation-H-oh-my-god-I’m-glad-I’m-alive set of mushroom-shaped cannisters. Ms. Hunt arranged them in a row on her desk. Her eyes were red and shiny.

Of course, the cannisters had been bought days ago, but they might as well have been a tube of Preparation H until the tissue came off. I can’t say how this affected anyone else. All I know is the change was as fast as the moment between me cutting a pumpkin stem with a knife and cutting my thumb to the bone.

I had turned a corner, a razor-thin corner, and knew the difference between being an angry, thoughtless person and being someone who thought about how what I did and said affected other people. I was redeemed. I didn’t deserve it, but I was grateful for it.

Even if, especially because, I learned it from a Turd.

by Charles Ries
High School

Another high school exception for this frank struggle with the popularity pecking order. -Shan & Jen

“Hi, Chuck. Congratulations on being elected Ice Carnival King. It’s about time a regular human being got elected king. I am so sick of the Kens and Barbies around here winning everything. You’d think looks were some kind of ultimate blessing like ethics, honesty, sincerity, or intelligence. Why should we reward people for what they look like? What matters is what people are like on the inside,” Clara Weidemeyer said between classes. Clara was the subject of unrelenting taunts by our classmates. Her appearance became of thing of legend. A local garage band even wrote a song in her honor:

You can kiss me anytime

Clara

You’re so ugly you make me blind

Clara

You’ve convinced me dumb is fine

Clara

You’re all right

Yes, you’re all right

The song continued on through six more stanzas of rhyming humiliations. Things weren’t good for Clara Weidemeyer. She was ugly. The kind of ugly that made people who didn’t know her assume she was retarded. Short and stocky, Clara had horrible acne and frizzed-out hair that bloomed on humid days into a sizable Afro—God hadn’t given her much to work with.  No redeeming physical attribute like great legs, a wonderful voice, or beautiful eyes. She did the best she could with the considerable intelligence she was given. She excelled in every subject. She participated in student government. She had a social conscience, but despite her heroic efforts to fit in and be accepted, she was as fragile as any girl would be with a face and body no one wanted to look at.

Knowing Clara led me to the uncharitable conclusion that a person may be better off dumb and good looking than smart and ugly. The proof of this theory was all around me.

“I told everyone I could think of to vote for you. You’re one of us. You’re a regular person,” she told me one day in the hall between classes.

“Well, thanks, Clara. I’m just as surprised as anyone. I mean, I’m not a jock and I’m not a brain and I’m not one of the beautiful people. So I just figured, why even think about it? But, I think I’m pretty happy about being selected. I mean, who wouldn’t be happy about it? Right?” I said, looking furtively over her shoulder to make sure no one had spotted us.  Fifteen seconds in the hall talking with Clara Weidemeyer could have serious consequences for one’s social standing. I was trained to be more compassionate than most, but I wasn’t blind. I wanted to slip away from Clara before I was branded Quasimodo’s boyfriend. It was one thing to talk with her at student government meetings or exchange views in social studies class, but it was the kiss of death to hang with her in the hall.

“I would be honored to have a dance with you tomorrow night at the Carnival,” Clara said.

“Wow. Well, thanks. I’ll have to see how this whole thing plays out. I’ve never been a king before. It must come with certain responsibilities. So my time might be a little tight. I’m sure I’ll have to do a few turns with Molly Murphy. But maybe you could help me with my math, which I am still flunking.”

I wasn’t sure if Clara would take the bone I’d tossed her and forget about the dance. God, I can’t believe I’m being such a coward, I thought. But I can’t do it. I can’t dance with her in public. Hell, I can barely talk with her in public. It’s one thing for her to help me with my math, but dance? I can’t do it. I had told a white lie. If Clara was the epitome of ugly, Molly Murphy was the pure embodiment of beauty. Perfect skin, large round breasts, full round brown eyes, tall and thin, with hair that glistened and lips like two party invitations. Clara’s ugliness and intelligence amazed me as much as Molly’s beauty and vacuousness. They both left me speechless, but for very different reasons.

“Chuck, anyone in this school would be honored to help you. You’re such a nice person. You’ve never made fun of me. I know what I look like. I know what they say. There isn’t too much I can do about it. I mean, look at me. I’m not going to be picked for the lead in the school play unless the character is an eighty-year old woman. But you never join in. You respect people, and that’s why you deserve to be our King.”

“Hey, Clara, maybe I’m just a good pretender,” I laughed nervously while admiring her ability to just accept who she was. “I might secretly be a detestable person. In fact, I often think I am. Look, neither one of us are going to win any beauty contests, but it’s like you said—there are a lot of beautiful people who don’t have one original thought in their heads. They wouldn’t know civil rights from civil engineering. Hey, in case you didn’t notice, there’re a lot more ordinary looking people in the world than there are beauty queens. So as Ice Carnival King, I do hereby declare that every day shall be ‘Take an Ordinary Person to Lunch’ day.”

“There. You see what I mean, that’s exactly why we voted for you. You’re just so darn cute and nice to people,” Clara beamed at me as I headed off down the hall to safer ground. She had mistake me for someone else and it made me nervous.

As I walked away, I patted myself on the back for jumping into the same ordinary boat as Clara and thereby raising all ugly people to a cultural ideal. I had developed a forger’s instincts and could quickly detect and become what people wanted me to be. I went wherever social acceptance blew me. But something deeper was happening. I was growing curious about people like Clara Weidemeyer. She was hard on the eyes, but her mind was unique. I was becoming a student of slackers, eccentrics, and intellectuals—kids who didn’t fit in, but seemed to be uniquely themselves. I was tired of oatmeal for breakfast. I wanted more chocolate éclairs.

________________________________

Friday night was the Ice Carnival. It was a simple affair held in the gym, with a band and, of course the highlight of the evening, the crowning of royalty. I was invited forward with my queen. Principal Paul Hersch draped red velvet capes over each of us and placed crowns on our heads. After the coronation, we were invited to do a spotlight dance before our subjects—just Queen Molly and King Charles. I had my arms around the most beautiful girl in the world. I smelled the strawberry scent of her shampoo and brushed up against her young firm breasts. When it happened; a predatory hard-on sprang from out of nowhere. I wasn’t driving the bus any more.

Just what I need! I thought as I pulled my cape more tightly around me and distanced my hips from my buxom queen while still holding her tight. It was a rather gymnastic move, but hard-on or not, I wasn’t going to release my grip on paradise.

I was in love with Molly Murphy. Every guy in school wanted her, but I had her. Me, the people’s choice. We danced badly, rocking back and forth. Given my surprise visitor, we leaned toward each other creating a kind of dancing pyramid. I’d prepared for this moment by getting an ID bracelet—the marker by which all men would know Molly was my woman. As we rotated in the glow of three hundred worshipful eyes, I whispered, “Molly, will you go steady with me?” Her eyes opened wide. I wasn’t sure whether she was overcome with emotion at finally winning my heart or in shock that a dork like me would say these words to her. I wanted to retract my offer. I wanted to return to the practice sessions I’d been having in my head, each one ending with Molly saying, “Yes, Chuck, I will be your girlfriend forever and a day!” But her reply was not the one I’d scripted.

“Joel Stegameyer just asked me yesterday to go steady with him. Thanks for asking. You’re such a nice guy.” She replied as if she were thanking me for loaning her my stapler rather then offering her my heart. It was no big deal to her. She was a pro at going steady. Hell, she had a scorecard just to keep track of all the offers. I was no match for the quarterback of the football team.

I hadn’t realized how fleeting regal privilege could be. When the song ended, Queen Molly quickly deserted me and floated like a touchdown pass into the outstretched arms of Joel Stegameyer. Wearing my cape and crown, I walked to the punch table. My heart had been ripped out of my chest, leaving a cavernous hole. Of course, it didn’t take much in those days—young love came and went so quickly and so painfully. At the punch table I reached up for one of the two royal goblets that were set atop a fake ice pedestal for the King and Queen to drink from after their coronation dance, and ladled myself a cupful.

“Chuck, I want to dance with you a bunch. Come on, let’s boogie down!” I heard a raspy voice from behind me say. I froze. I knew who it was. “Hello there, King Charles,” she sang to get my attention. “Would you like to dance with one of your subjects?” I heard the voice speak to me again.
How bad could it get? First being denied by Molly Murphy and now being sought by Clara Weidemeyer. Heaven and hell were next-door neighbors tonight. My balls tightened up under me. The remnant of the stiffy I’d gotten in anticipation of claiming the fair young maiden Molly was now limp and racing after my balls in a hasty retreat. “Oh, its you, Clara. What was that you said…you want some punch?”

“Close. I said, ‘I’d like to dance with you a bunch.’”

I had no choice. It was the right thing do. I did the pity dance. I danced like the cornered, equal opportunity ratfink I was. I heard the occasional “woof woof woof” or the slightly too loud “I think I’m going to throw up” as we circled the dance floor.

“So, how’s it being king for a day?” Clara asked.

I didn’t want to tell her that I thought it sucked and that this kind of honor was better bestowed on beautiful people who don’t need a single original idea in their head to be happy. I couldn’t tell her the truth. She thought my achievement was what it must feel like to be popular. How could I step on her dream?  The truth was, I wanted acceptance just as much as she did.

by Pat Gallant
10th Grade

We have made an exception to our usual elementary and middle school time frames for this lovely high school tale. -Shan & Jen

I had made it through first period at my new school without incident.  But there was still a whole day ahead of me and I knew all too well that a new student is a likely target.

I slinked up the stairs, heading for my next class, staying as close to the wall and as invisible as possible, as I had done for so many years, at my former school.  Frankly speaking, I was not popular.  I was the youngest in my grade, the smallest, and perhaps not so much shy as intimidated by the popular girls in my old school. My hair stood out in a bunch of corkscrew curls. The same curls which adults ogled over, fellow classmates teased me about. I was painfully skinny but finally, at fifteen years old, beginning to “develop.”  But as my best friend pointed out, she and I were already pigeon-holed, having been classified for too many years in the unpopular group.

My mother said many times over the years that she regretted her decision to put me ahead one year. My birthday falls in the summer, so I could have been the oldest in the class behind, or the youngest in the class ahead. My mother opted for one year ahead, remembering her school days and figuring I would like one year less school better than one year more. I agreed with her on that and despite my reassurances that she meant well and did the right thing, she felt badly about it.

A “good” school day was one in which the unpopular group was largely ignored. A bad school day was one where we were picked on mercilessly.

During breaks, I hid in the ladies’ room rather than have to walk past the cliques of taunting girls. After lunch, when all the kids went to the rec room, I was back in the ladies’ room. It was too daunting a task to have to face all of them at once; worse if they taunted me in front of the boys.  It was just too embarrassing.

****

It was the first day of 10th grade. All my friends had changed schools for one reason or another. I was now a posse of one in a school I hated. The workload was nearly unbearable. The pressure to succeed ever-present. And the cliquey girls had teasing down to a science. Worse still, this was the year we were required to put a live frog “to sleep,” for dissection. No excuses. No doctors’ notes. No parents’ notes.  This was mandated in order to stay in this very prestigious New York City school.

So, this posse of one sat in the first class. The teacher was nasty. Really nasty. Sarcastic, tough, and ranting that next semester, frog dissection was a must and that no one could get out of it.

It seemed counter-intuitive to ask students to kill a frog.  I glanced over and watched as the frogs hopped gleefully in their tanks. I looked out the window at the sunny day, the smell of grass filtering through the open window. I knew I wasn’t going to kill one of the frogs. They deserved this beautiful day, too.

At the end of the day when I got home, I told my mother I wouldn’t go back to that school. All my friends had left. The teacher was mean. My arms were stiff and back aching from carrying the eight heavy textbooks that held the five-plus hours of homework that awaited me. She saw how distraught I was and began phoning schools the next day, to find a new one for me.

We opted for the school my best friend had changed to. But I wasn’t relieved when I got word that I was accepted. In fact, I was terrified. I hated school. Or at least I thought I did. Another place to be teased.

****

So, there I was, halfway up the stairwell of the new school.  A tall, handsome, upperclassman came lumbering down the stairs. He stopped a few steps above me.

“Hi,” he said.

I looked behind me. No one was there. In fact, we were the only two people on the stairwell. He couldn’t possibly be talking to me.

“You’re new here, aren’t you?”

I nodded, pushing myself further into the wall, waiting for the taunts to begin. He introduced himself and then added, “Would you like to go for coffee after school?”

I couldn’t believe my ears. I was almost afraid to say yes. Was this a set-up? Was he joking?

He continued, “We can meet at the lockers at three o’clock.”

A small voice responded, “Sure.” It was mine.

“See ya later,” he said, and he was off.

And in that moment, I had an epiphany. He had no idea I was unpopular. He had no idea I was shy or scared. In fact, he knew nothing about me. It was a defining moment. I moved away from the wall, straightened up, and walked up the stairs a new person.

I could be those popular girls. I knew how to do it. I’m a good study. I had watched from the bleachers for so long. At last, maybe it was my turn. But I wouldn’t be mean. Not to anyone. I promised myself that.

I couldn’t wait for lunch to call my mother and tell her why I would be late coming home, that I had a date with an upperclassman after school. It took her about one second to know she had made the right decision in allowing me to change schools.

The date wasn’t a setup after all. In fact, we had a great time. And many more after that. So, I began my performance as a “cool,” popular girl; a performance worthy of an Academy Award.  I bought new, more “grown-up” clothes, changed hair styles, and bought the very trendy yet delicate Papagallo shoes. I forced myself to walk with my head high, to speak up in — and out — of class, even if I was shaking inside, and even if I wasn’t taking a popular viewpoint.

Eventually, I found my own voice and I didn’t have to “act” the part anymore. Heck, I had become cool for real! And popular! A cheerleader. Secretary of the whole school. I had plenty of dates. But I never forgot to extend a hand to the “unpopular” kids and to stick up for them, even if that was the unpopular position to take — even if that meant risking losing friends. I stuck to my guns and to my surprise, was respected for it. Most important was the change I felt inside. I didn’t hang onto people’s opinions of me anymore. I did what I thought was right and stood by what I believed in. I began to like me.

Another big surprise was that I loved to study and loved school. It wasn’t school I had hated after all; it was the other school that I hated. I loved this school. It was a good fit. The B’s, C’s, and D’s of my old school were now all B’s and A’s, using the same text books. The work wasn’t easier; it was because I was happy and motivated. The pressure and workload was decidedly less but it, too, was a pretty hefty load. But I loved the teachers and environment as well, and that made all the difference.

****

In senior year, there was still one stone left unturned. Could I cut it in my old school or would I regress to my former self? Would I once again slink around the halls, afraid of my own shadow, scared to talk, no dates, intimidated by those girls? But I was a woman now, I reminded myself, albeit a young one. I had straightened my hair and it blew willingly in the wind. I dressed the part, talked the talk — but could I walk the walk? I had to find out.

My same best friend and I both got permission from our mothers to cut class and visit our old school.  We arrived during lunch hour; the hour that had intimidated us the most when we were students there.  The hour where everyone congregated in the rec room. Nonplussed on the outside, hearts in our throats on the inside, we sauntered into the rec room. We walked center stage and propped ourselves up on the ping-pong table, something I wouldn’t have done for a million dollars some three short years earlier.

And then we were noticed. There were whispers. We overheard, “Is that really them? Oh, my God, they’re beautiful. Can you believe it?”

We still got glares from some of the clique-girls but they were glares of jealousy because we were surrounded — by the guys and many of the popular girls. We were invited to classes. Asked out for dates. We even became life-long friends with some. They, too, had grown-up.

****

Now, some 40-plus years later, there is still the little girl inside with the corkscrew curls. And I like her.  She has her place. She keeps me centered. She is the holder of memories.  But there is also the woman, the wife, the writer, and the mother. And if I ever feel intimated by someone, I smile at the little girl and remind her of that day on the stairwell when she became a woman — and I walk with my head held high, speak out, and don’t allow anyone to intimidate me. But when I return home, I give a secret wink and a High-Five in the mirror — to both of us.