Dec. 28, 2002 - 20:59 PST

THE WONDERING JEW

School Routine

Finally it happened, the thing that took centuries in my young mind. I went to a school new to me, a rung up the ladder, a longed for thing. I started Junior High. It was enough in itself to make me delirious with grown up happy.

It was still warm in September so Mom sent me off to school with something like denim trousers, with a brand new thing - instead of a belt it had an elastic waist band. No belt to cinch up, no long stockings to continuously pull up. Gee, I thought I had it made.

For only too short a time. I was walking the halls to find out where the office was when two boys about my age walked up beside me and simultaneously grabbed my waist band and jerked my pants to the floor, and then the rascals ran. I am not sure if I got them pulled back before the red went down to my toes from my face. A twelve year old, awkward, shy, unsure boy, with his shanks blowing in the wind, also blowing in the wind was what they were attached to at each end. I guess by the time I finally found the office the red had bleached somewhat, but my embarrassment was still aglow.

It must have been a short time but it seemed like an eternity before I knew which rooms to go at each period of the day and then learn the names of my teachers in those rooms. To me having come up through elementary school where one would be all day in one room with one teacher except for recess and lunch in Elementary School that new system really confused me to the max.

Everything around me there in the new school rather overwhelmed me. Basically the curriculum was the same only more advanced than in elementary school.

Homework was the thing that was wholly new to me. The first place I began to have trouble was in Mathematics. The teacher would write the homework lessons on the blackboard to be copied before class was over. Even staying after class and sitting in a front seat the numbers were not clear to me. I guess that was the time someone should have tested my eyes, but eye exams weren't common after the first time in grade school.

I really didn't have much of a problem with scool books, my vision in that aspect was great. But there were other things. I missed an entire grade in elementary school due to suffering St. Vitus Dance. I was skipped into the next grade as the upper echelon thought I was so damn brilliant that I would easily catch up. And I did, all except in English and math. Actually I never did catch up. My English usage was great but I couldn't tell a predicate from Adam's off ox. So, I failed English because I couldn't parse a sentence and call off the parts of speech by the numbers. In math too much was missed in that year for me to even come close to keeping up with my class.

Train wreck in Junior High for me. Latin was a subject that most medical doctors learned then, much of the terminology was in Latin or Latinate rooted. But my dear lady Latin teacher did not like boys, none of us ever made a passing grade in it, that was all she wrote for my Latin in that half year.

For the most part Junior High was great fun and a challenge to meet. I still had my friends from elementary school, those who had not been taken back to the Farm by their parents because of lack of work in the city. I made new friends there. They had what today is called a sock hop on Friday afternoon in the gym, no shoes of course on a gym floor but for some reason it was called a, "Social." My introduction to associating with young ladies, heretofore the only girls I knew were cousins and we got along because we were family I guess.

In spite of the fact that I did poorly in some of my subjects you might say I went to High School on a Social Promotion (to keep me with my class) I had though spent a summer in Junior High Summer School to make the grades I had flunked.

I did learn much while there, a lot about getting along with others and accepting their way of life without getting upset about any of it. Junior High is where I learned for myself that the only real difference between people is that which exists between the good guys and the baddies. I began to see the same faults criticized in others that we Anglos had possibly more of than others. Those were lessons that have stayed with me all my life and I see no reason to think differently. I learned to work with my hands in Industrial Arts (Shop nowadays). Most of my classes took, and my understanding of the world broadened. The three years I spent there growing in spirit as well as knowledge was great.

Also the system became as comfortable to me as a pair of slippers at home but once it was a new School Routine . . . . . . . . .

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