Blogging My Autobiography - Chapter 13

Junior High was such a jumble, I thought I would wrap up these years with a little gumbo of memories.

Paddling in Junior High, otherwise known as corporal punishment was a common way of getting our attention. In my youth, spanking, whipping with a belt and paddling with a variety of instruments was an acceptable way of disciplining a child. Today, that activity is limited to consenting adults in a certain fringe element of society. In 7th grade we had two noted paddlers in our school, Mr. Simmons, the gym teacher and Mrs. Anderson aka Yardstick Annie, the math teacher. Mrs. Anderson’s tool of choice was the yardstick, hence the name. These were the real thing, not the little flimsy things you see at the local hardware. 1/8“ hard pine across your hand, shoulders or butt. Though I never saw it myself, it was said that she broke them regularly. Oddly enough, she was partially responsible for me marrying Blondie but that is another story. I was never the recipient. Mr. Simmons was different, he had a paddle made out of hardwood that had holes drilled in it so that it would raise bigger welts. The benefit of gym was that he could contact bare flesh. I received one paddling because I didn’t much care for gym. It changed my mind immediately. He called the paddle the Persuader. It was good at it’s job. In truth, I had no issue with the paddling. I have no acrimony towards either of these teachers. They were just teachers who relied on force instead of more effective methods.

Bullies and how to deal with them was always an issue for me. Being so large, I was naturally challenged my any number of boys at that age. Generally, I was shy, awkward and not very forceful. However in 9th grade that began to change. There was one kid in my gym class that was supposedly a tough guy. He was what we called a greaser, with his hair combed back in a pompadour. Me, I was a ”beta“ we wore button down shirts and combed our hair more like the Beatles. This kid decided the my friends and I were prime targets and harassed us all the time, especially in gym. Much like Fargas in ”A Christmas Story.“ We had an intramural wrestling tournament that year and everyone had to participate. I lost in the first round and so went into the loser bracket. He went in to the winners side. We each won the rest of our matches and were paired in the final match of the day. I could see him licking his chops. What he didn’t know was that I found I liked wrestling and was probably far stronger than he was. We went at it, each getting a couple of points. I scored a takedown and got him on his back in what’s called a cradle. I rolled him up on his shoulders with his knees touching his nose and leaned on him hard. ”You’re breaking my back,“ he whined. ”Then stay away from me and my friends,“ I breathed back. ”I will break your back if you don’t“ That got a grunt of acquiescence and I released him. Sometimes you have to bloody their noses to get them to stop.

When I was in the 8th grade, English style and swinging London were becoming the rage. My mother, being English, was caught up in the fad and bought me a pair of yellow plaid slacks for school. They were banana yellow with a black plaid pattern woven in. I thought I was the height of style until I went to school. Here I was, walking down the hall like John Travolta thinking that all the girls would look at my hip hugger yellow slacks. I failed to notice the whispers and stares completely. In fact I wore them several times until one day I took them out of my closet put them on and looked in the mirror. OH, MY, GOSH! I didn’t have the sleek muscular legs I thought, I had legs that looked like overripe Chiquita Bananas. Face flaming, thinking of the times I had worn them and the odd looks I had gotten, I hung them back in the closet and never wore them again.

My first crush was named Suzanne. She was tall, had long legs and a curvaceous form, mature for her age, blonde of course. My taste in women has never really changed, has it? I would call her from work at the dentist office, where I was often alone and make small talk like, ”Do you like hairy, muscular legs?“ It makes me cringe a bit to think about it. Amazingly she was nice to me and would actually talk. We had some nice talks, in particular about the theater, movies and music. My dad was working at the Queen during junior high and I got to go to the movies every Tuesday. Always sat 4 rows from the back on the left aisle with a cherry Coke and popcorn. So I was up on the movies and could make conversation around that and music. I am grateful to her for listening to a silly boy and making me feel a little more like a man.

As an aside, the cherry Coke was a real one. Real Coca Cola with real cherry flavoring, made to my taste. I know, I made them myself. The popcorn was covered with all the butter I wanted but not too much salt. Halcyon days, halcyon days.

I sang in the school choir in 9th grade. It was actually cool, because one of the coolest guys in school sang in the choir and he actually had his own band! He had a beautiful baritone and generally sang bass with me. My voice changed in 7th grade, so I could hit the low notes. My teacher would praise me for being able to do that, which also made me feel good. Even the cool guy liked that I could go low. We sang all over and we were actually good enough to sing on TV. KUED public TV and we sang live. We went up to the University and sang on a Sunday evening. We sang the Battle Hymn of the Republic, Mormon Tabernacle Choir arrangement. My mother sang on the Emmy Award winning recording with the Philadelphia Philharmonic, Eugene Ormandy conducting. We sang our hearts out with the cool guy singing the baritone solo ”In the Beauty of the Lilies“ and then the sopranos blew it, they went flat on the final note. We heard the tape and everyone hurt for the sopranos. Our teacher didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. We went to class the next day and practiced just like any other day. He saw our expressions and knew that was punishment enough.

So ends junior high. In the 7th grade, I was being paddled and having farting contests with my friends (7 in a row, it was a record). By the 9th grade, I had given up banana pants and had my first crush. I learned to deal with bullies and how to talk to girls. We were growing up and gaining sophistication. Soon we would be sophomores in the big school, get our drivers licenses and take giant steps towards becoming an adult. We thought we knew it all and were excited to test that. Junior High is humbling to look back on, we had enough faith in the future to ignore zits, growing pains and yes, banana pants to look forward to life.