Memories of junior high school: Those were the days, “We thought they’d never end…” in Daydreaming on the Porch

July 26, 2022, 1:32 a.m.
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Public

I can still recall, with the help of my journal, an experience from about 15 years ago at work which set off a cascade of memories about my school days.

I was at a local middle school, at a rescheduled career-day presentation that was actually social studies night for parents coming to pick up report cards. I had been asked to talk about my job and how it impacts students. The only problem was that I was stuck in a healh sciences classroom at the end of a long hall, and not too many parents and students found their way there.

I sat writing journal entries on some scrap paper, thilnking about how many eons ago I was a student in New Orleans public schools. The school where I found myself that evening reminded me of my junior high school where I spent part of 7th and all of 8th and 9th grades.

The school was brand new when we moved in somewhere during my 7th grade year. I think it was 1963. I often felt very isolated and stuck for interminable hours each day in a vast, impersonal facility, with endlessly long cinder-block-walled hallways lined with rows of lockers, each with a Master combination lock. I am sure you remember fumbling with those contraptions between classes.

I can recall those times now — the clanging bell to change classes, taking books out of my locker and slamming the door shut, and walking to English, history or science class through a packed hallway full of chattering, babbling students letting off pent-up energy before their next period of confinement within four walls, presided over by teachers of various levels of competence and commitment to the profession.

It was not one of the finest and most enjoyable chapters of my young life. I was never one for teeming crowds, students or otherwise. I was very tall and gangly — 6 ft. 1 in. — and thin. Although I liked to play basketball, I had an aversion to organized sports, yet I had to endure a period of time (punishment for something apparently) on the junior varsity team, where I warmed the bench during games. Everyone just assumed because of my height that I played basketball on the school team. I hated that. I was terrible at organized team sports. But my father “encouraged” me to go out for them.

Then there were the awkward and nerve-wracking school dances in the cafeteria which I attended on a couple of occasions, both times feeling very out-of-place and foolish. Peer pressure can exert such a powerful influence when you are that age.

I don’t think I was alone in believing that junior high was a very awkward and even scary stage of early adolescence. I was such a serious student, and everything had to be just right: homework done on time, tests thoroughly studied for to the point of overkill, attention paid in class. I don’t remember having a lot of fun during those years. However, I was considered a model student by my teachers, one of whom let me grade quizzes in her class and another, the most feared teacher in 7th grade, taking very kindly to me since I was such a well-behaved youngster, eagerly listening to everything she said. It wasn’t brown-nosing by any means. I was just extremely conscientious and worried about everything, and I tried to please my teachers and parents, and by virtue of that, myself. I guess I was just brought up that way.

One thing about those junior high years was that the music on the radio was truly great. One after another, the hits of 1964 and 1965 just kept coming, and I would also buy 45 rpm records to play on my cheap record player. Look at the list of songs in the link below: The Beatles, Beach Boys, Roy Orbison, The Drifters, The Supremes, Ray Charles, The Dave Clark Five, The Animals, Gerry and the Pacemakers — the list goes on and on. I like many of those songs as much or more than I did back then. I think we forget just how much fun the music was in the early Sixties. It was happy music. I loved it, though I didn’t have the Top 40 radio station on all the time. I needed lots of quiet time.

So basically, I didn’t socialize much as a young adolescent. It seems like, then as now, I was a bit of a homebody. By age 13, I had a budding library in a bookshelf atop my desk that was crammed with titles I’d likely never read. I spent countless hours working on my stamp collection, and by the time I was in high school I was getting articles printed in nationally circulated stamp collecting magazines (it was more formally referred to as philately, and President Franklin Roosevelt was a notable collector). I always felt good about that because actually no one I knew collected stamps, and it was considered a bit nerdy, but I got lost in scenes from countries all over the world. It was fascinating to me, and I learned quite a lot. Also, I think it took my mind off the anxieties of thinking about getting up the next morning, walking three blocks to the school bus stop, and entering that huge, crowded, bell-buzzer-ringing chaos that engulfed and imprisoned me for six hours every day in that brand new two-story junior high building.

It was also when I was in 8th grade that I started my neighborhood lawn mowing business and ended up saving a fair amount of money for college. How many weekends in the tropical heat of New Orleans summers did I labor at those sweaty, exhausting lawn-mowing jobs? But again, I never missed a job and was highly conscientious, endearing me to my loyal customers, one of whom I greatly admired and particularly enjoyed talking to. In fact it was always much easier for me when I was a teenager talking to older persons compared to my peers.

There were incidents I will never forget such as being taunted by a bully in 8th grade. It was the first and only time in my grade school career that I had been bullied. It was one of those truly low point in my grade school years.

It didn’t last long, but there was this kid from “the other side of the tracks” who decided he resented and disliked me for some reason. I was tall, skinny and gangly but not nerdy looking by any means. Quite the opposite. He would call me disparaging names and say I was “so stupid.” I couldn’t believe it or understand it.

One afternoon during P.E., he and I and about a half dozen others were playing basketball in the gym. Finally, I couldn’t take his taunting any longer and began lashing out at him with my fists, only the second time in my life that I had been in a “fight.” I was and am a very peaceable, non-violent person.

He never bothered me again, although I was hopelessly out-maneuvered, and he was embarrassed in front of the others that such a tall, and in his view, wimpy guy, would be so aggrieved as to flail his arms around furiously, hopelessly trying to land a punch as he danced around me. He thought it was cool to be a professional troublemaker. None of the other kids thought it was funny, and they felt bad for me. I was not an unpopular student. He humiliated himself that day. Because of that incident so long ago, I have a lot of empathy for kids I read about today who are bullied. It can have devastating and lifelong consequences.

By 9th grade I was ready for high school. I was older and more mature, although I was always much more mature than my chronological age. I did have a very good grounding in grammar and English compositiion skills in both 7th and 8th grades, and this was invaluable in preparing me for my later writing career and encouraging my love of writing. It was also something that came naturally to me, but I am so fortunate also to have had good English teachers.

When we got report cards at the end of that year, I felt a chapter in my life had ended and awaited with expectation and anxiety over the summer, my entrance into the hallowed halls of high school.

Top hits of 1964

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_Year-End_Hot_100_singles_of_1964

Dave Clark Five - “Because”