Rocket: The Lost Years, Part 1

High School. Bleh. Whenever I think about at my alma mater, San Juan High School, I get sick to my stomach.

The facility was a first class dump. The main campus buildings, seemingly constructed around the time of the Pilgrims and held together with scotch tape and paper mache, had all the aesthetic curb appeal and charm of a low rent boarding house built over a landfill. Over crumbling stucco, the exterior walls were painted a putrid pink, while inside, the asbestos-laden classrooms were always too warm, too rank, or both. The school’s only redeeming feature was…oh wait; there wasn’t one.

 

But the building itself wasn’t the issue. It was the four years at that building that mattered, four years that were bad from the outset. Because it was closer, after eighth grade I got routed to San Juan while almost everybody else I knew ended up at rival Bella Vista. In effect, some arbitrary school district demarcation line caused me to lose the most cherished things in my young life up to then-all my friends. It made for a sad first transitory semester. And even if I did make new friends at SJ- which I gradually did over time-I was rock-solid certain they’d never measure up to any of my eighth grade buddies. In fact, I knew nobody could ever replace those guys from Carnegie Junior High. I was never going to enjoy going to school ever again. Ever.

 

However, there was one day I looked forward to during that first semester at San Juan- Homecoming. Because that year, the homecoming game was versus Bella Vista. I was excited and couldn’t wait to re-connect again with my middle school buds. When it was half time that night, I wandered over to the Bella Vista side of the stadium to see if any of the old crew had made the trip over. Scanning the bleachers and snack bar area, I picked out Mark Johnson. Mark had been one of my best friends at Carnegie Junior High and I practically broke into a sprint when I spotted him. But he was with a girl and seemed annoyed that I’d bothered him. We made brief small talk, but it was clear he didn't have much interest in getting into a real catch-up conversation. It was almost like he didn't know me at all. 

 

Moving on, I noticed my old gal-pal, Debby McCall. I didn’t think I’d ever see her again, and for a split second was really excited when I did. She wasn’t as excited to spot me, though. She gave me a recognition nod- which I guess was a moral victory- but then continued navigating through the crowd with another guy without stopping to talk. Then she- and he- disappeared. I noticed a couple of other old friends too, Tim Owens and Dale Vincent. But they were moving en-masse with a circle of new friends and, after getting rebuffed by Mark and Debby, I decided I could live without the sting of another potential snub and didn’t approach either. Instead, with head down, I returned to the home side of the field.

 

When I found my spot in the stands, the letdown I felt was palpable. It was such a gigantic disappointment to realize I really didn’t know these people anymore. And they didn’t know me. Hoping to warm myself in the glow of friendly faces, I got the cold shoulder instead. These guys had been like brothers not more than 5 months before and now we were practically strangers. I didn’t understand, but it hurt. And embarrassing. Although I hung around and watched the cheerleaders trying to whip our crowd into an artificial frenzy, I was totally detached from the football game, the fans and everything going on around me. I felt cold too, and not just because of the windy night. I left before the fourth quarter. And by the time I got home, any carry-over flair and confidence that I thought I'd brought over from the eighth grade had evaporated.

Unfortunately, this was also right about the time the awkwardness of becoming a full-fledged teen-ager was setting in. 

 

When I first got to San Juan, though nervous I still thought I was basically the same kid I'd been in eighth grade, except a year older. Yet even before Homecoming my self-esteem had started to sag. I began feeling physically out-of-proportion and emotionally out of balance. When I looked in the mirror, I found the person in the reflection very much lacking. I was ugly. So outwardly I wanted to remain invisible. And inside I felt timid, lost and in turmoil. It was hard to figure out, but in less than a year I'd gone from being a popular, fairly secure and well-liked 8th grader to a goober looking freshman; insecure, ill-at-ease, ostracized and unwanted. What the hell happened to me?

Eventually my body, or testosterone, or perspective had somewhat stabilized and by spring time I didn’t feel quite so alien. I even felt okay enough- or less spazzy enough-  to try out for the freshman baseball team. Unfortunately neither the skill or daring as an 8th grade flag-football competitor, or pseudo-swagger garnered as a neighborhood whiffle-ball slugger helped turn me into a very good freshman baseball player. I was awful. But Coach Hall must've either taken pity on me or was desperate for bodies, because I made the team. I still don't know why. Coach said he liked my 'potential' and wanted to give me a chance. Whatever, my name was on the roster and been assigned uniform number 23.

But lacking talent, my main duties were keeping score and warming up the second stringers. Truth be told, I was probably a third, fourth, or maybe even fifth stringer. But I was a serviceable enough outfielder and, despite my other limitations, Coach would sometimes let me play the last inning or two in games we were losing. Fortunately for me, we lost a lot of games that season. There weren't many balls hit my way but I caught the ones that were. And the few times I got to the plate, though I took some good hacks, I couldn't seem to generate enough bat speed to get around on even an average fastball. My timing was always off and my at-bats were usually an exercise in futility. And I had no chance of hitting a curve. None. I could never figure out the break.I think my only real purpose for being on the team was to make everybody else look good. And looking at my stats, I'd say I did my job.

 

Yet up till then, sports and acceptance had come pretty easy. Making the frosh baseball team, though,  wasn't. It was hard work and at the end of the season, whether I deserved to be there or not, surviving the final cut was worth the effort because for the first time since middle school, I’d achieved acceptance. Coach Hall liked me. My team mates liked me. And I enjoyed bonding with them. It was a good feeling. In a year when I was about ready to give up on myself, being part of that team gave me something to hold on to and be proud of.

In my sophomore year, one of my favorite hours of the day was Miss Menke's biology class. We got to cut into things like frogs and snakes and field mice. And though true I hated cleaning fish, dissecting a frog or mouse didn’t seem nearly so bad.  Slicing into one of those guys as a science project wasn't nearly as repulsive as pawing around inside something that was about to become a meal. And studying how their little innards worked in comparison to humans was interesting, although it wasn’t an assignment I’d want to do every day.

 

And so that nobody can cry ‘cruelty to animals’, Miss Menke always made sure none of the critters were ever hurt or suffered. Before anyone did any cutting, she paralyzed them with a tap on the head from a tool that looked like a little reflex hammer. Then she short circuited their brains with a shot of something that kept them from feeling anything. And trust me the only ones who suffered were squeamish students.

I also liked Mr. Trent’s typing class. I liked it because, in four years of high school, it may have been the easiest class I had. Once the bell rang, all we did was and listen to the radio. After Mr. Trent gave out the daily marching, or typing, orders, he turned on KROY and left us alone to type. Then he generally left classroom. Usually, he just went outside to smoke.  Oh, he’d come back in from time to time and check on people’s progress, but most of time, it was just 30 electric IBM typewriters and us kids.

 

Sometimes, though, he just disappeared. His butts were outside, he wasn’t. Who knows where he went to? Maybe running an errand. Maybe to the bathroom. For 55 minutes? Some of us even began to wonder if he was off with someone else, like maybe another teacher? Maybe a lady teacher? Never found out though and he never said. But whether outside sucking a Salem or sneaking around with Miss X, Mr. Trent was a likeable guy and nobody wanted to jinx the good fortune of having such a likeable and easy teacher. So we just did the work, didn’t ask questions and didn’t give him any reason to change and go hard on us.

 

But his final exam was kind of cool; all we had to do was type all 21 verses of Don McLean’s “American Pie”. That was it. Of course, I aced it. And actually, I wasn’t a bad typist. By the end of the semester, I could do 40-45 words a minute easy; a skill which serves absolutely no useful purpose today. Show of hands now: who the hell uses an electric typewriter anymore?  Yeah, I thought so.

But what I remember most about my sophomore to junior years in high school were all the people that didn't live through it. (see “Dying Inside”; blogpost 3.17.11) Both my grandpa’s died within a few months of each other. And while those losses were tough they weren't necessarily unexpected; it’s reasonable to assume an elderly grandparent is going to check out at some point. But when you're 16 and just starting life, you don't expect other 16 year olds to find themselves at the end of it. But during my sophomore and senior years in high school, two childhood friends, and a friend from church had all gone into eternal slumber. None of them made it to 18.

 

It was a lot of sadness in a pretty compressed amount of time and I think I probably became pretty withdrawn and unresponsive during those months. Probably drove Mom and Dad nuts. But that's what I did under normal circumstances. They probably weren't even aware what was running through my head, mainly because I never opened up to them about it. I just clammed up. I was probably depressed, though nobody called it that back then.

 

However, at least I wouldn't become another teenage statistic, not at 16 anyway, because- unlike my friends- I didn’t pass the driver’s test the first time. At first I thought I was just dumb. But maybe not. We had to watch a flick in Driver's Ed, though, called "Death on the Highway", probably the most gruesome thing I'd ever seen; lots of mangled up cars and bleeding dead bodies, all in living color. And knowing people my age who'd recently suffered the same fate, I think it actually scared me. Or freaked me out enough that I wasn't ready or completely prepared. Or maybe I used all the bad news as an excuse for failing. Or maybe I was just a late bloomer. Regardless, all I had was a learner's permit till just after my 17th birthday.

 

But I’ve been a licensed driver ever since, in three states:  California, Washington and Idaho. So there. Anyway, that's enough for now. More next time.....