With enough time and after sight, (not a word?), things may make more sense or become clearer as we understand them, or perhaps more importantly, as we remember them and somehow properly interpret them. How I interpret them, in this case. My middle school years ended in 1985; long enough ago that the distance is both a challenge and a buffer. Separated by enough years that many things may be forgotten, yet many things are open enough to scrutinize with honest eyes, hearts, minds. Laid bare, in some ways, which is good. Some of it may be painful, still, to those still around or involved. We are not perfect, that is for certain.
Mea culpa, alibi, disclaimer, caveat.
All meaning, take it with a grain of salt. Or, perhaps: I'm sorry for some of the real things that I say and feel this many decades later about those times, places, people. Real talk, trying to be true to me or whatever, not hurtful.
I don't recall if I watched any of it (Grease 2) back then or in the 1980s or since, but perhaps I healthily repressed it. Michelle Pfeiffer got her start, it would seem, maybe, but SO BAD!
Both my older sisters, one four grades above, and the other two above, and probably my foster brother Joey and sister Sophia gave me some insight as to what middle school would be like. My neighborhood friends also had older siblings that provided feedback to the world of junior high: six, seventh, and eighth grades; farther away than my elementary school, Elm Heights. Binford Middle School, with more classes and big time learning, us younger siblings becoming aware from the stories of the older ones with actual living and breathing with the kids of pubescence and bus rides to compete against other schools, to bring their instruments and travel to their official appointments and concerts, with cheer leading squads and all those big time school things. And football. And other sports. But I looked to be a performer in football.
My sisters told me that some boys at the middle school level were so self-conscious about their looks that they would put gel in their hair, because hygiene and style were a big deal; also, that most kids showered everyday. Not just a weekly bath. And of course there was homework. But more important than increased school work was dress and appearance, and which clothes were cool or not: Levis blue jeans, not just Wrangler or some kiddy brand. And Polo shirts. Yeah, Polo shirts, maybe Izod (of Izod Lacoste fame, the shirt with an alligator), but Polo was better because they had the guy on the horse and girls would like you better if you wore the right clothing. Shoes? Nikes or Reeboks for sneakers, not Adidas or Converse, certainly not Zeds or some other sneaker for 5 year-olds. And, of course, boat shoes, or Docksiders were definitely cool. A must for anybody who is anybody. This was Preppy, and Preppy was cool. Not Hush Puppies or some stupid kiddy brand. Grade school was over, buddy! This was the big time for impressions in fashion and style. Don't be lame like those dork boys, Eddie. Wear the right clothes and don't be a dork.
There were other things to look forward to. Gym everyday? Ya got to have underarm deodorant or you would be gross. Don't be gross, Eddie! Those boys who don't use deodorant and who sweat and stink and don't deodorize are disgusting. Gross! Gag me with a pitch fork! Goobers and ickies, all those gross boys with their pimples and bad hygiene.
What else? Yeah, home work and hard tests. And, an instrument if you don't do choir. I planned on clarinet since we already owned one, and I had taken a couple years of the recorder with my friend's mom, Mrs. Smith, and done special clarinet lessons with a young mother in my ward who knew the instrument.
2. Class Loads and Impressions
The classes turned out to be all right. The story problems in math were always harder or trickier than they needed to be, but math was doable. Social studies was amazing with famed long bearded Mr. Courtney. Right up my alley. English was fine, especially when I was able to read books. Gym, first period, was only stressful when we were forced to walk up to the P.E. teacher Mr. Fletcher completely naked to get our towels to go to the showers. He would have a couple of same age as us student assistants stand there to hand out the small, white towels, as we walked by in our various stages of puberty. Talk about embarrassing! Humiliating, really. All these years later I am pretty sure that there was something wrong with Mr. Fletcher. Something wrong about a physical education teacher who weighed an easy 350 pounds, glandular issues or not.
I was a good athlete and I excelled in most sports. I could do the second most pull ups in our class of 70 or whatever boys, after the freak of nature Bud Freeman, who was a shrimp but possessed unusually large biceps, and would knock out twenty on the high bar. I could do eight, or maybe eleven, which was normally 5 or 6 or more or better than anyone else, including the new so-called athletic kids from other schools. Some boys could do none. I prided myself on being strong. And fast. Athletic, Presidential Physical Fitness Award earner since 4th grade. Only two us earned it back in 4th grade, and the other one was a girl. That was Marnie, the one I had a continual crush on; puberty did not help her through middle school. Nor me, by seventh grade, for that matter...
We had a fun get together most weeks called Gold Block, where we combined three of our classes and did group projects and tests, including a game that I was good at called Quiz Bowl. My favorite category was World Affairs. I read and paid attention to the news, of all things. I followed foreign conflicts and international disputes. That knowledge came in handy in this format. Band was not too bad. I did not practice as much as I should, but the previous recorder and clarinet lessons helped. I didn't have to be first chair to be appreciated. I was good at writing for English and Social Studies, generally. Science was not too hard. Art was pretty fun, at times challenging but mostly chill.
Seventh and eighth grade course provided some more difficulties, but I was rolling with the punches academically. I always felt that I was smarter than some teachers, and perhaps I was. I respected those that tried to teach us, no matter their perceived intelligence level. Some did not try to teach very much. That would be you Mrs. Graebe, Cooking Class, and Mr. Zager, computers. You guys kind of sucked. I don't like to use that term, but you did. Middle school teachers who excelled at the art of slacking. A new phenomenon to behold.
3. Social Life
There were complications in middle school that come with aging and maturation, with the additional numbers and varieties of students, both male and female. I had to get used to the variety of new boys outside my elementary school neighborhood; gone were the country kids bussed in that I knew for six years at my old school. There were some new country kids, plus some other town kids from Rogers, Childs, and maybe one other school. Mostly those three... I had met some of them at the end of 5th grade week long camp the spring before. They were from Childs Elementary, and some of them were from the south side of town, which had its share of country confines, the "boonies" as my dad would say.
I stayed up with most of my childhood friends from my neighborhood, including most of the girls. There were new girls, and boys, and some made impressions, for good and bad. Expanding my universe one set of ears, eyes, mouth, and the rest, one person at a time.
Tony Weisstein was a friendly one and a real nerd. He had memorized the Periodic Table by sixth grade and impressed me. I would quiz him on it, and he was always right. I made up geography quizzes for him, which was something more to my liking. My friends would cruelly tell him that "he took drugs", which he would vehemently deny and then cry about it. They thought that was a hoot. I knew he was sensitive, and just different, and naive. Nothing bad about that. I hope he considered me a good guy.
David Higdon in art liked Barbie Dolls and Tears For Fears (TFF!, oh, and of course Duran Duran...), and talked somewhat like a girl despite his deeper and somewhat droning low voice. Trippy guy. Seeing him in the shower stalls was not pleasant either, but enough about that...
Chad Curtis. He thought he was the cat's meow. Or Mark Richardson. Or Eric Bomba. He would torment me through most of the seventh grade after I quit the football team. Long story, but that was bothersome. All these guys thought they were cool jocks. Cool, cool, dudes, new to me in middle school. Tyler Bass and Scott Jordan thought they were cool, but I could handle them. They were weak enough that there was no problem. Plus, they were not as cocky as the others. Rick Huffman was funny. Some of the country kids were all right, but there was one who had a beard (and maybe tatoos?), and would smoke at the grit pit behind school whenever he could. He was probably three grades behind.
Jerome Fine was a complete jerk and would pick fights. He was kind of bigger, too. I hated him, but interestingly he would share these southern type expressions that we would all imitate. Sweet bobo! Sweet daddy, which was accompanied with putting our two fingers under our chin like we had whiskers. A jerk of a dude, but influential. Funny when he wasn't meeting up with someone after school to duke it out.
I had a crush first year on a girl in band... Friend of Keri Pruett, that my buddy Lance liked. It was ... ahh, it will come to me. Lance divulged it, which really embarrassed me and led me not to trust him about confidences. Sandy Cochran! Not Kimberly Jonas, nor Sydney, nor Jeannie, all those new girls. Not Kathy Georg, that most of my friends liked. I thought Kristi Englander was pretty, who I sat by in band, but she was kind of spoiled and would try to get me to cuss. I did not cuss. I was clean cut. Part of my rep. Some call that goody two shoes, but how I was raised, clean was cool. I knew what was what, from a young age. I would rather fall off my bike and get bloody knees that swear. Not for me, Kristi. She even offered to pay me. Nah, I got what I need.
Kathy Overly I found attractive, and Raquel Avila, but both of them were too aggressive. One young lady was not pretty to me (name not mentioned), but she was in a bad traffic incident and lost part of her foot, but I noted a once rather snotty young girl became much more demur. Sounds mean, but true. I am not holding back much here, I am 50.
Brenna Bodner was super cute; I sat next to her in the auditorium for Gold Block. I think Mr. Courtney liked her, too, which for an adult school teacher is fine if you keep your place. How could you not like little brunette sixth grader, Brenna the Bod? This was a joke created about her, I think we all were just fans. It was more about her face than anything else. Really cute.
There was a girl that my lifetime popular friend Jake "went with", which didn't make sense, because I thought she was a dog, even though I would not say that out loud or to most others. Jake moved on pretty fast, but I feel like he was trying slow to up his game. I was not ready to "go" with a girl. Church guys like me could wait. Dalia from the old school had this thing for me, which made the first school dance hard, and then I danced with another girl first, and she bawled. Talk about guilt. I always cared for and respected Dalia. I was just not ready for that type of committed relationship at age 11.
There were others, not to mention the seventh and eighth graders, some of whom were foxes. I stayed away from the older guys, and kept my eye on a few of the older girls. Like the two T.A.s in gym, Yvette and Lissa. They were my sister Jen's age. Whoo hoo, eighth grade was a ways away, but right there in the flesh on the gym floor.
I tried to be nice to almost everyone, except maybe Jeremy, which was an error on my part, pointed out by my sisters. That is another story I have written about in this blog and elsewhere. I became friends with new guys in the old neighborhood, Seth and Jason. Both of them became significant in my transitions through middle school.
Ahh, sociality in the pubescent years! When you care most what others think about you and you are the most physically awkward, more than any other time in life. Some say this is humor endowed by heaven. By my last year at Bachelor (we were placed in a new school en masse my third year of middle school), things would develop differently in my social relationships, and friendships would look more towards some of my church buddies. Some circumstances of school changes and family moves affected those developments.
4. New friends and Competition
As mentioned above, I did develop some new friendships in the middle school years, some in and during school, and some outside of the classes, or both. Nathaniel was one at school that hung out with me during free time after lunch (he lived across the back field from Binford), but I found his repetitive sense of humor annoying and wished to distance myself from him over time. I chose not to play competitive sports after lunch because I thought getting hot and sweaty was not a good idea for the last periods of the day, with my co-students and teachers. Looking back, I probably began my descent into non-good physical shape in that free time. I potentially could have gotten dirty and sweaty instead of be a bleacher bum with Nathaniel and a few girls on the side lines...
I got to know new people in art, which is intrinsically socially adaptive. This happened in eighth grade at Bachelor, too, a couple younger folks that I never followed up with much in high school. I met new people at Bachelor, one year sooner than would have been normal at high school, some of whom I valued and others not so much.
I never became friends in middle school or later with the daughter of a famous rock singer, Michelle Mellencamp, that an adult church friend had informed me of before I even started sixth grade. That was the first time that I knew she existed. Michelle had her own circle of friends; most of them I did not associate with. I spoke to her once, to my recollection, our junior year of high school. To me, she was not that special (mean to say, okay), but her dad's celebrity made her an item to some. I casually knew some of her guy friends through P.E. and classes, like her eventual husband, Bradley Page. Bradley seemed like a nice guy, good luck to him and them. Rock stars are not that common, at least in southern Indiana. I have not run into many since then, either, or their children.
I competed against quite a few guys in gym, and to a degree in our academic pursuits, and with and against the peers in band; I suppose there was competition for the attention of the friends that we favored, or the girls that we liked, and even the quest for attention of our favorite teachers. The seventh grade football team tryout and subsequent quitting was a personal fiasco, or disappointment, at best, and it changed me. I thought of myself as one way, or so, before, and differently, afterwards. I was no longer the fastest, or strongest, most agile, as I had fancied myself, for years. Since my elementary school years and into sixth grade I was always exceptionally athletic, strong, tough, but that persona went away into seventh grade. I had to move on and adapt. My physical and mental self images changed, but I was making my way as best I could. I stayed active in church and Boy Scouts, I followed my likes and interests; I always felt like I had inner strengths and core values or objectives that would lead me to the eventual triumph of my desires. I grew to like the observation of sports, even more than participating, as a part of my overall identity or liking. Call it hobby, passion, fixation. I also always liked certain literature, journalism, music, television, comedy, and movies and art, as an aficionado and connoiseur of the greater world. I needed to know what was out there, always. Curious, always reading, watching, observing. That was still me in middle school, despite the drawbacks or psychological blows in my physical pursuits.
And, even though I gained some extra weight in middle school, and literally slowed down, I considered myself still worthy of the attention and support that I felt I craved of my cohorts and those of the opposite sex that I wished to please. Self esteem and self concept, what a thing. I trusted that better days would be ahead, despite some trying times finishing out high school and watching my family break apart. Teachers, church friends and leaders, including some Boy Scout men and boys, and some choice others helped fill my soul with positivity and support enough to forward as a young adult.
5. World Awareness
The biggest part of my identity, I guess from the depth of my time in the middle school years, to include the vacations and breaks from school, the trips to exotic locales or visits to the library or collections of comics and music albums, or the television and movie tracking was this: knowing what was out there. I learned to love Arthur C. Clarke as science fiction writer, who brought me to much of the known and unknown universe, including far back in Earth history, and our mysterious vast oceans. I really enjoyed fantasy and fiction that branched out into morality and stories of power, but I definitely delved into history, non-fiction, books and magazines about the real world. I marked parts with post-it notes in our rather extensive family collection of National Geographic magazine, every image of military soldiers, troops, and weapons from the world over, like Uganda or Mali or Brazil or El Salvador. Military affairs had my attention in the daily local newspaper, but it did not stop there. All this before the Internet.
I call it world awareness; I think I am still this way now. 40 some years later. And it is part of who I am, and I wish to continue to excel in it. Perhaps by not investing myself in a sports team in seventh grade, I divested myself as a free agent enough to spend more time perusing the world of other things. Much of it included sports in the news and games and personalities in T.V. and the papers and magazines. Those things have been a feature of my life and attention, which end up being connectors, bridges, and links to everything else. Bryant Gumbel and Bob Costas bespoke who I wanted to listen to or talk to; they covered the Olympics, world news, and talked to the who's who of people who mattered or struggled to matter. They were smart and engaging: I wanted to be like that, too.
Sports encompassed so much of the ideal world, for me, and I thought others: we fight and struggle and reach for the best, some get hurt but the object is not death or disenfranchisement or indignity. I played my hours of table tennis, of tennis, basketball, football, soft ball (baseball had gone by as a competition earlier on), I still swam, and took an occasional run or jog, I was physically active with Boy Scouts and church service and activities, but I was largely not part of organized sports as a player; (three months of the year with the church basketball team), but I became heavily invested in college, professional, and other amateur sporting stories.
Stories. I became a stories guy, often not my own. My and other religions and beliefs also were a huge part of my attention and concern. I paid attention to what I was told at church, what people focused on, how they said things, how they thought and operated. Life through believers and non-believers was fascinating, endlessly adventurous and fun. Tragedy and pathos, joy and celebration, laughter and tears, the whole gamut was available through religion, like sports. Both better, on average, than school and assigned work for grades. Literature was great; diagramming sentences, not so much.
So yeah, in the middle school years I became more world aware. I pulled away from my friends playing Dungeons and Dragons, a role playing fantasy game, some of them pulled away from me. I cut down on video games both at the arcades and at home. These narratives, including entertainment in cartoons, which had been a favorite for years, faded away.
In the time of middle school, even in the sometimes lonelier summers, when I mowed lawns or delivered papers or sometimes worked with my dad, I became a student of the world. All of it was good, from Africa to Asia to the high ways and byways of my own continent.
6. Being Me and Figuring things Out
So, by the end of eighth grade my parents were single, my older sisters were largely independent or finding their own ways, although I was still quite connected to the social and religious world of my closer one, who was a high school sophomore while I was getting done with eighth grade. Church was a mainstay for belonging, support, reassurance, a semblance of virtue and hope, a structure that made me feel at home, but also pushed me or motivated me to be happier and more selfless.
I must mention that after my seventh grade year at Binford Middle School, my old middle school, that of three years each for both my sisters, was changed to an expansion of elementary school, shooting me and all my neighborhood chums to the outskirts of town, where I was forced to take the bus. Riding the bus introduced a whole new dynamic to life that I mostly did not enjoy. There were some students on the bus that I got to know that I would not have known much otherwise; I was largely unimpressed and sometimes disgusted by them. A lot of the exposure to new people on the bus were some of the kids from a couple neighborhoods where the children seemed to be entitled and spoiled, while there were a couple of kids from closer to downtown neighborhoods that were involved in drugs and sex, including assault and abuse. Most of the people that I observed and intermingled with on the largely uncomfortable hours weekly on the transport, either too wealthy and distorted or too worldly and craven, seemed to bring the outside world that was broke or wrong way too close. I was exposed to some of those more adult and sometimes sordid things through my own circle of friends, to include some church peers, but that year on the bus brought new things to light that I wish I could have kept in the dark. But maybe this was awaiting me my next year in high school anyway.
By the time I was leaving middle school, or junior high (Bachelor was only seventh and eighth only, no more sixth graders, which was disappointing to me to add to other aspects of the school switch), I was personally and inter-personally matured, a little bruised, but still optimistic. My biggest disappointments?
1. My parents broke up.
2. My sisters were making decisions that I thought were not wise, not productive or helpful. I was just the little brother, so there is only so much one can do or say. That said, my sisters were big influences on me for many things positively, and I should not sell them short.
3. I was not actively engaged in a sport or team, that I envisioned myself doing the years leading up to that. A couple people rubbed it in my face, particularly the football player son of the IU basketball team, an elite college squad, doctor. He made the rest of seventh grade really snotty whenever he saw me in the halls; I thought of him as stupid enough that we did not have many classes in common; maybe he gave up on tormenting me by eighth grade at Bachelor, I can't remember. Years later I thought of him being the least of his brood of brothers who were super big and athletic, so he was probably used to the verbal abuse cycle, not to mention getting hubris from his dad who worked for the world famous bully Bobby Knight, basketball coach known world wide for his tantrums, antics, psychological games to motivate and intimidate, and even a warrant for his arrest in Puerto Rico for throwing a policeman in a trash can. Choking a player and grabbing another young student (someone I taught in high school!) eventually got him fired from his job in my home town. So, Eric, my seventh grade antagonist, was likely a victim of his environment. I mostly wish him well now. I was not verbally perfect back then, either. I was nor have I ever been clean from disparaging others.
4. I had let my body get out of shape after sixth grade; that affected my self esteem in a negative way.
5. I grew apart from some of my friends, some of it by choice and other by circumstances of moving on. I made some new friends but some of them I also ended up ending things with.
6. Some of my church friends were okay but some of them had standards and ways that I did not like. 7. My skills at math were not that great.
8. I had some middle school teachers who were underwhelming, intellectually disappointing. The health teachers at Bachelor were pretty bad. My English teacher, turns out, was not that much a true devotee of literature. Yeah, you can't have everything.
9. Global thermonuclear war with the Soviets was a real concern; plenty of people in Bloomington thought that Reagan was terrible, despite my liking for him.
10. People in Lebanon and east Africa were still fighting, starving, struggling just to live. They are in trouble, we are all still in trouble. I became aware of the issues in Palestine and South Africa. Second class citizens were still a thing.
Highlights?
1. I felt very valued by some teachers, I felt like I was capable as a student overall, and I had things to contribute in the world of knowledge. My mind was sovereign enough to believe that my intellect was intact and whole.
2. I went on some tremendous family vacations with my family, and trips in Scouts, that impacted my views, understandings.
3. I had access to really good books and periodicals.
4. I loved watching some sports and following some teams.
5. There was entertaining television series and movies, plus some music I enjoyed.
6. I had some good experiences with some friends and peers, and some cousins and aunts and uncles.
7. I had the best teacher for me, of all time, Mr. Courtney. The geo-political world and its history was his oyster, and he shared it with all.
8. I enjoyed church, and to a lesser degree, Scouting; the ideals and goals always resonated with me as noble and good. I felt that I was part of a bigger solution to a world with serious problems. Lots of great associations always with people in my ward, stake, missionaries, etcetera.
9. The world was interesting, and I was a part of it.
10. People like David Letterman on late night T.V: funny, smart, and silly, showed us that the world was delight-some, even in the minutia.
11. In my ultimate belief system, Jesus Christ was my Savior and had my back. My family was eternal, no matter what decisions my immediate family made, no matter my own weaknesses and foibles, that I was a part of something so big and beautiful that was filling me and filling the earth, and things would be all right. I believed what I heard, read, felt, experienced.
Here I am 40 years later, or so, after middle school.
I am still him, he is still me. I have forgotten things, occasionally remember others; I have gotten past some negatives, held on to some positives. Life has gone all right. High school, work, mission, college, work, dating, work, education, marriage, children, college, education, career.
I watched the Wonder Years in high school, some of it reminded me of me, despite how much my buddy Ross thought it reminded him of himself... It was played by a young, innocent, Fred Savage depicted in the 1960s in middle school. It was a popular T.V. show in the 1980s. Life was, is, and always has been challenging, no matter the time or circumstance.
It has been a challenge for me, as anyone; there are life lessons to be pondered and analyzed, and perhaps learned from, for me now and present and future generations.
Wonder years, wonderful years, all these years.
Middle school was a bit of good, bad, and ugly. We all got to do it.
And, four decades later, perhaps this analysis or recounting, my telling on how life can be, or should be, or would be, or has been: middle school is a part of my existence, and part of yours.
It can make you wonder.
