I was the weirdest teenager alive. I know this for a fact from every accounting of teenagerdom ever told. Why? Because I experienced ZERO teenage angst. I’m serious. It took me until I had my own children to develop any kind of neurosis. But that’s for later posts. For now, let me tell you about my ridiculously wonderful high school experience. Since no one in the history of coming-of-age films has ever depicted a positive image of high school, my experience seems to have been incredibly unique. For those of you who suffered bullying, I am really sorry, but I can't relate. I can honestly say that I never knew it was happening at our school because it didn't happen to me and I don't remember ever witnessing it myself (or I am totally blocking it out so I don't have to deal with it). And for those of you who now realize that you were a bully and regret it, just know that social science has studied your kind thoroughly, so thanks for giving social scientists the opportunity to create structures against this type of thing in the future, I guess. And for those of who had a decent experience but actually cared what other kids thought about you during your teen years, you probably won't relate to the contents of this post. You can skip it if you like. Because I am about tell you how much I loved high school! Sorry. But... it’s true... and I feel kind of odd saying it, but I had a great time in high school. I have come to the conclusion that I was so incredibly clueless... so naive about social dynamics and societal ills at that point in my life, perhaps because I was so utterly self-absorbed, that I just bounced from one thing that I enjoyed to another without a care in the world. Cheerleading and singing, calculus and physics... AP History was the only thing I was really not so enthused about at the time and I still liked the teacher. I made prize-winning Homecoming floats with the Music Club and raised money for it by singing Holiday Songs in front of the post office every year. I went to dances in pretty dresses, wore hip clothing to school and hung out with everybody from the smart kids to the burn-outs and never batted a judgmental eye at any of them. How could I? I was in the geekiest clubs of all. The choral groups! Our co-ed group was called the “Belles and Beaus” - get it? And the all-girl group was the “Notabelles” - get it? We did annual tours of the old folks' homes for the holidays and we were in demand for spring concerts as well. And we were good, too! I seem to recall that we claimed a “First Position” at some state competition.
I was also Pom Pom girl for a couple of years, and did a tour with the Soccer and Wrestling cheerleaders. Yes. Our school had Soccer and Wrestling Cheerleaders. And, yes! We really had cheers. For wrestlers even! Here’s one: Roll him over - clap clap, on his back - clap clap, pin his shoulders - clap clap, to the mat - clap clap! Repeat. You can probably imagine with ease the very simple hand gestures that went along with this cheer and the ebulient jumping that we did simultaneously that made everyone's ponytails bounce rhythmically. Shamelessly cute, we were. And we had others cheers, too! Really! I swear! Not only can my contemporaries, as well as my sister, corroborate this story, but I can also tell you that we Soccer-Wrestling Cheerleaders were the rebels of the secondary school sports enthusiasm encouragers. You see, the wrestling matches were often all-day affairs on Saturdays and sometimes one or more of us who had access to a liquor cabinet would bring a flask of booze to these meets. So, on occasion, we’d be cheering while a little buzzed. We never could get a hold of enough liquor or sweet wine to get any one of us more than slightly goofy so nobody really noticed when a bunch of teenage girls giggled a lot or fell asleep on an hour-long bus ride home from a foreign land somewhere in the “far western suburbs of Chicago.” I am not condoning or encouraging this behavior in any way. I’m just saying that none of us were so bad that we ever did anything that would have actually destroyed anyone’s life. Today, of course, even the mention of a flask of booze on a school grounds would get you ostracized from the in-crowd, expelled, and possibly buy you a trip to rehab. This is, of course, a preferable stance on the matter of unsupervised teenage drinking, and I agree with the official rules (although, perhaps not the societal ones) and have encouraged my own children to follow them, of course. But, my theory about understanding liquor at this early stage in our young lives goes back to our immigrant upbringing. With we girls all being from immigrants’ homes that regularly drank wine and liquor at the dinner table along with our families, we knew our tolerances and not to overdo it. Liquor wasn't some foreboding elixir with magical powers that suddenly made you an adult. It was just something that could make you a little silly and a little sleepy and totally willing to cheer for two entangled, sweaty boys. We also had a healthy fear of our fathers' wrath, I presume. Needless to say, we never got caught. I am also acutely aware that our white privilege in a homogenous world meant that we always got the benefit of the doubt.
As for academics, I have to say that my high school was top notch. It’s just that, since we were from a “light-blue” collar neighborhood full of adults who didn’t speak English very well, no one could spread the word. I had seriously Golden-Apple quality and totally unappreciated teachers. My French teacher was actually French and took us to a family-friendly French film every year. I decided that I wanted to be called Chantal in that class even though my full first name, Jacqueline, is, in fact, French. But using your own name in a foreign language class is lame, I decided. My chemistry teacher let us titrate caustic chemicals, light the Bunsen burners and observe substances for state changes (read “melt ice into water and then turn it into steam while recording the temperature the whole time”). I didn’t know it then, but I truly love chemistry. And, ok… the fact that Mr. Polz was totally rugged-handsome helped with the enjoyment of his class. I was a bit smitten, and even a bit jealous of his playful relationship with Ms. Nakiama, the petite Asian chemistry teacher from across the hall. Mr. Polz was cool. He was a marathon runner, took us out on a field trip where he fed us chili made from a deer that he had shot and was totally cool with the “You killed Bambi’s mom” jokes. He even had a cool surprise for us at the end of the school year. He set up a lab called “Foamed Saccharides with Protein Inclusions”. We lit the Bunsen burners and he had us pour crystallized saccharides, sodium bicarbonate and other “chemicals” into ceramic pots and when it began to expand rapidly due to the creation of small, encapsulated gaseous boluses, we had to quickly dump in the protein inclusions and dump it out onto wax paper. We had made peanut brittle! Mr. Polz was the coolest! Well, almost, anyway, my physics teacher had us blow a dart gun at a piece of wood in front of his desk when we were studying trajectory! Everybody loved that, especially the guys. I was, unfortunately, the only one who did NOT hit the wood and instead embedded a dart into the front panel of the teacher's desk. I didn't hear the end of that one until my friend Pam set her sweater on fire with a Bunsen burner in chemistry the following week. Such is the fickle world of teenage teasing.
My math teachers were all awesome and I have to give props to Mr. Myers for drilling calculus through my thick skull. If I could get a hold of him now I would thank him ever so graciously since it did, in fact, come in handy. Sure it was over 30 years later when it came in handy, but who’s counting? The thing that stuck in my mind was how “into” calculus he was. He was the math geek of math geeks, and I guess his enthusiasm kinda rubbed off. We had fun in that class and even had some lively discussions. In one class period some smarty-pants challenged Mr. Myers on the usefulness of mathematical proofs. Mr. Myers launched into a passionate and eloquent dissertation on the history, pertinence, and salience of mathematical proofs and their role in the development of every technology known to man. He finished this dialectic with a proof that the rational, but non-terminating, number .99999 repeating forever was, in fact, equal to one. I was positively enrapt until Joe from the back row said “Big deal, my dad can make a nickel shit a dime.” Everyone, including Mr. Myers, luckily, burst out laughing. This particular incident sparked my affinity for geeky math jokes that endures to this day.
I have a ton of cute anecdotes and could spend lots of time telling you about them but, truly, it would be uninteresting, I guess. The only thing I can remember that can even be considered angst-provoking was the time I got an actual detention. For some random reason I was late to gym class one time. The meany gym teacher was in the hallway and caught me not being in the locker room after the bell rang. I was so surprised to be handed a little pink slip of paper that I really didn't know what to do! In fact, since such a thing had never happened before, I completely forgot about it and went directly to my after-school activity and then went home. The next day I GOT CALLED TO THE PRINCIPAL'S OFFICE!!! I could not comprehend it when the secretary said that I had been issued a suspension for not showing up to detention the previous day. I was so panicked that I did the only thing I could do... I lied my way out of it. I played dumb and said that I didn't know what she was talking about. Someone else must have given my name to the gym teacher instead of their own because I had not been given a detention. "Certainly, there must be some mistake.", I said insistingly. I don't think the she bought it but she let me off the hook. Whether she was too busy to deal with me or she knew me as " a good kid", I'll never know, but she let me slide. I was NEVER late to anything in high school ever again! Since the cloud of a detention was not on my permanent record, I got into a good college. Thank you, Betsy-the-secretary.
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