A Freshman in a junior high building designed for grades seven through nine should have a magnificent year. I could have been a top-dog and not an underdog or some sort of bottom feeder subject to the predation of upperclassmen. My own experiences do not confirm this conclusion.
The beginning of my freshman year in high school in Mineral Ridge had been great. I had been readily accepted by upperclassmen, even Seniors, as well as my fellow classmates. Returning to Washington Junior High School, I was a Nebbish, even if this word for my “nothingness” did not exist, at the time, in my vocabulary. This role may have been the result of my entering the ninth grade after classes had begun for the academic year. Although I had been at WJHS for my entire seventh grade, my absence in the eighth made me an invisible kid to my peers, only fourteen months later. My teachers welcomed me back. Once more they had someone to respond to the questions they posed. Maybe that was part of the problem.
The language of junior high had not yet included the word, geek, but the concept, none-the-less, existed. I gradually learned that the only way to turn geekdom into an advantage was to help other kids get through their own classes. At reunions many years after high school graduation, I was informed by fellow alums that they had made it through Latin only because of the ponies I had trotted out for them.
No doubt the content of the classes I took was relevant to my later studies, but I recall little about them or the teachers who taught them. I did like study halls. They were not overly supervised and so it was possible to whisper to others assigned to the same open-period. However, given my social standing, my own whispers were limited. I had plenty of time to complete my homework during school hours and, thus, free myself for other events after school.
Yet, there was little for which I needed the time I had earned. Although I knew the jocks who took part in under-varsity sports and I attended their football, basketball and track events in season, I never became part of the group who gathered around the popular ones. I was, also, not readily welcomed into other extracurricular activities and seldom thrust myself upon them in junior high. A couple of years later, I attempted to fit in with other students.
So, my freshman year slowly dragged on, making limited memories of what a dreary time I was experiencing. There were hopes that next year, as a sophomore in high school, things would be different. I would be moving to Niles McKinley High School. In this new location the size of the class would expand by our joining with kids from Jefferson Junior High, which served the other side of Niles. I recognized I needed to change, perhaps become more assertive in meeting new people. I knew the life being expressed during my freshman days could not be endured for another year.