Harrow: growing up
Sep. 6th, 2003 05:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vaneramosAs previously recorded, my parents and I moved to the country when I was eight. In September I started grade 3 in Harrow, a town of 2,300 people.
I had trouble making friends at school. I used to look for excuses to stay indoors at recess. I would complain of a sick stomach, and Miss Skuce started calling me a hypochondriac. I was perfectly healthy, except for a serious case of shyness and bad nerves.
I was exceedingly bright, however, so much that my grade 4 teacher, Mrs. Buttery, wanted me to accelerate. The school had stopped skipping students, but she persuaded the principal to make an exception. So I took grade 5 and 6 together in a single year.
It was the worst thing that could have happened. I was still having trouble making friends, and skipping made things worse. My grade 5 friends, the ones I left behind, shunned me. The grade 6 kids were even meaner. My home room teacher happened to be the girl's gym teacher. She was as butch as they come. She didn't like sissies and browners, and picked on me mercilessly. The kids followed her example. It was never physical, just taunts and fun at my expense.
Once during a game of Truth Dare Double Dare, someone dared the most precocious girl in our class, Connie, to try and kiss me. I was horrified. The ensuing antics amused everyone so much (except me) that it became a game lasting several years. Three of the most popular, sexually developed girls in my class would chase me around the school yard, pretending to fawn over me. I knew how square I was. I thought they were laughing at me, amusing themselves and the other boys.
In hindsight, I realize their game was not malicious. Connie probably had a real crush on me and was trying to get me to come out of my shell. After all, I was a good-looking boy. In hindsight, I think several of my classmates did try to open me up. But I was already too lonely and uptight to know how to respond.
At Poplar Bluff, the beach road where I lived, things were a little better. My best friend was N. He had three little brothers. Another neighbour, Tracey, was my age, too. In good weather, we played in the woods between our houses every day after school. We called it the Jungle. We had great adventures there, often following adventure stories that I had made up.
In grade 7 I had one of my favourite teachers of all time, Miss Reed. She was about 5 feet tall with round glasses and long, wavy, dark hair. It was her first year teaching and she had great ideas. She taught Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe. I soaked it up.
For our assembly that year, we did Music Through The Ages. We learned songs and dances from every decade of the 20th century: the waltz, the Charleston, the twist. Three girls stepped racily around the stage and lip-synched Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy. We all sang Lily Marlene. One of the boys sang Ben. The whole class ended up on stage in jeans and black t-shirts dancing to Saturday Night.
The show also included poetry. I was Miss Reed's pet, but she tried to pull me out of my shell, too. So, for the assembly, I was forced to participate in one of the most humiliating events of my public school career. I had to stand on a balcony, with Connie reciting from the floor below, How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. In front of the whole school.
In fact the assembly was so successful, I had to do it in front of a packed gymnasium on two successive nights, in front of everyone's parents. In front of my parents, who seemed oblivious to my misery. Our class raised enough money to go on a field trip to Stratford to see a Shakespeare play. And I learned how to keep a stiff upper lip, hiding my humiliation.
My love of literature had already begun, but Miss Reed fueled it. Reading and writing became my haven, a secret world. About that time I started creating imaginary characters who I would write about throughout my teens and into adulthood.
I was still a loner when I started high school. But by that time I was also sexually active. So my secret became deeper and more intense.
I had trouble making friends at school. I used to look for excuses to stay indoors at recess. I would complain of a sick stomach, and Miss Skuce started calling me a hypochondriac. I was perfectly healthy, except for a serious case of shyness and bad nerves.
I was exceedingly bright, however, so much that my grade 4 teacher, Mrs. Buttery, wanted me to accelerate. The school had stopped skipping students, but she persuaded the principal to make an exception. So I took grade 5 and 6 together in a single year.
It was the worst thing that could have happened. I was still having trouble making friends, and skipping made things worse. My grade 5 friends, the ones I left behind, shunned me. The grade 6 kids were even meaner. My home room teacher happened to be the girl's gym teacher. She was as butch as they come. She didn't like sissies and browners, and picked on me mercilessly. The kids followed her example. It was never physical, just taunts and fun at my expense.
Once during a game of Truth Dare Double Dare, someone dared the most precocious girl in our class, Connie, to try and kiss me. I was horrified. The ensuing antics amused everyone so much (except me) that it became a game lasting several years. Three of the most popular, sexually developed girls in my class would chase me around the school yard, pretending to fawn over me. I knew how square I was. I thought they were laughing at me, amusing themselves and the other boys.
In hindsight, I realize their game was not malicious. Connie probably had a real crush on me and was trying to get me to come out of my shell. After all, I was a good-looking boy. In hindsight, I think several of my classmates did try to open me up. But I was already too lonely and uptight to know how to respond.
At Poplar Bluff, the beach road where I lived, things were a little better. My best friend was N. He had three little brothers. Another neighbour, Tracey, was my age, too. In good weather, we played in the woods between our houses every day after school. We called it the Jungle. We had great adventures there, often following adventure stories that I had made up.
In grade 7 I had one of my favourite teachers of all time, Miss Reed. She was about 5 feet tall with round glasses and long, wavy, dark hair. It was her first year teaching and she had great ideas. She taught Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe. I soaked it up.
For our assembly that year, we did Music Through The Ages. We learned songs and dances from every decade of the 20th century: the waltz, the Charleston, the twist. Three girls stepped racily around the stage and lip-synched Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy. We all sang Lily Marlene. One of the boys sang Ben. The whole class ended up on stage in jeans and black t-shirts dancing to Saturday Night.
The show also included poetry. I was Miss Reed's pet, but she tried to pull me out of my shell, too. So, for the assembly, I was forced to participate in one of the most humiliating events of my public school career. I had to stand on a balcony, with Connie reciting from the floor below, How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. In front of the whole school.
In fact the assembly was so successful, I had to do it in front of a packed gymnasium on two successive nights, in front of everyone's parents. In front of my parents, who seemed oblivious to my misery. Our class raised enough money to go on a field trip to Stratford to see a Shakespeare play. And I learned how to keep a stiff upper lip, hiding my humiliation.
My love of literature had already begun, but Miss Reed fueled it. Reading and writing became my haven, a secret world. About that time I started creating imaginary characters who I would write about throughout my teens and into adulthood.
I was still a loner when I started high school. But by that time I was also sexually active. So my secret became deeper and more intense.
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no subject
Date: 2003-09-06 02:54 pm (UTC)One of the better things my parents did for me, despite their tendency to push me academically, was refuse a suggestion to skip me directly from kindergarten to second grade. They felt it would be bad for my social development. God, it was rough enough without the added misery of being so much younger.
On the topic of girls trying to entice us out of our shells: in high school our advanced chemistry class did a Christmas gift exchange. The girl who had to buy something for me picked a t-shirt that said "The Incredible Hunk." I was pretty devastated, *certain* she was teasing me. Years later, not so convinced of my unattractiveness, I'm not so sure.
I'd love to figure out how to bring shy kids like you and I were along through the school years better.
Miss Reed sounds wonderful, though it's too bad she didn't pick a less publicly scary way of trying to open you up.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-06 05:03 pm (UTC)I also wonder (this only occurred to me today as I was writing) if she was encouraging me to dabble in gender bending (the beautiful boy swooning and dropping his handkerchief from a balcony).
no subject
Date: 2003-09-06 07:31 pm (UTC)And with a low baritone. Swoon. You may have to fight me for bottom. :)
no subject
Date: 2003-09-06 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-07 09:19 am (UTC)I've probably repressed a fair amount of my junior-high days -- or maybe I've just forgotten; it was rather a long time ago -- but I do have some memories of being variously embarrassed/freaked out by girls in my class who tried to draw me out in certain rmontically-suggestive ways. Of course at 12-13, girls are older than boys, and being (all unconsciously at that stage) attracted primarily if not exclusively to boys probably didn't help.
That last bit is probably relevant to Van's story too, yes?
no subject
Date: 2003-09-07 12:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-08 03:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-06 03:46 pm (UTC)This was an all-boy school. I played Thisbe in "Pyramus & Thisbe. I played, (in blonde wig, high-heels and a nifty little cocktail number) Edith in a play called, believe it or not, "Queer Street". I topped this triumph by playing the Princess in the quartet from "Kismet".You can imagine how supportive and kind the other boys were.
There was quite a lot of drag. Our school had a reputation for drama and plays were put on frequently. The only time girls were imported was for a huge production of "Hamlet". The kid who played Hamlet became a professional playwright and actor. The newspapers gave it rave reviews.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-06 05:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-06 05:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-07 09:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-07 07:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-07 12:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-07 09:57 am (UTC)I went to a snotty private school for 5th and 6th grades. One's worth was determined by the hood ornaments on daddy and mommy's cars, the exclusivity of the labels on one's clothes, the number of times daddy and mommy's names appeared in boldface type in that bitch Joanne Davidson's Society Column in the Denver Post (she looks just like Christine from "The Oblongs". Acts and sounds the same, too.). Oh yeah, and how much of a jock one was.
I recall one of those horrible nights when students and parents assembled in the auditorium-cum-lunchroom for some dumb performance or another. Choraliers? An Xmas pageant? I don't remember what it was. I'd liked 'em OK in public school, where I had the unpleasant tendency to lord my rhythmic, singing and vocal projection abilities over the other kids, but boy, were they ever hellish at that private school. Karma? Donno. Anyhow, there we all were, milling around before it was time for the parents to sit down and the students to line up on the bleachers, and one or two of the other kids went "Hi, Daniel", in that sneering, smarmy, singsongy tone of voice. I ignored 'em. For that, I caught immediate hell from my mother, who was "very disappointed" that I was "shunning people who were trying to be friendly". (She took delight in repeating that story ad maximum nauseam for the next decade or so, whenever she wanted to remind me or illustrate for someone else what a social retard I was.)
In grade 7[...]the most humiliating events of my public school career. I had to stand on a balcony, with Connie reciting from the floor below, How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. In front of the whole school.
Oohyes. Why do they do that to 7th graders? Why? Why? I will never understand. Ours wasn't anything so elaborate as stage acting, but rather was...singing. It's just wrong to force 7th-to-9th-grade boys to sing in public. It just is.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-07 12:14 pm (UTC)Oi, she sounds more like my ex-mother-in-law-from-hell than my mom. My parents' chief failing was that they ignored how antisocial I was. I think it was convenient for them; I didn't get into much trouble.