My freshman year of high school sucked.
At the suggestion of my teachers — and against my will — my parents had made me skip seventh grade. So in eighth grade, I took all my classes with people I didn’t know too well. They’d all known each other since kindergarten, of course, and because I’d skipped a grade, they immediately branded me a grade-A nerd. Worse, I was a nerd. Even worse, I’d skipped with a friend of mine, who adjusted much better than I did and then stopped talking to me.
Meanwhile, twice a week I still went to Hebrew school with my old friends, but I always felt out of their loop, because I didn’t know the people or incidents from school that they were gossiping about.
Things got even worse the next year, when I was a high school freshman.
At least, as an eighth-grader, I’d had the consolation of running into my old friends in the hallways or taking random electives with them. But now I was a freshman, a ninth grader, at a different school from all my old friends. I was already nervous about going there, because when we’d visited the high school on our eighth-grade tour, I’d seen students smoking as they crossed the street between the high school’s two buildings between classes.
During my freshman year, I biked to school. And I wore a helmet. I’d arrive at school and chain up my bike along with the other dorks, watching other students arrive on foot or, better, in cars driven by upperclassmen.
My French teacher barely spoke a word of French, and he barely kept control of the class.
My earth science teacher was this like 90-year-old woman.
My Family Life (i.e. Health) teacher was this mean angry lesbian who had accidentally given my cousin a black eye when she’d been the gym teacher back in middle school. She frightened me.
I actually liked my geometry class. Except one day, for homework, our teacher made us memorize a poem, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Euclid Alone Has Looked on Beauty Bare. When it was my turn to recite it, I zipped through it like a scared raccoon. Nobody clapped.
I’d really wanted to take history, but for some reason I didn’t get signed up for a history class. Instead, I got assigned to study hall. During most of study hall, I’d do my homework or read Piers Anthony’s Xanth novels. At the beginning of the spring semester I decided to try shop class instead. I hated the other kids in the class. On the first or second day, I was pushing a piece of wood through some electric bandsaw using one hand, and the shop teacher ran over and placed one of his hands on the piece to steady it, and then yelled at me because apparently I’d almost lost an eye or something. Terrified, I quit shop that day and returned to study hall.
I’d done lots of acting in middle school, but I was too scared to try out for the high school productions. So I joined the Chess Club. It was my only extracurricular activity. I never won a game.
My only friend was this guy from geometry class. We never hung out outside of school, but during the school day we’d eat lunch together in the amphitheater and play this weird science fiction game.
Really, I had like no friends. Outside of school, I mainly watched “Days of Our Lives” and read DC Comics. That was about it.
Lots of kids in the late 80s wore jeans jackets with various big buttons containing messages. My one attempt at coolness was my own jeans jacket. I had one button on it, and it said, “Leave me alone, I’m having a crisis!” I thought it was cool. No wonder I had no friends.
My life sucked.
Fortunately, the following fall, we moved to Japan, and my life improved a thousandfold. I acted, I had a circle of friends, I felt cool, I enjoyed my life. Moving to Japan saved me. If we hadn’t done that, I don’t know what would have happened.
If I ever have a kid, he’s not going to skip seventh grade if he doesn’t want to.