Ah, the Junior High years. I would equate these three years of my life to a life sentence in prison. I was not one of the cute or popular girls much to my mother's disappointment. While she didn't want me to be boy crazy she did want her friends to be envious of how very highly sought after her daughter was. My mother was voted Most Beautiful and Most Popular in her high school and she expected I would follow in her tiny footsteps. Most people in Junior High didn't know my name.
Mother figured out by the middle of 7th grade that I was not going to be Miss School. I guess she felt compelled to make me feel better about this by reminding constantly that there was nothing wrong with being average. I would soon discover that there was something wrong with it, it made my parents very unhappy. These were also the years that the school system introduced "New Math". Great, I couldn't do old math and new math proved to be more challenging. I got my first D on a report card.
After my parents draped the house in black and my mother cried for hours. Dad announced that he was going to help me every night after dinner with my math. We would sit at the built in desk in the den and until I learned the days lessons there would be no TV for anyone. This has got to be hell. I dreaded dinner. It was already the time of day when the litany of things wonderful accomplished by Brother was recited and the litany of areas where I needed improvement or was hopeless enumerated. And then the math lesson.
I would explain to dad what I was being taught and he would say, "no, this is easier, let me show you on the slide rule". (To this day I sweat when I read a measuring tape because it reminds me of a slide rule). "Dad, we don't use slide rules", was a pointless argument. Dad had tricks, "always multiply by ten then subtract the difference". "Always remember that an odd number and an odd number equal an even number". I just looked blank. I was blank. In my head this sounded like: "Just oiue pthid toknhi8e naojkht loouit e ieknypsp-". "Please", he would plead, "you can't be stupid."
One evening I looked at Dad and I said, for the first time out loud, "I don't give a DAMN about X. I will never give a DAMN about X". "I am NEVER going to try to find X!" There was no cursing in our house. "Shoot" and "darn" were strong words. Dad turned on his heel and walked away throwing his hands up in the air. He was done with me. He told mother that I was hers from now on.
In the ninth grade I met Zelda, the new girl from California. She sat behind me in Algebra. She was a walking math genius. We bonded on her first day in school and she got me through the hell of algebra. She let me copy her homework and would let me cheat as much as possible during tests. God bless you, Zelda, you saved me.
This was also the year I discovered another hidden talent. I never said a word in any class. I had learned early that there was indeed such a thing as a stupid question. In social studies we had an assignment to debate the class across the hall on the Civil War. I knew all about the civil war. Gone With The Wind was my favorite book. Scarlett O'Hara was genius in a corset. I agreed to give the closing argument in this debate. Did I study? Did I make notes? Did I really have any knowledge of the actual war? No. None. The debate began and the debaters used terms I didn't know had anything to do with the war. Industrialization? What? The slaves were freed? Really? Uh oh. I wasn't going to be able to just talk about the romance of the old south.
I stood up. I looked at the two classes and teachers crammed into the room and I started to talk. I made a beautiful argument that the south was completely within it's right to have labor. They were not industrialized as the north was. The actual issue of slavery had come from Europe with the forefathers of this great nation. Given time industry would have spread to the south and equipment like the cotton gin would eliminate the need for labor and the slaves would have been freed anyway. The war had actually been pointless. I went on and on using all the power of persuasion I could muster. We won the debate according to the judges because of such a convincing closing argument.
I had another gift! I could bull shit.
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