Arrowview Junior High School — People

Probably ’cause I was older, by this time, but I remember rather more of my teachers and classmates at Arrowview than at Bradley. Photos of more of these folks may emerge. Until then, word-pictures will have to suffice, largely. Please keep in mind that I’m the subject-matter here. Old friends, associates, neighbors, and such who wander in and out of this narrative appear strictly for the light they can cast on my youthful character and behavior. If anything I have to say about them seems unkind, please take it as a reflection of my imperfect charity, not as evidence of anything objectively negative about them. As a seventh-grader (a.k.a. “scrub,”) I was pretty much at sea. Bad eyesight kept me from focusing effectively on the academic end of things, such as it was. I found my classmates, by and large, repulsive. Over the summer, they seemed all to have learned to spit and to use a whole lot more foul language than I’d ever been around before. Even kids I’d sorta been friends with at Bradley seemed to have metamorphosed into strange and unattractive beings. Mr Bill McClintick (or maybe it was McClintock), music teacher and band-and-orchestra leader, invited Gary, one of the “hoodier,” more testosterone-laden saxophone players in the band to demonstrate something new called “rock ‘n’ roll,” to which my classmates seemed to resonate immediately, and which alarmed and disgusted me, much as it does to this day. Sorry ’bout that, more up-to-date descendents… As mentioned earlier, dressing for gym and the obligatory communal shower were major embarrassments. Given my smallish size (as one of the youngest kids there) and lack of athletic interest or accomplishment, I came in for some bullying. Some of those who later became high-school “jocks” decided I was queer and treated me accordingly. Failing to measure up to the standard of the Suffering Servant, I hid my face, as much as possible, from shame and spitting.

Thanks to my parents’ loving protection, I had no idea what a “queer” might be. It was clear that those who so classified me were precisely the sort of people with whom I wanted as little as possible to do. So, it is perhaps not strange that I should gravitate to friendship with a quiet, droll, gentle lad named Ronald Edwards. Like me, he enjoyed and knew a bit about “classical” music. And played a wicked game of chess, which I’d picked up while still at Bradley. I later learned that his mother was a fortune-teller, and that he wasn’t at all sure just who his father might be. None of which kept us from enjoying a lot of really good chess, some of it with musical accompaniment from his “hi-fi” phonograph or mine. Only after Ronald had moved out of the school district did others tell me how seriously I’d compromised my social standing (if any) at Arrowview by keeping company with “that little faggot.” And only then did I begin to gain an understanding of occasional mysterious things Ronald had said.

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Updated Dec 2013

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