If you haven't made it to your sophomore year yet, you might be wondering two things. First, isn't there more to fear about "hazing" after the Freshman year? The answer to that is: probably, but only by social outcasts and losers. A second question might be about the "freshman" year experience in college. Let there be no doubt in your mind that second-year+ students in college have more to worry about than that, (fraternities possibly excluded). The funniest thing that I learned was that the cruelty inflicted on freshman is actually perpetrated by sophomores. "Upper classmen" really have better things to do with their time.
So, what was my sophomore year like? Well, I started out with a cast on my right arm. On August 9th, 1983, I was involved in a car accident that broke my right arm and took a tiny layer of skin off of the right side of my face. (My eyebrows are still uneven.) I was not wearing a seat belt. Little did I know that my lingering pain would be the muscle spasm in my back. It hurts every single day when I get up in the morning. This is one of my deep rooted resentful situations in my childhood. I was technically on visitation with my father (5-7 miles away) when we crashed. My brother could not remember if he hit the steering wheel or not, so the doctors were very nervous about his chest cavity, naturally. I only blacked out for about 10 seconds, but I can remember everything. My friend, who was to start college, broke his left arm and hit his head on that metal dashboard so hard that he still doesn't remember 30 minutes before and after this accident.
So, with only a broken arm, and a lot of scratches, I was the least of anyone's concern. The doctor set my arm, and lightly bandaged my shoulder, but not my face. I went back to my mother's house for the evening. My head ached slightly, but I was more worried about my friend who was kept in the hospital over night. That evening my back began to hurt more and more to the point of being unbearable. It felt like someone shoved a softball into my back muscles and stitched it up. The next morning I was due back to end my weekend with my father. I could not stand the legality at which both my parents addressed this situation. I pleaded with my mother to let me stay at home, in my own bed. My father did not have a bed for me and I knew I would be on a polyester couch, or worse, the floor. My mother became indignant and said that it was my father's weekend and that there was nothing to be done about it. She left the room and I cried. That's right, fifteen years old and crying. I cried later that night when I was pushed off of the only sofa in my father's house that I could sleep on. My arm had finally started to ache and throb, and my back was twice as worse as the night before. Who pushed me off? My sister's boyfriend, that's who. I pleaded with him to let me sleep on the sofa, but he said he had it the night before and it was his couch for the night. I ached and throbbed and cried myself to sleep hating him, hating my mother for shoving me out of her house, and hating my father for never providing a bed for me EVERY OTHER WEEKEND!!! I'm pissed right now thinking about it. (Language.) Oh, and my back hurts.
But back to the 10th grade... No one was really impressed with my scabbed face and broken arm. My english teacher wrote two notes to me about my sloppy handwriting in my writing assignments. I showed her my right arm in a cast, but Ms. Bentley seemed nonplused. She just gave me this dopey blank stare and said that I was going to have to try harder, or she would kick me out of class and have me sit in the principles office until I decided to not be so recalcitrant. I wasn't mad at her, though. You have to understand that Van Halen had released their album 1984 earlier that year, and the hit song of the day was "Hot for Teacher." Oh yeah, Ms. Bentley was hot. I began writing left handed for this women.
My PE instructor was Ben Womble. Man, this guy was square! He also told me that I had to participate in PE, even with a broken arm, because I did not have a doctor's note. (Perhaps the cast was just fashion, and only a doctor could prove that I had indeed broken this arm.) Ben Womble was not hot, so I resented him all year for this. I had to learn to play tennis with my left arm. I became the best player in class, in fact. I even beat (two matches!) one of the stars of the JV tennis team, who was really ticked off and began calling me names. I couldn't even keep score properly, so he must have been frustrated by being beat by a hobbled kid that appeared mildly retarded.
What are those letters after Biology, you ask? Well, I took the "gifted" form of biology that year. I mainly took this election to be in a class with my brother, who apparently was taking his science electives out of order. Poor Mrs. Roberts, having the two of us in one class almost drove her insane. Great woman, though.
And, finally, you will note the vokie class, technical drawing. I was inspiring to study drafting and eventually architecture, so this vocational class really inspired me. Five years later, in college, I was using the same skills I learned in this class in my manual cartography classes. I was embarassed to go down that section of the school, though. There was such a stigma about the vo-tech program, and I really played it down. I laughed with all of the other students when jokes about taking auto-body work, HVAC, printing, and bricklaying courses. I was a mule. (Language.) Those kids were able to go on to successful and lucrative careers with only 6-months of training after high school.
In all, I could not wait to get through this school year. I was turning 16 at the end of it, which meant driving. Oh, and I was considering taking a summer job. (I didn't, I started working in the fall of my junior year.) I started to care much less about my school work, and started to avoid studying at all. Actually, I am amazed by the grades that I did get that year.
Writing about all of this is cathartic, kind of like therapy. My back hurts.
--gh
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