Thomas Starr King Junior High Here I Come

When it came time to “graduate” from Ivanhoe Elementary School, things quickly began to change.  The assembly celebrating our passing was made up of our class singing the Doris Day hit “High Hopes.”  I guess I should have taken that as a harbinger of things to come.

Thomas Starr King Junior High pulled from a much wider and diverse catchment area than Ivanhoe. Frankly, I was nervous to be starting this new adventure and very jealous of my friends who were twins who could face the new challenges together, and my friends who had older brothers and sisters who had gone before.  I felt a bit like an explorer without an expeditionary force.

I think it’s ironic that I spent three years at a school named for someone I had never heard of and never was educated about. 

At King, life changed.  No longer was it important to kick a home run at recess or beat someone at handball.  Calluses earned from doing turns on the rings counted for naught. New words quickly joined my vocabulary:  Vato, Saint Christopher medal, Pendleton shirts, rat comb and scrub. It was now important how you held your blue notebook binder.  Girls to their chests and boys down at their side.  If this was not done correctly, one’s sexuality might be in question.

Wearing socks with your shoes made you a dork, hair spray was a must and suddenly deodorant became important.  The smell of Rite Guard Spray permeated the girl’s locker room as if it were the finest French perfume.

A year earlier, I had made a plea to the gods of bodily functions to PLEASE DON’T LET ME GET MY PERIOD IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL.  This prayer was answered, but the onset was made no easier by the horrible contraptions designed to deal with our “curse” and the hall monitors who patrolled the bathrooms during break and lunch.  “Recess” was a long gone bittersweet memory.

I think one of the things that junior high, and the entire educational system, teaches is that LIFE lets you get to the top--just every now and then (6th grade, 12^th grade for instance) and puts a most addicting and tiny taste of omnipotence onto your tongue. Then it pulls out the rug with a twisted twinkle of the eye and makes you start climbing the ladder all over again.

At King, we had to start at the bottom, and not with just our “Leave it To Beaver” Silverlakers.

 

When I first started to ask for a St. Christopher medal my very Protestant mother was a bit at a loss.  She was not to know that a shiny blue medal hanging from your neck made you a “Surfer” and not a “Vato.”  The Vatos were a group whose females wore their hair in huge beehives that had enough hairspray to support a skyscraper.  It was rumored that inside of those intricately backcombed styles were razor blades and cigarettes.

On my family summer travels we had passed through Pendleton, Oregon and I was well aware of the fame of its woolen blankets and shirts. At King, I was to learn that a Pendleton was also a badge that said you were a “surfer.”  Those pseudo tartans were worn by boys who cultivated long, blond—often bleached-- bangs hanging just over their eyes. A Pendleton and a St. Christopher medal was all it took to be a “surfer.”  Think Beachboys.