Life of Brian

1987

Jr. High School

(A school usually including grades seven to nine)

Who had a good experience during their Jr. High School years?  I know a lot of my experiences were not much fun.  First off, all these kids in Jr. High were finding themselves and trying to become young adults.  Their parents expecting more from them. More maturity, more responsibility, better decision making etc.  Now lump that in with puberty and what not, and you've got yourself a recipe for a society of meanness.  Kids who thought they were cool, kids who were cool, kids who tried to be cool to fit in with the others who were cool, and kids who were shy, polite, understanding, and inevitably, dorky.  I like to believe that I was at the level just above dorky.  I was not incredibly intelligent, nor cool.  I didn't dress in the latest fashions.  My clothes were simply a means to cover up my bare flesh.  It's the law right!  I didn't care if I matched, didn't care about anything clothing related.  My ability to do things on my own most of the time meant I didn't have many friends going into Jr. High.  Living 20 minutes outside of town in the mountains decided that for me.  As I mentioned before, I wouldn't change it for anything.  In my town, there was only one Jr. High campus.  This meant that all the kids in the valley were funneled on to this campus.  Unless you attended private school, you were a lab rat of the Matilija Jr. High proving grounds.  Luckily, Matilija was only grades seven and eight.  Only two years to spend with the bullies and turds.  I would graduate from this campus.  Not without experiencing some good content for this blog however! 

Nineteen eighty-seven would be my seventh year of public schooling.  Seventh grade was a turning point for sure.  New campus, new kids, new teachers, new everything.  The first experience of having multiple teachers, in different classrooms.  In elementary school you just had one classroom, and the same teacher for the entire school year.  I can recall walking around with my mom before school began and trying to find the best way to get to my various classrooms.  You only had so much time in between bells.  This was also new.  learning to have a schedule.  Also being able to choose electives.  I chose Home Ec.  A class where you learned to cook and clean up after yourself.  At some point in this class, we were all instructed to bake a cake.  The teacher placed us in groups of three to four students.  My group seemed to be able to make a cake just fine.  Another kid in the class, who was there for any reason but to learn how to cook, decided it would be funny to top our lovely cake with dish soap.  Let me tell you.  You will know there's soap in your food the very instant it touches your tongue!  Taste buds are efficient little buggers.  Our teacher was not happy at all about this turds actions, and I believe he was removed from the class for the rest of the year.  Luckily for my group, our taste buds saved us from learning how inefficient your sphincter is when soap gets processed through your body.  I cannot remember any of my teachers' names in Jr. High.  Except for Mr. Mathenie.  He taught science.  Some kids from years past had come up with a nickname for him that rhymes with Mathenie.  This is the only reason I still remember him.  It would be safe to say, Jr. High was the end of really knowing your teachers.  Although, I do indeed remember most of my teachers in HighSchool.  Gotta be something to this.  Maybe Jr. High was soo bad that it turned off my ability to remember?  In seventh grade, you were low level scum.  Ripe for the teasing and bullying from the eighth graders who were simply fresh survivors of the same torment the year before.  We were given the title of 'Sevvies'.  'Sevvies', were placed on this earth to be tormented and ridiculed by the mighty eighth graders.  At lunch, squads of eighth grade boys would hunt down Sevvies.  I'm not sure how they made their picks.  I just know that my day came around the middle of the school year.  Luckily for me, I'd had half the year watching other terrified Sevvies fall victim to these attacks and most ended up headfirst in the cafeteria trash cans.  Having watched many of these 'Cannings", I became wise.  This is another reason why I feel I was just above dork level.  When I saw the mass of eighth grade boys forming on the day I would be chosen, I booked it for the gymnasium.  Why the gym you might be wondering?  Because there was a dance going on at lunch, and I knew there would be a teacher standing at the door checking students in!  My hundred-yard dash to the gym would have easily beat Usain Bolts best time!  There was no way I was going inside of a trashcan headfirst!  Sure enough, as the eighth grade hit squad caught up with me at the gym, there was a very stern looking teacher to persuade them to rethink their motives.  I had outsmarted these kids who literally were probably not all that intelligent.  Everything happens for a reason in my mind.  I'm the type that is very passive until you flip a certain switch.  Once that switch has been flipped however, watch out.  There are only a few scenarios when pure anger and zero reasoning result in a good outcome.  I would prove that in eighth grade. Stay tuned.

Another traumatizing first in Jr. High was having to take showers after P.E.  My sisters have mentioned that they too had to take showers.  One difference though, is that they could keep their underwear on and simply rinse off their limbs.  Not us!  We had to get completely naked and walk to the horse trough shower room that had ten or more shower heads protruding from the wall about three feet apart.  The floor was wet, slippery, and disgusting!  It was comical, for some, to pee in the shower.  Others found great joy in snapping bare skin with damp towels as you exited the trough.  Are you picturing a prison shower scene from a movie?  Well, it was only different than what you are imagining due to the fact we were free to go once we proved we had set foot in the trough and at least rinsed off.  If you couldn't prove this, your grade suffered!  I won't even get into what the purpose of all this could have been.  We'll just leave it be.  Our P.E. teacher had an uncanny prison yard boss voice too.  He would wear his sunglasses all the time.  Checking for wet heads.  "Hey ah, Turner".  "You get in the shower yet"?  "Yessir!"  "See this huge red welt on my butt cheeks!"  Didn't matter that my hair wasn't wet that day.  The red welt was proof enough that I had at least made the journey to the trough from my locker.  Lots of discoveries and knowledge were gained from these experiences.  I'll leave most of them locked in my memory.  If you recall me mentioning riding the school bus to and from school, you may remember me mentioning we had various bus drivers.  In Seventh grade at some point, we got a new driver who would remain on our route up until I no longer needed to ride the bus.  His name was one I'd never heard before meeting him and haven't heard since!  His name was Obiesia.  Sound it out like this:  Oh Bye Zia.  He was a very nice person.  Because of this, some of the kids on the bus took advantage of him and our bus became a little noisy at times. He would stop the bus from time to time and try to regain control, but his voice, and his stature, was not very intimidating.  Me and my sisters got along with him just fine.  We were not turds I guess.  Obiesia liked us and would wait a little longer in the morning if we were running a tad bit late.  There were many morning sprints down our driveway of roughly 100 yards.

This year's trip to New Mexico would take place over the summer break.  When we traveled in the summer to my grandparents, we always left at o dark thirty in the morning so that we could get through the blazing hot desert before the scorching heat kicked in.  You might be thinking this is odd and in the year 2024 it sort of does sound odd.  After all, I'm not sure if there are any models of cars these days that don't come with A/C.  But in 87' lots of cars didn't have it.  Our Ford LTD didn't even have electric windows.  Our only way of staying cool on car trips was to open the windows, let the wind blow in, and spray ourselves with a spray bottle filled with water.  So, leaving at three a.m. was crucial. Driving through the Flagstaff area on Interstate forty, my dad became a little groggy.  My sister Angela and I were very awake in the back seat.  We watched my dad veer in between all three lanes for a good twenty minutes before we both decided he must be falling asleep.  After a brief discussion on whether or not we should squirt him with our spray bottle from the back seat, we decided to ask him if he'd like us to do so.  His reply was "yes".  I cranked that bottle to jet stream and squeezed as hard as I could.  It was a good shot too, hitting him right around the right ear and neck.  This took my half sleeping father by surprise and he yelled out.  "Ahh!"  "What did you do that for!".  I guess he had not been fully coherent when asked the question that he had replied yes to!  The water did the job, and he was very much awake.  He made the decision to pull over to a rest area and sleep for a couple of hours.  The trip in total was around eight hundred miles.  Even if we tried driving straight through it would take us twelve hours!  I loved traveling by car.  Loved looking out the windows at all the new scenery.  My mom and dad would start counting Antelope and it was fun to all keep a running count to see who saw the most.  We were too naive to think to cheat.  Heck, there was no prize anyway, so why would we feel the need to elaborate on our numbers.    We'd also see how many different license plates we could find.  Vicki mostly slept on these trips.  It was a long time to spend in a car that only seated five and there were five of us.  We'd also drive back to South Dakota now and then.  That trip would take us three days.  My dad did all the driving.  Those are some long days.  He was a good commander too.  He'd have everyone awake at six a.m. to start each day.  Long days require and early start!  My grandparents lived on maybe a two-acre lot near Farmington, NM.  In the front near the hwy was a barranca of sorts that always seemed to have water in it for watering crops.  My sisters and I would play in their large yard.  One of our favorite things to do was find sticks and pretend they were motorcycle handlebars.  We'd run all over the place pretending like we were riding.  This included making motorcycle noises with our mouths.  Good cheap fun that was.  There were about a billion red and black ants on the property as well.  I used to get a magnifying glass and try to burn them.  Those things hurt when they bit you, I never felt bad about cooking them using the power of the sun.  If we were there in July, we'd buy fireworks.  I remember placing a Black Cat right into the hole of an ant hill.  When it blew, there were ant bodies strewn a good six inches away from the hole.  Some of the ants that had been blown out of their home remained intact.  Boy were they angry!  Lot of bites on my body that day.  One learned quickly not to stand around and watch!  My Aunt was at my grandparents' house on one trip.  She had brought her boyfriend with her.  He for some reason got a kick out of calling my dad 'Old McDonald'.  My dad did not find this funny in any way and was very tempted to teach this young man how hard it would be to eat a big mac with his jaw wired shut. That was an interesting trip for sure.  Surely my aunt's boyfriend didn't know he was making fun of a Vietnam Combat Warrior.  Maybe he would have thought better of his choice of words if he had known.  The boyfriend claimed to be able to make excellent goulash.  Well, my dad knew better and when the goulash was ready to eat, he and I quietly slipped away from the house and found a taco joint.  My mom was not very happy with him for that.  She too, probably would have preferred the tacos!  New Mexico has a rich history of Native American culture.  We'd drive out to the mountains and look for arrowheads.  My dad and uncle found a cave on one of these trips.  Inside the cave were numerous pottery artifacts along with some moccasins that were still in great shape.  They might still be there to this day as they left them alone not to disturb the ancient site.  Thunderstorms would roll through while we were on these explorations.  The smell of mesquite and sage with the first few drops of rain is a very pleasant one!  These were epic adventures we had and all they cost us was a few gallons of gas, and our time.  My grandpa was a tail gunner in World War two.  His plane would actually be forced to crash land.  I cannot remember which country they ended up in, but he fortunately survived the ordeal.  My grandma must have been at least fifty percent Navajo Indian.  There's an interesting story about her uncle being found wandering around the high desert.  He, supposedly, was a full blooded Native American.  If you've never been to Mesa Verde National Monument near the New Mexico, Colorado border it is well worth the trip.

As far as the rest of the world is concerned in eighty-seven, times were getting rough, and really, we have never looked back!  Black Monday occurred on October 19th of 87.  Worldwide losses were in the trillions.  There were fears of a reprise of the Great Depression afterwards.  Luckily, this was not the case.  Median home prices would jump another six percent up to $139,000.00.  A tighter inventory was to blame of course.  Prices continued to rise on everything except wages.  Most companies weren't even giving raises to simply outpace the inflation rate.  

Popular movies in 87 were Wish You Were Here, Dead of Winter, and Empire of The Sun.  That is actually still a very good movie.  Another good flick starring Arnold Schwarzenegger titled Predator.  Hit songs that year were, I Wanna Dance with Somebody by Whitney Houston.  Nothings Gonna Change My Love for You by Glen Medeiros.  And I Just Can't Stop Loving You by Michael Jackson.

I was loving my life living up the Canyon.  I'd make it on to the boys seventh grade basketball team.  We were a decent team and no, I was not a starter.  But it was my first experience of team sports.  We got to go to a few away games over the season thanks to parent drivers.  This is when my ears would hear my first rap song.  I still, to this day, do not like listening to rap music.  The music, and the experience of being with another kids' parents, who didn't have the same parenting guidelines as my parents, was an eye opener.

"I think that real friendship always makes us feel such great gratitude, because the world almost always seems like a very hard desert, and the flowers that grow there seem to grow against such high odds".

- Stephen King The Eyes of the Dragon