Full Frame
6
School Daze
“MOM, I NEED NEW CLOTHES for school!” I said as we left the building after registering Kat and me for classes. Thank heavens school didn’t start for almost a month. I was not ready for this.
In my book, it had been a disastrous day. We’d gone to the school with Mom to register for fall classes that would start the day after Labor Day. Classes themselves were pretty standard for juniors. I had English, US History, Algebra II, Biology, Speech, and Spanish I. I hadn’t taken any language at Calumet High School and they said I needed two years if I wanted to get into college.
Alternatively, they wanted to put me in a shop class. Word of my refinishing a couple of bicycles and a motorcycle had gotten around the community, but I wanted to take an art class. They pooh-poohed that idea as being worthless for my future, which meant my one elective would be either chorus or physical education. Like those would be a great benefit to me in college or life. I couldn’t sing a note, so I took PE. What a waste.
We toured the whole building so Kat could see where she’d have her classes in sixth grade. I could see her getting ready to throw a tantrum. This was an old school building, built near the turn of the century. The floors creaked, the steps were worn in grooves, the desks were some pre-war vintage that actually had holes for inkpots. One of the things about Calumet Heights was that the elementary school was pretty new—as in less than ten years. This was going to be a real step backward in Kat’s mind.
The elementary school, junior high, and high school were all in the same building. High school was on the top two floors, junior high on the first floor, and elementary in an annex, all on one floor. The guidance counselor assigned me a locker that smelled like spoiled milk. She said maintenance would be through to clean all the lockers before school started. Poor guys. I had to acquire and bring my own combination lock and was required to leave the combination at the desk on the first day of school. They did random locker checks and advised me that I should be sure no contraband was in my locker at any time.
I really didn’t know what they expected to find.
Then we got to the dress code. This school was rigid. First of all, we weren’t allowed to wear blue jeans or athletic shoes in the school except in gym. No T-shirts could be worn alone, but boys were required to wear them or undershirts under their regular shirts. All shirts had to have a collar. Man! I wondered how Tony was going to dress for school on his motorcycle. Girls had to wear dresses or skirts and blouses. Skirts had to touch the floor when the girl was on her knees. This would get laughed out of the building in the city. The miniskirt rage had hit and a lot of girls wore skirts that barely made it halfway down their thighs.
And I’d need a haircut. The rules indicated no ‘mop-top or Beatles’ hairstyles. Boys’ hair had to be off the forehead and above the ear. My hair had just gotten to a length over my ears that I was happy with. I needed a haircut. I was not enthused.
Worst of all, the dress code meant that I needed new clothes. Or at least new to me clothes. I’d been dressing in hand-me-downs from neighbors and Goodwill clothes, for years. We usually got something new on birthdays and at Christmas. That was fine in a city where the clothes could have come from anywhere. Getting clothes at Goodwill out here meant that any given day I might meet someone who said, “Oh, I wore that shirt when it was new last year.” Just great!
“Don’t worry, Nate,” Mom soothed me. “We’ll make a trip into the city next week and get you what you need. I’m sure you’ll need notebooks and gym clothes, too. I want your shoes looked at. They’re getting pretty worn.”
My feet had grown along with the rest of me. I admitted that my shoes were all uncomfortable. I just wasn’t looking forward to this at all. But at least we’d get to visit the city. I was hoping I’d get a chance to stop at Camera Warehouse and get some more chemicals for my new darkroom.
The darkroom was coming together. Dad helped me build it and we painted the inside black. I had to deal with how to have a door and keep light out.
The answer turned out to be in the room itself. Mr. Barkley not only kept stuff from his own store up there, but occasionally he ‘rescued’ things from other places. I guess at one time or another, the Catholic church had heavy dark drapes that surrounded their chancel area. Behind the drapes, they hid all kinds of stuff that was only needed occasionally. They had a lectern, baptismal font, various communion services, and a bunch of other things. Right after the war, they remodeled the area and the drapes were removed. Rather than throwing them out, Mr. Barkley rescued them. I checked with him and he gave me permission to use them for a door to my darkroom and to hang the heavy drapes in front of the windows in the room. They effectively blacked out all light in the room and cut the need for the lamps to be burning all night in the windows.
Dad helped me buy the materials for the room and build it. I think he was really happy to be able to use some of the tools he’d bought through the years and never used. It took us nearly to the end of the month to get it finished.
On Monday the week after we registered for school, we took off for the city. Much to my disappointment, we weren’t going to Chicago. Dubuque was only an hour away, instead of three plus to Chicago. What was better was that we didn’t go straight to Goodwill. Mom took Kat and me to JC Penney. She sent me to look at teen boys’ wear and dragged Kat to the girls’ department.
I knew there was a method. She needed to watch over Kat and control both the style of clothes she was permitted and the amount she could spend. I had the dress code and a budget. She’d approve each item before she paid for it, but I’d be responsible for getting the biggest bang for the buck. I couldn’t believe I was being turned loose in JC Penney with that much to spend. Preaching must pay pretty well.
I followed the outline that Mom worked out after we looked at my closet. I’d returned my clothes to the closet and she inspected what was hung, making me try on several things and putting things that didn’t fit in a bag. Recycle, she said. We take things to Goodwill for others and then go in and buy other people’s castoffs for ourselves.
I know when Naomi was in school, she was forced to wear the clothes that Deborah outgrew until Naomi got bigger than Deborah. She was pretty miserable about it, too. At least it had been so long since Deborah and Naomi left home that there were no clothes of theirs left that Kat had to wear. She didn’t get all new, but at least it wasn’t family hand-me-downs.
I was five-eleven and change now and was sure I was going to top six foot—I knew. Unfortunately, that meant all my pants were up above my ankles. Most of my shirts still fit, though some of the sleeves felt tight.
I chose two pairs of slacks and two button-down shirts, underwear, and socks. Then I chose a sweater. I knew it would be cold this winter and I wasn’t sure how well the school was heated. When Mom caught up to me, Kat was dejectedly dragging a shopping bag along, obviously dissatisfied with the result of her shopping spree. Mom looked at what I’d chosen, confirmed that it fit, and paid for my stuff in about ten minutes.
Then we went to a sporting goods store and got the regulation gym shorts, T-shirt, and jock strap for me, and gym clothes for Kat. It was embarrassing to have my mother ask if the strap was the right size. I just said, “Yeah, it’s fine.” I glanced at the package and noted it was a Large. At least I hadn’t grabbed an Extra-Large or a Small. How the heck do they size these things anyway?
Our final stop was a discount shoe store where I got a pair of plain-toe black work shoes and a pair of high-top basketball shoes for gym. Kat got a pretty pair of pink shoes, a nice-looking pair of saddle shoes, and a pair of tennis shoes for her gym classes.
We stopped at a diner to eat a late lunch and then headed back to Tenbrook.
I really wanted to get my darkroom setup finished so I could start working. Of course, there were other responsibilities to take care of, too. Like laundry. Mom insisted that all our new stuff be washed and ironed before we could wear it. Guess who got to babysit the laundry in the laundromat Wednesday. Yours truly.
Mom got back to the laundromat just as I finished folding the last of the clothes. Then I had to take them home and iron them. I know that sounds like a dumb job for a guy to have, but I really didn’t mind most of the time. I sprayed the shirts down with starch and pressed them neatly, then hung them on hangers. I quickly figured out that you need to iron corduroy on the wrong side. My new slacks had a small patch on the inside of the left cuff where the cord was flattened out. Not noticeable and it would fluff out the next time it was washed. I ironed Kat’s skirts and blouses, all Dad’s and my handkerchiefs, and our napkins. By the time I was finished, it was dinner time and I knew I wasn’t going to finish the work in the darkroom tonight. Tomorrow, I’d be able to start taking my equipment over.
Mom wanted to see my setup, which was natural, I guess. She volunteered to drive over to the back of the Center Marketplace with my boxes and bottles of chemicals. She even carried a box up the four flights of stairs outside the building to the top floor. With the blackout curtains up, the room was really dark until I turned on a light. This had always been a storage area, so the lighting wasn’t as great as the fluorescents in the main part of the store on the first three floors. Mom looked around the room after she’d examined the darkroom itself. I moved the boxes into the darkroom and planned to start assembling things as soon as she left. I turned to find her sitting on a little bench kind of thing that used to be in the shoe department, I guess.
“Well, this is very cozy,” she said.
“I guess it would be if there was some comfortable furniture. I’m not going to live here, though. It’s just a work space,” I answered.
“And what kind of work do you plan to do?” she asked. That was dumb. I had my darkroom.
“Well, it’s got good light control for the darkroom, so I figure I can develop and print photos. Mr. Barkley said that I could use anything up here as a prop for photo shoots if I get inspired. That’s all.”
“That’s probably enough to get you in trouble.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I can smell cigarette smoke.”
“Mr. Barkley has a chair one floor down where he sits and smokes when he thinks Mrs. Barkley won’t find out,” I laughed. “You don’t think I’m smoking, do you?”
“Well, after seeing your photos at the fair, I was a little concerned.”
“Oh. The girls didn’t really smoke the cigarettes. They just used them as a prop to get in the pose I wanted. Mom, I’m not into booze, drugs, or cigarettes. You don’t have to worry about that.”
“There are other things.”
“Like?”
“Oh, I wish I could depend on your father to have this talk. He means well, but he’s not very good at it. Did you know that your older sisters weren’t allowed to date until they were seventeen and then they had a hard and fast nine o’clock curfew? That was your father’s solution to giving them the facts of life.”
“I’ll be seventeen next month and I haven’t been out on a date yet,” I snorted.
“Oh? How about all the times you were out with Nancy Hargrove?”
“We weren’t dating. We just met up at school dances and stuff.”
“I see. Those weren’t dates. Nonetheless, I was glad when you stopped meeting her ‘at dances and stuff’ because it made it easier to tell you we were moving,” Mom said. “I can’t say you broke up because you weren’t dating. Right?”
“Right. It turned out that she mostly just wanted me to take pictures of her and give her prints. I didn’t mind much because I wanted to take pictures of her. But I guess she got her portfolio filled and didn’t need me anymore.” It also turned out that she didn’t want me to kiss her, but I didn’t tell Mom that.
“That’s what I want to talk to you about. Mr. Barkley said you could use things up here for props in a photo shoot. I’m guessing you don’t plan to take a lot of still lifes, though I think there are some interesting things you could arrange for them.”
“Um… I did think I’d do a few.”
“And then that you’d have models who posed with or among things up here for you to photograph.”
“Uh… I guess,” I said slowly. “I could have used some of this stuff when I was posing Judy and Janice. And, Mom, Patricia is an absolute natural at modeling. She has ideas about how to move and then she moves and freezes, moves and freezes, so I have an opportunity to capture the next pose. Of course, the only prop we needed for her was the motorcycle.”
“That was a rather provocative pose,” she said.
“She wanted that to give to her boyfriend. Then they suggested I show it. It’s really a good picture,” I defended myself.
“I am not criticizing, Nate. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m trying very hard not to be judgmental about things. Professor Cassel at Garrett counseled our class regarding assuming that because we were ministers, we were also appointed judges. I’ve been called to minister, not to judge. So, what I have to say is not directed in suspicion about any one or all of the girls you have photographed, be it Nancy, or Judy, or Janice, or Patricia. I’m concerned about you being up here alone with any of them.”
“I’m not going to bring girls up here to make out with, Mom. Mr. Barkley kind of talked to me about that, too. It would be against our understanding on the use of this space,” I said.
“I’m glad you take your understanding seriously. I was told, however, that last year at camp, you refused to sign the pledge.”
That kind of pissed me off. A preacher at camp had given us a long lecture about how terrible and disrespectful sex was and pressured everyone to sign a pledge of abstinence until marriage.
“Mom, I don’t plan to get married for a long time. At least until I’m out of college and maybe a long time after that. I don’t think that a fifteen-year-old should be coerced into signing a pledge about something they really have no understanding of. It wasn’t because I planned to go out and start having sex right away. It was because I didn’t like being guilted and bullied into committing to something for when I’m an adult when I was still a child.”
“I’m proud of you,” she said, cooling my heating temper with her calmness. “You’ve always been pretty level-headed. It’s not you or your behavior that I’m directly concerned about. It’s others who you might ask to… uh… model for you. They might have different expectations.”
Mom fidgeted around on the bench in a way very unlike her kind of stiff religious persona. She continued.
“Photographers, musicians, theatre people, and probably sports stars all have a more open view about what might be acceptable behavior between the sexes. In private, a girl might allow herself to be freer in what she does and how she poses for a photographer. She might believe that freedom is because there is something special between the two of you. Even if she doesn’t suggest sex or even appear to make herself available for it, she might be thinking that it would be a good opportunity with a nice guy to try out more than just having a photo taken. It is a situation rife with possibilities for misinterpretation and hurt feelings. She might justify her poses, like Patricia did, as something she’d only do for her boyfriend. Only, unlike Patricia, she might be thinking you were going to be her boyfriend.”
“Wow, Mom. Do you really think Judy or Janice would be like that? They dress up in costumes all the time. Taking a picture of them is just a natural extension of their costume play.”
“I’m not making a judgment on any of your models, Nate. I’m warning you to be watchful and cautious that you are not making an unspoken contract that you will regret in the future. I’m not unaware of changing moral values. It seems to be cyclic. My mother in the early twenties had far more liberal morals than I did growing up in the thirties. I have no doubt, seeing the news of the hippies and war protesters and civil rights protesters, that we are shifting the other way again. Who am I to decide that one is wrong simply because it wasn’t the way I behaved? And I can’t even say that my own behavior was always stellar. But I believed, and I convinced your father, that our behavior implied a long-term commitment and that we would get married. I guess it is my own behavior I am warning you about in others.”
I did not know what to do with the information I’d just been given. I just stood there in silence.
“Well, I’ll get back home and start dinner preparations. I know you want to get started putting your equipment together. Just remember that if there is ever a time you want to ask something, please do. I will continue to try my best to be non-judgmental.”
“Um… Mom? Next weekend the State Fair starts and runs until Labor Day. I know it’s a long way to Springfield, but is there a chance we could go one day? I’d really like to see how my photos do in the broader competition and would like to see what kind of photos are being exhibited by others.”
“Oh. Well, it is quite a ways down there. I’ll talk to your father about it and see what can be arranged.”
That really killed the excitement I had for my new studio and darkroom. I fiddled with unboxing the enlarger and developing pans, then sat on the bench to roll a couple of cassettes of film.
Let me say that Mom is pretty cool for a preacher. She could have really been a stick in the mud, but it seemed like she was over her head when it came to being both mother and filling in the gaps left by Dad. I wondered if she knew about the photos I had in my private album in my desk, under my high school yearbooks. Maybe I should move it over here to the studio, but then I wouldn’t have it when I needed it at night. Just thinking about the nipples in those pictures made me hard. I knew there were guys who kept copies of girlie magazines in their bottom drawer, but I’d actually seen these nipples. They were special.
Of course, about anything could make me hard these days. It was funny that while I was actually taking pictures of Patricia and Judy and Janice, and looking through the lens, I was focused on the light and the settings and being steady when I shot. When I looked up at the girl, it was like an instant boner. I guess I didn’t mind that. I’d be happy with a boner for any one of those three. Or probably any other girl.
It was odd that I hadn’t met any other girls from my new school yet. I guess there isn’t really much to attract them into town or down our street. There had been a few at the river on the Fourth, but I didn’t get more than a passing nod from them. There were, according to the guidance counselor, fifty-six people in my class, divided precisely in half between twenty-eight girls and twenty-eight boys. I’d met three girls and three guys, so more than ten percent. I was pretty sure I didn’t know ten percent of the people in my class at Calumet High. Even in my home room.
Mom didn’t want to be gone on Saturday before church on Sunday. She always took her ‘day off’ on Monday. Dad got the day off, so the Monday before Labor Day weekend, we were all in the car and headed south by 7:30 in the morning. Kat just curled up in her corner and went back to sleep. It was a wonder she had clothes on instead of her pajamas. I wore shorts and my old sneakers with a T-shirt. It was still going to be hot down there. It was supposed to be 75° and sunny with high humidity.
We got into town on Veterans Highway and the fairgrounds were almost immediately on our left. I couldn’t believe we had to pay two dollars just to park! I guess everything has a price during the fair.
The first thing was to find Mom and Dad a cup of coffee. I figured I’d get a Coke later on, but eleven o’clock in the morning was too early for it. Since I’d begged for this trip, we headed straight for the Artisans’ Building where amateur and professional arts and crafts were exhibited; it was behind the horse barns. The exhibit was pretty big and it took a few minutes to reach the black and white photography exhibit.
The picture of Patricia on the motorcycle had a blue ribbon and a purple ribbon with a pom on it, indicating it was best of category. There were other blue ribbons, red ribbons, white ribbons, yellow ribbons, and I think I saw a green ribbon. Everything had some kind of ribbon on it. The smoking picture had a blue ribbon on it and the one of the two girls at the train station had a red. Cool! I’d won a State Fair Championship!
I looked around at the other black and white photos and decided the judges had classified them pretty well. Of course, I thought mine should all have been blue ribbons, but they were classed with photos of similar caliber, so I couldn’t complain. The color photo exhibit was a little harder for me to understand. I could see the draw to having color prints of the baby or your wedding, but most of the pictures exhibited, I thought, would have been better in black and white. I failed to see the big draw for color photos. It was like a recording of life where the black and white was more like an interpretation of life.
I didn’t care if I never put color film in my camera. It was too hard to get processed anyway.
I took a couple of general photographs so I’d have a reference of what the exhibit looked like and, of course, I took a picture of my winning photograph with its ribbons. I figured Tony and Patricia would appreciate seeing that.
Then we went over to the Commodities Pavilion and the Exposition Hall. There were some cool exhibits, but most booths were trying to sell something. There were three different cookware booths with demonstrations, two people selling eyeglass cleaner, a leatherworker, and no less than seven roofing and siding contractors. That’s just to name a few of close to a hundred exhibitors.
When we came out of that, Kat spotted the midway and wanted to go ride everything. I can take or leave rides, but I knew I’d be going on any of the bigger rides with her. She wanted nothing to do with the kiddie rides. Mom bought us tickets for the Scrambler and I endured. Kat looked a little green after that and didn’t want to go on anything that went around in circles. Fine by me. The Mad Mouse was a kind of roller coaster that went straight out to the end of a track before it made its turn. It always looked like you were just going to keep flying off into nothing.
But four rides was the limit. I told Kat that if I didn’t go on the last ride with her, she’d have an extra ticket to take one more. Sold! That gave me an opportunity to get my camera from Dad and get a couple nice shots of Kat on the Carousel. We all got hotdogs and chips with a soft drink, used the bathrooms, and loaded in the car for the trip back north.
It was a good day. I couldn’t wait to tell Tony and Patricia about the prize. Unfortunately, I didn’t see them all week.
The first day of school started ‘just great.’ I rode my bicycle over to the school. I was supposed to be escorting Kat, but as soon as she could, she took off and left me behind as she wheeled around the back to the elementary school entrance. I headed toward the bike rack in front of the high school to hear my name called. I turned to see Tony and Patricia pull up to a parking spot.
“Put the Shadow over here by the Black Snake. No one will dare to bother it. They’ll think we’re brothers.”
I parked the bike beside his motorcycle and had to admit they kind of looked good together. Patricia’s skirt had blown almost all the way to her waist and she showed a lot of leg when she got off the motorcycle.
“Hey, Nate. How’d my picture do?” she asked.
“I was going to tell you but didn’t see you all week. We won best of class. That’s best of all the black and white photos at the State Fair.”
“All right!” she yelled. We headed toward the school. I carried my gym bag with my notebook in it and a padlock, and carried my camera over my shoulder. I sincerely hoped I didn’t have to cart textbooks to and from school. I wouldn’t be able to ride my bike.
“You two should come up with some more sexy shots,” Tony said. “I’d dig a whole collection of my girl.”
“Oh, Tony. You’re so sweet. Really? You’d really let Nate take more pictures of me?”
“Sure I would. The two of you got me straightened out when I flew off the handle last month. I understand now. I dig it. Taking pictures isn’t making off with my girlfriend. Do it!” he said. Holy cow. My pants started to get tight just thinking about taking more sexy pictures with Patricia.
We headed into the school. Patricia checked my schedule and walked with me to English class. One thing about this school was that the classes weren’t all that big. You figured there were only fifty-six in our year and that was too many for one class, so there were only a couple dozen of us in each section. In Chicago, we were lucky if there were less than thirty-five in a class.
The first class was pretty predictable. Mrs. Grayson said she would not assign seats unless we were disruptive. As juniors, she expected us to know how to behave in class and that we would optimize our learning opportunity.
“You will be immersed in the American Experience this year. Your class schedules call for this English class, which includes American literature of the past 200 years, and you should all be enrolled in Mr. Hennessey’s American History class. Much of our syllabus will overlap and you will find three joint assignments, including your final junior project. While we will be grading the same project, we will have different items that we will be weighing. You’ll get that assignment at the beginning of next term. Now, let’s talk a few minutes about what the ‘American Dream’ means.”
The class looked like it would be pretty interesting if she kept up the pace she started at. I wanted to take a picture of her in front of the class, but I figured I’d better wait until I’d asked her about it before I just started snapping the shutter. Patricia sat in the next seat over from me in the second row of the classroom. Another girl named Christine sat on the other side. She was nice and said hello when we sat down. We didn’t have time for much of any other chat. She got up and headed straight out to her next class and I checked my schedule.
“Biology?” Patricia asked. “Follow me.”
That was easy to do. In fact, I wasn’t paying much attention to anything in the hall except following her. I loved the way her skirt bounced.
“Just a minute there, Mr. Hart.”
I jumped and looked around. Mrs. Abernathy, the assistant principal and guidance counselor who set up my schedule, was walking toward me like I’d been speeding.
“I don’t know what kind of rules they had in Chicago, but you can’t be carrying a camera around school here. This is a place of learning, not of entertainment.”
“Ma’am, my camera is very important to me. It’s what I plan to do for a career.” I saw Patricia keep walking away toward class, maybe even hurrying a little.
“Photography is a very nice hobby to have, but you can’t call taking snapshots a career. You may lock your camera in your locker for after school or give it to me and I’ll hold it in the office.”
“But Mrs. Abernathy. I don’t just take snapshots. I just won best of category for portraits in the county fair and my photo was awarded best of show in black and white photography at the state fair this week. Certainly, you must see that having a camera with me is very important. I can hardly focus on a career in photojournalism without a camera.” Not to mention that I didn’t trust her not to fool around with it.
I thought she was just going to take it from me, but she paused a second.
“Best of show? That’s quite an honor. And you want to become a photojournalist. Hmm. Come with me.”
“What about class? I’m supposed to be in biology,” I said as the bell rang.
“I’ll explain to Mr. Franks. I want you to meet Miss Sullivan.” We walked all the way past the office to get to Miss Sullivan’s business class. “Miss Sullivan, may I have a word?” Mrs. Abernathy asked. The teacher came to the hall, admonishing the typing class to continue with their first exercise.
“Yes, Mrs. Abernathy?”
“This is Nate Hart. Is that supposed to be Nathaniel? No? Well, Mr. Hart has aspirations of becoming a photojournalist. It seems his photographs have gotten some notoriety at the county and state fairs. I thought perhaps he would be a good candidate for your job as newsletter and yearbook photographer,” Mrs. Abernathy said.
“Really? How wonderful. Here’s how it works, Nate. I’ll supply you with a roll of film before any major school or sporting event and you show up to take pictures. I’d advise you to keep your camera with you around school, but always ask the teacher before you take any candid photos in class. Remember, in class, your job is to learn what is being taught, not to take pictures. We’ll send each finished roll in to Grossman Photo Lab in Huntertown and choose what we want from the prints.”
“Thank you, Miss Sullivan. I appreciate the help with film, but I do my own processing and printing of photos. I have a darkroom here in town,” I said proudly.
“Splendid. Thirty-five cents for each standard 5x7 print. That’s what the printer prefers to use for the yearbook.”
“Yes, ma’am. That works fine.”
“Now, I must really get you to your class and Miss Sullivan needs to return to hers. I suggest you stop by after school to get to know each other further,” Mrs. Abernathy said, taking hold of my arm.
“Nice to meet you Miss Sullivan,” I said as I was being tugged away by Mrs. Abernathy. She nodded and returned to her class.
“Now, it seems I have no choice but to let you carry a camera around school,” Mrs. Abernathy smirked. “Some days I just can’t win.” I didn’t think she was very serious.
Mr. Franks was still trying to learn everyone’s name. He was a first-year teacher and would be the head basketball coach. He looked to be about six-six. I just settled down on the stool Patricia had saved for me. Judy had positioned herself on my other side so the three of us shared a lab table. I wasn’t going to enjoy cutting up a frog, but there might be some interesting pictures to be had in this class.
Then we headed for US History. Mr. Hennessey took roll and came back to my name.
“Hart? I haven’t seen you on the football field. Practice started last week.”
“Uh… I don’t play football, sir. I didn’t even know we had a team. I’m a photographer.” I was really laying it on everywhere with the photographer bit, but I was pretty damn proud of what I’d accomplished since coming to Tenbrook.
“This is our first year to have a football team and we need every able-bodied man in the school out there to run the ball,” he said loudly. I just stared at him. No way was I going to wear a football helmet and run into things. He dropped his voice a little. “Make sure you take good pictures of them.” Then he was off and running with the syllabus and distributing textbooks.
I had Algebra II and PE before lunch. Mr. Phelps in Algebra was a quiet guy who was also the assistant coach for the basketball team. I discovered Mr. Franks was not only my biology teacher, but taught phys ed after his first two classes of biology in the morning. He seemed more comfortable on the basketball court.
I joined Andy and Tom at lunch and got ribbed about getting sandwiched between Patricia and Judy all morning. Well, the first class, Christine sat beside me. I thought she was pretty nice. A girl named Karen sat beside Andy and she introduced herself with a sidelong look at Andy. I guessed they were girlfriend and boyfriend, but they didn’t do a lot to acknowledge it.
In Speech class after lunch, I finally started to meet some girls—a girl. Miss Kellogg was the teacher and she also taught senior English and a couple of other classes.
“We’re going to get loosened up a little with introductions. You have five minutes to engage in conversation with the person seated next to you. You will notice the seats in this classroom are arranged in pairs and that indicates who your partner is for the first day of class. In the next five minutes, I want you to discover the name of your partner, his or her favorite food and music, something about him or her that no one else knows, and what that person wants to be known for when you think about him or her. Then you will have the opportunity to introduce your partner to the class. Ready? Feel free to adjust your chairs so you are facing each other or to stand up if you prefer. And go.”
We were right into this. There’d been no roll call, so I immediately held out my hand to the sweet looking girl beside me. Wow! I lucked out on this one.
“Hi. I’m Nate Hart. New here, so I’m especially glad to meet another girl… er… person.” She took my hand and didn’t immediately release it.
“Oh, yeah. I’m Anna Marx. I guess we’re both juniors, huh?” When she finally released my hand, I quickly jotted down her name. She saw what I was doing and scrambled to do the same. “Nate Hart, was it? Sorry, I’m a little scattered right now. Have you eaten the hot fudge sundae at Sweet Treats? It’s on Main Street. They are to die for.” I jotted that down.
“I haven’t yet, but I’d love to join you there sometime. Do you like to dance?”
“Oh yeah. Beatles, of course. And Herman’s Hermits.”
“Of course, the Beatles,” I agreed. “I like some of the new folksy stuff, too, like Judy Collins.”
“Really? Hardly anyone here knows her. ‘Hard Lovin’ Loser’ was good, but I liked her rendition of ‘Suzanne.’
“It’s hard to go wrong with Leonard Cohen.” We almost lost track of time and forgot to write some things down, but that was the best five minutes I’d had in school all day!
“This is Nate Hart, who is a new member of our mighty class of ’68,” Anna said in her introduction of me. “He likes all the same music I do, and he likes to dance to it, too. He’s an award-winning photographer and um… he doesn’t have a girlfriend. Yet.” She blushed and the whole class started laughing.
“That could change in an instant,” I whispered. “Want to go to the football game with me Friday afternoon?”
“Okay,” she squeaked.
Wow! Just wow!
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