Eighth-grade was a dark time for me. My eighth-grade teacher, our principal, loved arithmetic and therefore we had no English period. To add insult to injury he had a double arithmetic period. I just remembered as I was writing this, as I got older, math became extremely difficult. In high school, I had the lowest letter mark, E, on my report card. At night, early on in my arithmetic days, I sat at our dining room table in the late evening crying because I couldn't do my math.

 

I couldn't figure out the word problems. It was getting late and I should have been headed for bed. My mother came out to the table, I wanted to go to bed. It was certainly the hour for it, but Mother was determined to help me finish the long arduous assignments. Why do math teachers give pages and pages of assignments?

 

I would sit hunched over with my head on my arm to the point of exhaustion and tears. Mother sat quietly down beside me. She gently asked me clarifying questions to the word problems and wrote down my nearly inaudible response. I think the teacher knew my mother had done it for me. It was her writing but it didn't matter. It was done and he never said a word.

 

I’ve told of the dances at the town hall for junior high kids, where I  was the belle of the ball. As you’ve heard, I was by far the most popular girl for dancing the jitterbug. However, Buddy, one of the boys I had often fought with in the seventh grade did something so mean it changed everything for me. I was always in my glory, I loved to dance.

 

Maybe it was to get back at me for giving his desk such an angry shove that he tipped over and was caught feet up between his desk and the one behind him. He’d deserved it. The last day of school had arrived and he had teased me for what would be the final time that year. Even though summer had erased the act of retaliation from my memory, it had not, from his sick scheming mind.

 

He’d seen all of the boys asking me to dance and was determined to put a stop to that.  Shortly after the eighth-grade session began, right in front of me, he made fun of the boys for dancing with me. He must have reached the ones who weren’t in that classroom because no one ever asked me to dance again. Karma may have taken over, he passed early in life and did not get to enjoy a full life.

 

Healing took place later on when Teddy and Timmy wanted to date me. What fun. You may remember it was Timmy I pushed over the railing on our front porch and Teddy who chased me around the neighborhood with a BB gun. I was dating these guys? Kind of funny. We went to the dances at the Town Hall. I remember one time Timmy and I were waltzing and someone made fun of the way we were dancing. We were slightly nonplussed but were still having a great time.

 

And what did they have in Phys. Ed. for a whole semester when I went to ninth grade at the new high school? Dance lessons. Worse yet, was the flamingo-colored one-piece gym suit I had to wear for everything else. That was the year I learned I am combination lock challenged. I was being presented with more confusing math than ever.

 

When I was working at the Women's Shelter, the food room was secured with a combination lock. They had to change that style of lock. People would starve to death if they were waiting for me to get into the food supply room.

 

During my high school gym class almost daily, I profusely perspired the first fifteen minutes into the class period, not because I was doing any physical running in the gym, but because my mind was racing, struggling to figure out how to get to that flamingo prize, padlocked in a wire basket with little squares of mesh too small to pull it through. Trust me, I attempted that more than once. My fingers were too big and the cloth was too bulky.

 

I had no other choice than to keep working at the combination. No one even came to look for me as I struggled almost in tears turning left then right waiting for the tumblers to click so I could snap the lock open. When I was finally successful I still had to put on that awkward suit, and join a session already long in progress. I hoped it would help me forget I would have the same math nightmare the following day and the next, ad nauseum.

 

The one good thing about that freshman year was the chance to pitch on the softball team in the fall. I met and developed a great relationship with the catcher who was a senior, whom I had a crush on. She may have had one on me too because we did enjoy each other. We’d practice together and laugh a lot. It was effortless to pitch the ball right to her mitt.

 

I guess it paid off. I don't remember it, however, I'm reading here as documented over 20 years ago, we won many games. I was still hitting those home runs we recall broke the window of the lady who had the audacity to move her house right at the end of our softball field, across from my house.

 

I went on to pitch no-hitters and excellent winning games, as I moved on to the next school, which you will hear more about. In recent years, I have been unsuccessful in my attempts to contact my former high school crush. Her ex-girlfriend told me she had burned her face severely, in some fire and she isn't stepping out into public very much.

 

It would be fun to reminisce with her about our practices when life was simple and we could laugh and enjoy each other.