The Greatest Hits of Middle School
A Memoir of Buddies, Girlfriends, Bullies, and Catholics
There had to have been something about me that attracted these hoods.
You may not believe what I’m about to tell you, and I wouldn’t blame you. I have trouble believing it myself, nearly sixty years later.
Continue reading “Bullyland, Part III: Hands Don’t Fail Me Now”
IN WHICH I learn the subtle side of conflict.
Paul Dabuse was the toughest kid in the seventh grade and I knew this because I once saw him fight. It was enough to brand him in my brain as someone I didn’t want to mess with. Continue reading “Bullyland, Part II: Up a Notch”
As a pious Catholic boy, I had never received lessons on how to deal with bullies.
IN WHICH I deal with one type of bully.
Ex-marine sergeant and Troop 16 scoutmaster George Murray strutted four patrols away from the one I was in, Patrol 7. Its leader, tall, lanky, wiry Paul “Gussie” Gusterton, was frantically trying to button the collar of his uniform. If he failed at that, he wouldn’t be able to attach his neckerchief properly. It would look . . . sloppy. And there would be consequences . . . .
Chris Montez1 had it right. “Any old dance that you wanna do.” When I was 13 at Holton-Richmond Junior High2, attending class in wooden desks with dried-up ink wells, I used to go to the school dances that happened third Friday each month. They were called “mixers,” because that’s what the girls and boys were supposed to do. Mix with adults gaping on. Of course not many of us did. The concept of a sock hop, with minimal supervision and an outta sight disk jockey, was yet to be in Danvers, Massachusetts.
Continue reading ““. . . the Twist, the Stomp, the Mash Potato too . . .””
