Attack of the Monsters of Eleventh. And Social Disease?

Eleventh Grade was to be my worse year academically in public school. I finished my Ninth Grade with a 1.77 average, which was my previous worst.  I managed a mere 1.57 average in eleventh, a very low C minus, very low. This may seem odd considering I made such an improvement in Tenth.

By Eleventh I had several friends and not many enemies. This factor did not improve my attention to school. I was far more interested in my outside activities. I also did not have a great slate of teachers and this really turned me off to school. As teachers went, so went my marks all through my school days; like my teachers my average rose, but dislike them, I caught the elevator to the bargain basement of cut rate marks.

My best subject was Driver’s Education, a required subject. I hadn't waited around to take this course  before getting my license. I had passed my driver’s test by early July and had two months of solo driving under my belt by the time my classes started in September after Labor Day.

Driver’s Ed was a full year subject, too. I was stuck with it for nine months. Considering myself already an experienced driver I probably should have been bored silly waiting for that baby to deliver, but I liked Mr. Alvin Alderfer, the instructor. Oddly enough I got an F in my midterm exam, but I finished the course with a B. It probably helped that I already had my license. It took the pressure off.

The course was kind of fun. We had these simulators in the classroom, which were like precursors to video games. You sat in this big box pretending to be a car with a steering wheel and foot pedals while a film ran before you. Kids chasing balls into the street, others on bicycles would pop out from between parked cars, an errant dog would dart across your path, and many more sudden appearances would challenge your reaction. Everything but the town drunk staggered into the car's path. The object was not to run over anyone. You got no points for kills.

As strange as it may seem, Plane Geometry proved to be my next best subject, it and health, but I’ll deal with health a little later. I got a C in geometry much to my surprise. That was a great morale booster. I had given up on math the year before. I had surrendered to my belief I could not do math after flopping Algebra.
Granted, Geometry sure wasn’t my favorite thing. I couldn’t seem to get any angle on how to do it.

I didn’t like Mrs. Shinehouse, the Geometry Teacher, nobody did, not while she had us in sight of her pointer. We kidded that when they build the school in 1912 she was already there and they put it up around her. She was an elder woman with gray hair pulled back in a bun, the very stereotype of the old-fashioned school marm. She was very tough. Nobody acted out in her classes. She forced us to do a lot of board work. You stood there with chalk in your fingers and sweat rolling down your face until you solved the problem or you couldn’t sit down. Often she kept pupils working after the bell, so there wasn't even rescue in that. She didn’t care if you were late for your next class or not. That was incentive to come to class prepared.

My assessment of Mrs. Shinehouse is she was a dedicated teacher who truly cared about her students. She wanted you to learn, dared you to learn and insisted you learn. It didn’t matter to her whether you liked her or hated her. Popularity was not her purpose for being there. Her purpose was to drum those degrees, angles and shapes into your brain. She even succeeded in making me an average math pupil, as uncomfortable as I was when called to the board. I say we need more Mrs. Shinehouses in this world.

The rest of my classes were Ds, evert last one of them, with a lot of Fs mixed in along the way. I had a lot of insane teachers giving me those marks.

In English I had Mr. Pidus. He looked like an old time movie version of the Latin Lover, sort of a Cesar Romero look.  I had him every day at 11:00 and I was always fighting sleep by that period. This was a class I often went into my out of body experiences, floating up above it all.

We had to give speeches in his class each and every marking period. In Junior High my one great strength was giving little classroom speeches, in Mr. Pidus’ English  the first speech I gave was one of the most boring speeches ever heard anywhere on God's green Earth and the planets that surround her on how television worked. It was technically correct, but dull as a test pattern. I did learn from the yawns and rolling eyes, and my speeches the rest of the year at least held the attention of my fellow classmates.

I would have done better in English if I had been a different sex. The girls made a beeline for the front row of his class. It was the best place for cute little lambs to entice the wolf. A little hitching up of the skirt worked wonders on hiking your grade level if you were female. A little lifting of my pant leg did nothing for me at all. Pidus lit up around any young lady passing through his sightline. His name was Pidus but it sure wasn’t pious.

I came into Chemistry with great expectations. I had been very interested in this subject, in sciences in general, back in grade school, even considering chemistry as a possible career path. I had anticipated having this class for years. It proved one of the biggest disappointments of my young life and by year-end I had crossed it off my list of interests. D. Marlin Horne was the teacher and I think we were his first class out of college. Look at his photo. Does that look like a happy man? He was very short, but with this incredible booming voice. You would have expected with such a deep voice he would easily command attention, yet he had no ability at controlling the class and he made Chemistry the dullest subject on earth, even duller than my lecture on television.

The school did little to help. We didn’t even have a lab. We met in a regular classroom. Every day we came to class and Horne stood (if he sat we wouldn’t have seen him) and bellowed out formulae. He would have an overhead projector and show sheet after sheet of these formulae. It might have helped if we could have seen the formulae applied to an experiment in a test tube or two, but we didn’t. Horne dissolved my interest in Chemistry faster than hydrofluoric acid dissolves silicon dioxide.

I did not have the good fortune to have Mr. Elliott for French II. I had Joan Grim, and she was all of that and my whole year proved grim. I took a dislike to her during the first class. I had trouble ever working for any teacher I disliked. Add to that my hearing problem with similar sounding words and this was not going to be one annee tres bonne. I had five Ds and five Fs and somehow finished with a D, allowing me to pass France. Merci pour afficher la pitie, Mme. Grim! 

There was something totally weird about our World History teacher. I swear he was crazy. His name was Sigmund Knies (pronounced: Kaa-neice) and he made up half the history he taught. He also brought in movies to show, but such might be a John Wayne epic with no relationship to World History. He took a dislike toward me, which usually teachers didn’t do. They might complain about my grades, but they normally were pleasant to me because I didn’t give them grief. Mr. Knies seemed to find nothing but fault with me. He is my only high school teacher to give me unsatisfactory marks in the deportment side of the card. He was very liberal with these, too. I got unsatisfactory in Cooperation, Responsibility, Seriousness of Purpose, Industry and Self-reliance. Think what he would have given me if I talked during his Wayne movies.

Mr. Buckwalter, the Marine DI, taught Eleventh Grade Health as well as Physical Education. I got a satisfactory in gym, by the way. Health I got a C. (Guess I was wrong about getting a D in everything; oh wait, I did say with the exception of Health, didn't I?)

Health was year long in Eleventh Grade. Boys and girls had separate Health classes with separate teachers, a lady for the girls and a gentleman for the boys. Well, Mr. Buckwalter, anyway. This was so the instructors could talk about S-E-X. Yes, by Eleventh Grade the powers that be decided maybe we should know about the birds and the bees.
They did not delve deeply into the subject however. I will summarize our sex education. A male has a penis. When a male marries and wants to have a baby, the male inserts his Penis (A) into the Female Socket (B). Sperm will magically swim from his penis and possibly penetrate the female egg. Yes, the female has an egg like a chicken. It must be why we call them “chicks”. If Mister Sperm gets lucky, the chick will have a baby. Apparently all it took was for me to place my Penis somewhere inside a woman for a baby to happen, where exactly was still kept some kind of secret. 

Although they described our penis to us in some graphic detail, as if we guys had never looked down and seen it, the Female Socket was not described. It remained just a socket and we were basically told not to plug our penises into it. The most important point stressed in our sex education was don’t do it until you are married.

Mr. Buckwalter explained how we boys should behave during our dates to prevent any premarital misappropriation of our penises and sockets.

“You might find yourself alone with some girl you like.” He began. "You may be in a car kissing. Remember your emotions are high at your age. You may experience some urges. You have to control them. If you ever feel such urges you need to go out behind the barn and take care of it yourself.”

In other words, if you are getting aroused, you need to go somewhere private and masturbate to dissipate the heat. He didn’t mean you took the girl out behind the barn. Actually it was surprising he recommended masturbation. Many people still considered this something of a sin and perversion. Remember Dr, Kellogg and his circumcision as a cure and punishment for masturbation? People said you would grow hair in your palms if you masturbated or worse go blind. (I use to check my palms a lot, but I couldn't see anything...ut oh!) Mr. Buckwalter’s more important advice was not to let things get to such a boiling point. Mr. Buckwalter recommended taking a lot of cold showers.

There was no mention of positions. There was no hint of oral or anal sex. No one uttered the word homosexuality in the room. Most of the discussion was not on the how and why of sex, but on all the bad things it could lead to. Pregnancy was a serious consequence of letting your hormones run away with you. No proper young man wanted to get a girl pregnant and ruin her life. (Shades of my father's advise.)

There were even worst things that might befall one called “Social Diseases”. We had a film showing the devastation of such things as syphilis, pictures of destroyed faces and warped brains. Health class was enough to give you nightmares and take a vow of celibacy.

Early in the summer after eleventh grade, Richard, Tommy and Suzy paid a visit. It was a languid day. We were lounging about behind my house. It was hot and we boys had our shirts off. My father had strung a hammock between two trees and Suzy and I were sitting on this hammock, gently swinging. We got slightly off balance and the hammock dumped us to the ground. I landed first and Suzy fell atop me. Her bottom came down on my face and my one lens shattered from the impact. She rolled off and I turned over carefully brushing away the broken glass before any got in my eye.

“What’s that rash under your arm?” Tommy asked.

I looked down and saw a red circle around my armpit. I didn’t know what it was. I pulled on my shirt to hide it. I was concerned about my broken glasses and what mom would say when I told her. I wasn’t going to worry about a rash.

Except I did worry about the rash, that was how naïve I was. I remembered all the stuff about “Social Diseases” we had been taught. Oh my gosh, I’ve gotten a venereal disease, I thought.  

I was now afraid to tell anyone I had this horrible, disgraceful thing. How this could have happened didn’t cross my mind. After all, I had not had sex with anyone. I had barely even kissed anyone at this point of my life. And if I did have a venereal disease, what kind of sex would I have been having that I caught it in my armpit?

“In a world where the HORROR never ends there is no escaping the HARPIES of JUNIOR HIGH!!!!”

We were presented with choices when we entered Ninth Grade. We were no longer in sections labeled Section A, Section B and so forth studying basic subjects. We were told to select a course reflective of some life endeavor. These were Academic, Commercial, Industrial Arts, Agriculture and General. I didn’t want to work in a stuffy office the rest of my life, so I ruled out Commercial (proving to be somewhat ironic, I suppose). Industrial Arts was not feasible with my history in Shop. Can you imagine four more years of magic belt hooks and cast iron pipe holders? I had no plans to be a Future Farmer of America and viewed General as the Future Dropouts of High School (certainly an unfair judgment, but that was my opinion). The best fit or more like the only fit seemed to be Academic. Believe it or not, I still had an interest in becoming a scientist.

The other name for Academic was College Preparatory. My parents weren’t certain I should take this selection. Oh, let's be brutally honest, they were downright hostile against the idea. They told me straight out to forget college, no way was I going to college. They did not purely base this on financial considerations; although that was part of it.

My parents had a dim view of higher education. They felt it didn’t prepare you for anything worthwhile, unless you were studying medicine or law. In fact, my mother worried me constantly about my “always having a book in front of my face”. She believed too much reading wore out the brain.

My dad was not only against Academic; he didn’t really see any future in taking Commercial either. It was too much emphasis on secretarial skills like typing and shorthand. It wasn’t man’s work; women did those kinds of things. Men did the dictating and women did the transcribing and then getting coffee for the men. He suggested either Industrial Arts, or at worse even Agriculture, because those courses trained you “for real jobs”.

I thought Academic might help me become a writer even if I never did go on to college.

My grades in Ninth Grade Academic certainly supported my parents telling me to forget college. I probably wouldn’t have qualified for Hamburger U. with my marks. This was my worst year academically yet. I finished the year with an overall GPA of 1.78, a nice solid C minus (or a D plus if you wanted to be negative about it), just enough to promote me to Tenth Grade where a different set of teachers would have to put up with me.

Perhaps I should have rethought the Future Dropouts of America and taken General. I may not have been considering dropping out, but my grades seemed about to shove me over that cliff.

That September just before I set off to Ninth Grade my dad actually pulled me aside for some fatherly advice, the only such he ever gave me.

“Don’t get an F and don’t get a girl in trouble,” he said.

Well, I followed half of his advice.

I never got a girl in trouble. I didn’t even know what he was talking about when he said that. Why or how would I get a girl in trouble? That didn't make any sense. I didn’t ask him what he meant. Dad giving explanations to my questions wasn’t his strong suit.

I did get an “F” in Latin.

Several old familiar faces greeted me back into Downingtown Junior High that fall. Mr. White still oversaw his students from West Chester dictating gym. Mister Hemberger and Mister Kipp were manning the Wood Shop and Foundry. Mr. Paltrone still waved his baton teaching Varsity Music, as they now called it.

Much to my relief, there was at least was one  familiar face I was happily leaving behind in Eighth Grade, but much to my chagrin on reporting to Homeroom I was greeted as Lawrence by Miss Hurlock. It was only for Homeroom, but even two short periods a day with her got under my skin.

I had Louise Remetz for Art in seventh and eighth, but now I had a Mr. Paul Leonard (pictured left). Art was my best subject and the only one I finished with anything higher than a C in. I got straight Bs.

I earned a C in Health, but have no idea anymore who taught it.

I had Mr. Edward Campbell for Civics and Pennsylvania History. If you recall this was the teacher who snagged the back of my shirt and hauled me off to the principal’s Office for hitting Gary Kinzey. Mr. Campbell turned out to be an all right teacher who most students liked, but some kids did call him “PorkyPig” behind his back. He resembled that cartoon character and junior high kids can be cruel. I got a C in both courses and I actually found those classes interesting. He taught us a lot about how the branches of the government worked as equal entities and how our rule was designed as a series of checks and balances to guard against the formation of any person or one or other of the governing houses gaining too much power. He taught we were a nation of rights, which were not in the purview of government to deny us, that we were protected by the Constitution. He told us one of our most important right was that of free speech, even if we were to say things that others vehemently disagreed with. He told us we were a nation of laws and tolerance, but one in which the majority ruled, but the minorities had the right to challenge that and try and convince people to accept their ideas. He taught us a lot of things that don't appear to be followed very well anymore.

It was the Harpies that did me in. Here I was and then they, these female teachers, swooped down like birds to torment me and in a figurative sense, snatch the morsels of knowledge away before I could gain nourishment. (f you don't understand the allusion here, look it up.) Two of my women instructors made me dread coming to school every day and gave me nightmares at night. A third made me lose faith in justice. I don’t know which had the most damaging effect upon me.

I originally had Mildred Wilson for Arithmetic in Seventh Grade. I had managed a C then. I thought it humorous she had the same name as my cousin, the one that served my mother as Maid of Honor. My humor didn’t last. I had struggled with Math in Eighth Grade finishing with a D despite having Mr. Ax, a teacher I liked. Now in Academic Ninth I was facing Algebra for the first time. I was hardly prepared and I had a hard time following the lessons. I managed a C in the first marking period, but dropped to a D in the second. I realized I was falling behind and I didn’t want to fail. Teachers told us repeatedly during all our years in school, “Go to the teacher for extra help if you need it. They are always glad to help.” I had never taken that advice, but this time I did.

I went up to Ms Wilson’s desk after class and asked if I could get any extra help after school.

She screamed at me, literally, screamed,  “No, you’ll get it in class like everybody else. Now get out of here.”

I practically ran.

I never again went to any teacher for help after that. I finished First Year Algebra with a D plus average, pulled up by a C in the final exam. I was thoroughly convinced that math was beyond me.

But the teacher I dreaded the most was Lucille Horner, who I had for Latin.
I did not love Lucy.
 Two things conspired against me in her class.  One was my slight hearing problem, the one I was born with where I had difficulty distinguishing some English words and pronouncing them correctly. Foreign languages would always prove tricky for me. I mean I couldn't tell Calvary from cavalry or quarrel from corral. I was able to read the Latin in the textbook and understand the meaning. Speaking it was my problem and Ms Horner made us stand up in class every day and speak it.  

Here is where my second problem, Social Anxiety Disorder, kicked in. I did not like to be the center of attention in Junior High. People not seeing or hearing me was my preference. Ms Horner forced us, in order of seating,  to stand up and congregate the Latin verbs. This could be hard enough for me under any conditions to distinguish the subtleties between the verbs, but Ms Horner threw in another Monkey Wrench. She timed you. She kept a record of the fastest time achieved of every conjugation ever performed in class history and she expected her students to try for a new one. I would come to class and know the verb forms in my head, but once on my feet in front of my peers my tongue would be Greek to me, not Latin. I would stumble at the start and never get back on track. I use to shake before every Latin class. I would stand to recite and literally quiver. My constant failure wasn’t embarrassment enough. She had to make cutting remarks about my failures.

This was the course where I broke my father’s advice. I got an F. The only one I ever got for a course.

The teacher that stung me more than any wasn’t mean or nasty. Mrs. Rodgers was very nice. I had her for Homeroom in Eighth Grade and I believe she had a son in Boy Scouts. I had visited her home socially for somereason. I remember being there and I remember standing on her front porch, but I don’t know what the visit was about. She was a very kind and gentle lady. I had her for Ninth Grade English. I ended up with a C.

I was totally devastated about what happened in English. Mrs. Rodgers was a teacher with no ability to control her class. She would go out into the hallway and cry sometimes it got so bad. The bullies and troublemakers ruled and learning was difficult for anyone.

I may have been a poor student, but I was never a troublemaker. Everyone else might be yelling and throwing things, but I would be calm and quiet. During one of her attempted lectures about some literary point the two guys who sat next and behind me shoved all my books off my desk. The volumes hit the floor with a load bang. Mrs. Rodgers had been facing our way when they did it. She had to have seen it happen..

“Larry,” she said very sternly, “you are to stay after class.” She said nothing to the other two boys.

At the end of the period I walked to her desk. I said, “Mrs. Rodgers, I didn’t do anything. So and so and Whozits pushed my books off my desk.”

She looked at me. Her eyes were moist at the edges. “Yes, I know,” she said. “But you’re the only one who will listen to me.”

I think that was the moment I became cynical toward education. I felt sorry for Mrs. Rodgers, but I also lost all my respect for her. It is one thing to be singled out and punished for the bad things you do, but quite another to be treated that way when you are innocent and everyone knows it.

Ms Horner assigned some homework I was delighted to do. During the year she assigned us to see movies and she provided the passes. The first was Ulysses (based on the Odysseus Myths, not the James Joyce novel. I can imagine we ninth graders reporting on Penelope portrayed as Molly Bloom. ), The film debuted in theaters August 1955 and played the Roosevelt sometime after school began.

The second film was Helen of Troy, based on the Iliad. This film came out in January 1956 and we saw it on March 9. I am not certain why she did this, since Homer was Greek and Ms Horner was teaching Latin. The films were in English.

Ronald, Stuart and I saw these together. We were walking home on Lancaster Avenue after seeing Helen of Troy. This movie had several battle scenes. One particular scene stood out in our minds. A Spartan below the walls of Troy shoots an arrow in the air. A Trojan soldier is standing on the battlement. The arrow pierces the soldier below the chin and comes out the top of his head. We were discussing how they accomplished this effect.

“You know what,” said Stuart. “I bet what they did was go to a prison and give an offer to a condemned prisoner on Death Row. They would pay the prisoner’s family something if he let them execute him this way for the film.”

Ron and I didn’t think so.

“I don’t see how else it could have been done,” said Stuart. “You could see the arrow go right through his head.”

I did not discuss The Sirens confronting Ulysses on his journey, although they had more interest for me than arrow-pierced Trojans. The Sirens were mythological women who seduced sailors into shipwrecks with their songs. The crew tied Ulysses to the mast so these women cannot lure him. This type of story and imagery fit right into my fantasies.

As the stresses of Algebra and Latin increased, I fled more often into those fantasies. The story always began the same, but as the year progressed I began to play act as well as imagine. This wasn’t difficult because my parents were seldom home with me. I would become the shipwrecked sailor left ashore on the island. I would slip off my socks (I seldom wore my shoes inside the house then). I use to sit in the living room imagining it all, but now I would get up and pretend I was exploring an island, moving cautiously into the dining room. In my mind I would come across the Pirate Women here and they would give chase. I might run back to the living room, slipping off my shirt as if they had pulled it off in midflight. They would capture me in due time and strip off my pants. I would walk about as if a prisoner, holding my hands behind as if tied.

My story wouldn’t end with me tied to a pole (figuratively). The Pirates would slowly circle me. They would poke me or pull at me. Then they would pull off my briefs and leave me naked.

This total striping wasn’t enough after awhile. Like any addiction my fantasy demanded more after a time to keep me interested. I began adding little flourishes to this fancy. My story would continue with my alter ego escaping the bonds.

I had seen the Tarzan films and pictures depicting Native Americans wearing loincloths. I didn’t know loincloths were a long piece of material that they wore tucked over a belt and then passed between their legs and up over the belt again in the rear. I thought these people wore two pieces of cloth that just dangled over their front and back with nothing underneath. I began to fashion a loincloth for my escaped hero to wear. I used a couple of my handkerchiefs hanging them from a rope belt. Eventually I began trying to make my loincloths cover even less.

One day I decided it would be more exciting if instead of a loincloth to have the Pirate Woman not simply pull off my briefs, but to tease me by gradually ripping up my undershorts. I had some old worn underpants, so I took scissors and cut strips and holes out of these, making the shorts ever smaller, but leaving enough to cover my privates.

Yes, I was quite aware doing this made my penis  erect and sensitive to touch. This felt extremely pleasurable, but it ended there. There was no ejaculation. I still didn’t know about masturbation.

I  would hide the tattered underpants in my room and reuse them until a pair was too far-gone then I would dispose of it in the trash.

However, every time I indulged this fantasy I felt guilty afterward. I would lie in bed afterward agonizing about what was wrong with me. I also worried whether anyone could see me dashing about inside the house dressed in ripped up underpants; after all, the lights were on and the shades were up. Whatever feelings of guilt or fear I felt did not impede me from pursuing my fantasies. The next time I was home alone and feeling frustrated I would go to my fantasy world all over again.

And I began adding a voyeuristic element. The Pirate Women would now tease me with their bodies. I imagined them undressing in front of me. But I still lacked a full image of a woman’s body to complete my imagination.

There was a totaling embarrassing incident at school that had absolutely nothing to do with my fantasy life. It was the day I freed the slaves.

It is hard to image any school today having this; however, Googling the Internet shows the practice continued as late as the 1970s in several schools around the nation. Even today, some schools have a version of it to raise funds for charity.

Downingtown High had a once yearly “Slave Day”. We did this in 1955 or 1956.

This was considered a fun day. They had criteria for masters claiming slaves, but I no longer remember the rules. Perhaps Ninth Graders could claim slaves from the class below. I do recall I was very determined to claim a slave. Usually a student would tap another’s arm and claim them. The person claimed had to be a slave for the whole day, which entailed carrying the master’s books, get the master his or her lunch and run small errands.

I was in the hall and zeroed in on this very tall girl walking ahead of me. I think her name was Yvonne, but I could be wrong. She was as tall or even taller than I was. I walked up behind her and tagged her arm, but she ignored me. I took hold of her arm and declared her my slave and she took to running. I leaped for her. I landed upon her back and she ran down the hall with me clinging piggyback style to her. She carried me right past the school office door as Mr. Evans the principal was stepping into the hallway. We almost knocked him over. He looked totally floored by this exhibition.

That was the last year that Downingtown had “Slave Day”. So, I guess I freed the slaves.