The Eights

35

How would I be sized-up in Eighth grade...?

No new friends developed outside of school as my mind was on other things during the summer break of Nineteen Seventy-Seven, and those few friends I had developed earlier had moved away so eighth grade started out with Jonathan, Van, Tim, and frenemy Pete. Just before getting to school on the first day, I decided I needed something more than just pushing out my tummy to get people focused on that rather than the chest area. As a television show, The Incredible Hulk, had become popular in those years, I riffed off of the title and when I saw Pete in the hallway that first day I stopped long enough to mention how I'd gotten a bit fat during the Summer and the kids around town had taken up calling me 'The Incredible Bulk'.

Sure enough, in Pete's hands that nickname spread and I was soon deemed the fat kid in class. Which was oddly successful as another kid, who had been retained at the eighth grade level, was now part of our class. Not only was he larger due to age, but probably weighed as much as two other students put together. Perhaps it was just a case of no kid wanting to dub him the fattest kid in class simply because he could probably crush them without a second thought if he found out. Thus I held the title.

A few weeks after classes started, Van had found a new friend. Luke, it turned out, lived in the same town as the apartment, but he wanted nothing to do with me. Perhaps it was an assumption that I was mentally retarded given my stuttering. But he did join our lunch table and by the end of the calendar year he had warmed up to me, my guess being that seeing me in a different light at lunch showed him that I was much more than just my stutter. By the turn of the year we had become friends and were spending time at each others' houses chatting, playing games, and even cross country skiing in the back woods.

When it came to classes, eighth grade was my most successful year in Middle School as I evenly did well amongst the classes, in fact I spent a good amount of time on the honor roll which might have been a first for me. Homeroom was again science class, but the teacher was more ambivalent about me than the previous year's science teacher who was pleasantly surprised by my performance. Perhaps it was a case of each previous year's experience shaped the following year's expectations. Sixth grade science teacher told the seventh grade teacher I wasn't going to do well and when I did, he was surprised and happy and told eighth grade teacher I'd be great but the eighth grade teacher found me 'okay' when measuring me against his expectations of greatness. Either way, I did well enough in class and I feel I learned the most that was relevant to my adult life during his class, though that's an entirely different book.

Perhaps it was the same expectations game that lead me to what I had for eighth grade math. While the majority my grade level was having algebra, I was in the math class where the students spent the year learning metric and how to convert between English and metric measurements. Similar to science: Had the sixth grade math teacher, being thrilled with my success by the end of her class, heartily recommend me to the seventh grade teacher? Had that teacher instead found me wanting on so many levels that she insisted I not be challenged by anything too tough, like algebra, for eighth grade? Whatever the reason eighth grade math, back to a full-time self study class, was in no way taxing for me and grades were based primarily on test results, not quantity of homework pages turned in. By the end of the first quarter, I decided to pace myself by spending half my time doing work for other classes and half the time on the math work so I wouldn't finish the math book too quickly. By the very beginning of fourth quarter I had still completed the math book early and I spent that quarter with the rest of my time there being an official study hall for other classes.

'Math' class was also my chance to discretely use the bathroom each day. During all my school years, boys bathrooms were devoid of stall doors or privacy dividers for the urinals. Given my new 'situation', using one of these bathrooms was going to be chancy at best. Next to the math room, though, was a small boys bathroom with just the one toilet stall and one urinal in its own stall. Each day, halfway through math class I'd ask to use the bathroom, thus it would likely be empty at that time, and given the greater level of privacy that urinal provided, I was able to do what I had to do in order to pee cleanly while standing.

'Social Studies' class was sort of fun as it mixed in a balance of projects with reports and tests. The two most notable moments for me was the test on World War II and one of the activity projects I couldn't do. For World War II, the teacher told us all the contributing reasons why we'd gotten into World War II: Ties with England, our global interests, etc. So when the test came and we reached the question, ''Why did the United States enter World War II?'' we all put Our ties to England, our global interests, etc. The Social Studies teacher was horrified that all but two of us had gotten the question wrong and demanded that we take the test over the very next day and told us to think about our answer on that question before filling it in. But as she had quite clearly taught us about our ties to England, our global interests, etc., that's the answer we gave except for a couple more of us who put down the correct answer this time. The Social Studies teacher was again stunned and spent the following day berating us on how could we not know about ''Pearl Harbor''? Apparently it hadn't occurred to her that our generation was so far removed from the event that it was no longer common knowledge that kids chatted about and so she hadn't taught it. But rather than realize that, her rant boarded on her wondering about why we would all conspire to choose to give the same wrong answer on the test. Why had we done that? Why had we done that? Those brave students who raised their hands to point out that she had only told us of our ties to England, our global interests, etc. were shot down with a flare of anger because everyone knew of Pearl Harbor!!!

The project I couldn't do was a project I was willing and wanted to do. It was to get with one of your parents and do something for the community, like clean-up trash by the side of the road, tend some trails in the woods and so on. It was a pass/fail project and all that was needed was a statement from your parent that 'we' had done it. Mother felt she had enough things on her plate and felt dad should do it, dad felt since I only spent two days a week with him, it was mother's responsibility and I knew I was screwed. As the three weeks to get this project done came and went, I repeatedly went to the teacher asking if there was something I could do for the school or in her classroom, but she assured me it was a project for me and a parent. By the third week I heard that some leeway was going to be given and the coach would be taking a few kids to paint the dugout buildings at a nearby, non-school, ball field. Once I heard of this, I ran to see the coach but he already had enough kids. The three weeks were up and I was given a letter that I was to give to my parents about how I had let myself and the community down by not doing this project and I would have had an 'A' for the quarter except for not having done this project. As with all other paperwork from school over the years, neither of my parents took any interest.

This year was my favorite English class. Unlike the rest of the eighth grade students, we had the new teacher. She was just out of College and had a limited schedule for this year to break her in before she took over eighth grade English full-time next year. As a result she was full of enthusiasm and lacked any of the jaded frustration that established teachers gained as the years ground on.

This would not be a self study class, but more like a talk show where topics about the English language would be brought to us and discussed and debated, then a page or two of homework where we were to apply what we had learned. This was when I learned that most words weren't just arbitrary sounds chosen to mean something, but things that meant something and over time came to mean something else. An example was: Did you know that 'testify' in olden times meant that if a man was found to have been lying when giving a sworn statement, he would be castrated as his punishment? That's why the whole concept of women 'testifying' was laughable because they literally had nothing to lose if caught lying. Over time the meaning of testify had become unlinked from the punishment and instead became the term for any sworn statement verbally made, thus people no longer understood why women couldn't testify.

One day she had us do a two page essay for homework that night and the following day taught us about rough drafts by telling us that what we had written last night was our rough draft and we were to do a final copy from it in class using a pen. As I had grown to be a one draft writer over the years given the pain and effort involved, I had done my homework in pen. I gauged the amount of time doing a new draft would take versus the time we had in class and I cheated; I pulled out my pencil and instead wrote a page and a half 'rough draft'. Comparing it to my 'final copy' I would copy much of it, but leave out a sentence here and there, use smaller words in pencil for the more colorful words already in my pen draft, then put a line through them to make it seem like I had thought better of those words. Once done, the pencil page I wrote in class had all of the things she expected to see as we reconsidered our rough draft in order to make our final copy. We turned in both drafts of our work and to my horror, she felt the need to point mine out in class the next day. It turned out I had been so successful, at making the paper I did in class look so perfectly like what she wanted to see us do to our rough drafts, that she had been convinced that I actually had done the pencil draft first and had learned so much from it that it made my pen draft so great! She thought there was much the rest of the class could learn from me... And I just wanted to crawl under my desk and hide, but instead fought to keep a poker face that didn't give any hints of my deception.

For the third quarter, the English teachers and Social Studies teacher had concluded that we had never been taught how to write a proper term paper. So they decided to do a joint term paper between their classes, our Social Studies teacher would help us each pick a topic and narrow its focus while providing us time at the library to research. Our English teachers would explain to us the process of finding books and looking-up periodicals at the library and taking notes from them without plagiarizing. They would then teach us how to take those resulting note cards and assemble them into a chapter based grouping and how to keep track of those points as footnotes referencing each point's source. Being an astronaut want-to-be, I chose to write my paper on the newest NASA craft, the Space Shuttle, as my topic.

I loved learning this report writing process and was on track as we reached the outlining stage to sort out our chapters. Then we were told it was time to write our rough drafts... I actually started to write a rough draft in pencil for a couple of pages before I realized the brick wall lying ahead of me. As we had been told that the term paper would be a major portion of both our Social Studies and English grade for the quarter, I knew I couldn't duck it to avoid the expanse of hand written material I'd have to do. So, as it didn't need to be turned in, I chucked the whole idea of doing a rough draft and started on my pen draft. Given how slowly I wrote, it gave me plenty of time to think out my words ahead of time, debate them, and chose a better way of expressing my point as I reached the period of the preceding sentence. Then I'd start writing the sentence I'd been thinking so much about while reflecting on what should follow. Still, two weeks later as the Friday deadline loomed, I realized I still didn't have enough time to finish. We had been told that each day a term paper was late would be a letter grade off. By Wednesday I settled on a plan and feigned being sick Friday morning when the paper was due and stayed home from school. This not only gave me Friday to continue writing, but the whole weekend as well.

Grueling through the weekend, I had reached the 'summary' potion of the paper by Sunday night and debated what to do. I thought a second sick day would make it too obvious what I was doing. As one sick day would save me from losing a letter grade on the paper, would two days still work for that? I thought there was a good chance I could finish the paper during my spare time at school during Monday, so I went in. But since Monday English and Social Studies classes had other things to focus on, I couldn't use that time. Even with skipping lunch, I ended up only having about two hours more to work on the paper and the summary wasn't yet done. But if I turned it in before going home at the end of the day, I wouldn't get that letter grade off. As it turned out that Monday was the night that there was a late bus going to the apartment town; I stayed at school after hours and continued on the paper and was a couple paragraphs shy of finishing when it was time to catch the late bus. Pondering if the missing last few paragraphs would mean the loss of more than a letter grade, I gave in and took the paper home with me that night to finish it and have it perfect before I turned it in the following morning. By the end of the week, the graded term papers were given back to us. Sure enough, not only had my paper achieved a great grade, but both the Social Studies and English teachers had written notes stating what a shame it was that it lost a letter grade for being a day late. But to me, that meant I had made the right decision playing sick to insure I'd only get one letter grade off and not two or three...

The end of the school year came and the good news was all the Honor Roll students would be going to the advance science studies track at High School and I was on the Honor Roll! And yet, I wasn't on the resulting advanced studies student list. I went to the science teacher and asked why, he explained to me that there was limited room and they had already gone over their student count for that track. When I asked why I had been the one bumped and not someone else, he explained that if I thought about it, I would understand why it was me and not someone else. I did think about it and later told him I didn't know what it was and wanted to be included with the advanced studies group. He said it wasn't going to happen and as for what it was about me, he assured me it was something obvious about me and I should realize what that was. To this day, I don't know what it was, though if it was something obvious about me that pretty much narrowed it down to either my mixed race background or my stuttering.

To prepare for the first year of High School, we students would be going to a room at the end of eighth grade to select cards with class names and time periods on them. These cards would then be used to create our personal curriculum for Freshman year. Those on the Honor Roll would have first pick as it was a first come, first serve basis and once the cards for one class were gone, so were the seats available. Being on the honor roll, in my case, meant I could go in with the first group of non-honor rolls students. I glanced around at what was available. English was already a full year class so there was no choice there other than what time of day to take. We were to have a year's worth of Social Studies made-up of a half year class and two quarter year classes of our choice. Science had to be a full year, but we could pick from two non-advanced studies choices. With spare time during our day, we could pick up two elective courses so I took Wood Shop and various specialty gym classes that wouldn't require changing clothes.

Then came math: Math had to be a full year choice as well, the advanced studies students had already cleared out the 'Advanced Algebra' cards leaving 'Intro To Algebra', 'Basic Math', and 'Math For Home'. I took a card for 'Intro To Algebra' and the adviser behind the table told me I couldn't take that one and had to put it back and chose from the other two; 'Math For Home' would be a good choice for me he said. I kept the 'Intro To Algebra' card tightly in my hand as I circulated the room one more time to see if I wanted to reconsider my other choices. The adviser from the math table got up and chased after me demanding I give the 'Intro To Algebra' card back to him. I didn't and ignored him as I glanced over the other tables, then made my way to get in line with the other students to turn in our cards. The math adviser went straight to the Principal standing in the room and talked to him heatedly and pointed at me. This caused the Vice Principal to join them and the three huddled together in discussion with continued furtive glances in my direction. When I reached the front of the line, the staff member accepting the cards had become aware of the kerfuffle and rather than taking the cards from my hand, looked to the three, instead. After a moment, the Principal nodded and the staff member took my cards as I had them, no changes were made and my Freshman year was locked in.

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