Our high school was a new-fangled thing called “consolidated”—combining five smaller high schools into a small high school. We didn’t have drugs, much less “do” them. Alcohol, yes—that was always the excitement Friday and the big news Monday. Didn’t understand the giddiness then and don’t understand it now. But we didn’t have hard drugs. Narcotics came to my high school during the next years after I left.
High school in Small Town was a time when we all figured out a little bit more about who we were and who we hoped to be. We all wanted to be cool, at least that was true of the boys. Girls were harder to understand, then and now.
It’s hard to be cool, though, when your Latin teacher calls you “Rexy.” In fact, it’s hard to be cool taking Latin. Mrs. Burns called me that Freshman year, the next three years till I graduated, and for all I know till the day she went to heaven. Part Latin teacher, part Librarian, she taught the classics and was herself a model of all that’s classic in high school teacher-dom.
In Mrs. Burns’s class I learned—I kid you not—“Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” in Latin. Sure, I learned to conjugate Latin verbs—porto, portas, portat, portabam, portabas, portabat—but I’ve forgotten most of them.
I haven’t forgotten:
“Mica, mica, parva stella,
Miror quaenam sis tam bella.
Super terra in caelo,
Alba gemma splendido.
Mica, mica, parva stella,
Miror quaenam sis tam bella.”
Yes, Mrs. Burns forever bequeathed to me the ability to recite “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” in Latin.
Our high school algebra teacher was Mrs. Crevey. She was as wide as she was tall, taught us everything we needed to know about algebra, and we were afraid of her. The idea of being “afraid” of a teacher seems quaint, but it’s true nonetheless, and I don’t mind admitting it. She was as good a person as she was a teacher. We learned a lot more from her than algebra.
I remember a high school P.E. Teacher who was little more than an over-large bully. Big voice, big strut, big nose, big ego, big nuisance. He lasted long enough for us to learn some adults never grow up.
Our high school quarterback was Dominic Capers, a couple of years older than me and a multi-sport athlete who went on to a career in the NFL. Today he’s the highly respected Defensive Coordinator for the Green Bay Packers.
Our cheerleaders actually cheered. No choreography. No sensual moves, not really, let alone the semi-exotic dance that passes for cheerleading in some school districts today. Kids think “current” is normal, which is to say erotica at times transposed onto cheerleading, so kids do whatever prevailing culture urges them to do. But where are their parents who know better?
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2010
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