Dealing with Changes

Even after the disastrous first part of my summer in 1949, which left me with deep feelings of guilt, there was still a bit of time remaining before school would be back in session. I was still eleven, but I would be twelve in September, and I was starting to change physically. Between ten and eleven, I’d put on a little extra weight, but as I headed toward puberty, I had lost the weight. I was wearing a training bra, which I hated. I wasn’t at all anxious for a more mature figure as were some of my classmates who were slightly older. The slightest indication of a couple of bumps in our blouses and the guys would embarrass us girls with ‘hubba-hubbas’ and wolf whistles.

Just before school started, Mom learned her niece needed someone to keep her daughter for a couple of weeks while she went somewhere for job training. Mom volunteered that Mary Nell could stay with us.

I wasn’t at all pleased. Mary Nell was ten. I’d seen this cousin a couple times before, but I didn’t really know her and I thought I was too much older to have much in common with her. To my dismay, I had just learned the previous day, I was starting my very first monthly period. It was humiliating, I felt I was cursed for life, and I wanted to be by myself to grieve my lost childhood. I had spent the entire day before she came lying around writing sad poetry and pitying myself, while wondering what God had against females to design us to bleed.

Imagine my shock when I learned my ten-year-old cousin was also having her first monthly period, and she was thrilled to pieces with the idea. Well, I must admit that did take some of the pressure off of me. The only problem was this kid wanted to compare pads to see who had produced the most blood. This was a little too personal for me.

The two weeks went better than I’d expected. I’d decided I wanted to be an artist and was going through my World Book Encyclopedias looking for ideas to draw. My copycat cousin claimed she planned to become an artist too. I picked a ‘View of Toledo’ by El Greco to copy, and she picked an earthworm. At least she was willing to start on a beginner’s level.

Mom gave us Kool-Aid popsicles and popcorn balls between meals and the time went by quickly. Strangely enough, I’d started to enjoy my cousin’s company. After our time together ended, she and her mom moved away. That was the last time I ever saw her. Back then, I had too many cousins to keep up with them all.

School started and for seventh grade, I had the first male teacher I’d ever had. It was Mr. Johnson’s first year to teach. He had no clue what to expect and neither did we. Thinking back, I feel a bit of sympathy for him having to share the teacher’s lounge and the classroom next door with Miss Nicholson. She had less tolerance for him than she did for students who misbehaved. The idea that he had to smoke a cigarette each time he got a break was almost too much for her. The truth was he had a roomful of students, all going into puberty. He probably needed that cigarette to help him relax.

Most of us were country kids whose main sex education came from observing the farm animals. We had no televisions and most of our parents believed the subject wasn’t to be discussed until just before marriage. We didn’t ask our parents questions of that nature because it made them uncomfortable as well as us. Girls were told, “Don’t let a boy touch you anywhere, and don’t be wrestling with them or sitting in their laps.” Most of what we gleaned on the subject came from whispered dirty jokes or True Story magazines, which was standard reading in all the beauty shops. Suddenly, every innocent remark we made was interrupted as something dirty by one of our fellow students.

It didn’t help matters that three of the girls new to our class were already in their late teens. Zetty Bell, at 18, was the one who decided to contaminate our minds with her version of an X-rated adult world. She hadn’t been demoted because of learning difficulties. She was intelligent, but behind because she’d not attended classes enough to be promoted. Zetty Belle was lazy, but she stayed in school to avoid having to get out and find a job. She was pretty, a talented artist and likable enough to be accepted. This wasn’t the case with the other two girls, who kept mostly to themselves.

Zetty Belle seemed to know all about the seamier side of sex. She started bringing into class some extremely lewd and sexually explicit stories. She claimed they were written by her brother who was in the Navy. Those stories shocked and embarrassed most of us girls, but they were titillating enough we didn’t pass up reading them when they came our way. Both boys and girls in our class turned red and felt dirty while reading the papers before passing them on. None of us wanted to be thought of as a “goody two shoes.”

Mr. Johnson had to have known stories were being passed around, but he never challenged us or asked to see what we were reading. He also had to know cheating was going on in his class. By not seeming bothered by it, we all assumed he didn’t care how we got our answers to test questions. We copied from each other or from an answer sheet we had with us. He was so lax some times we simply opened our books and looked up the answers. I don’t recall learning much school subject matter during the year. We all made good grades, which wasn’t fair to the few students who really bothered to study the material in our textbooks.

Sometimes there were off campus activities students could attend only if they brought notes from their parents. The boys usually forgot to ask. Because they wanted permission to leave school and attend, they would ask girls with decent handwriting to write them a permission note and sign their parent’s name.

 “Are you sure your mom won't care if I sign her name?” I would ask.

“Oh, no she won’t mind. She meant to give me one. I just forgot to remind her.” 

This may or may not have been true, but I’m sure Mr. Johnson had to know all those notes with the same handwriting wasn’t from anyone’s mom. Sometimes, I wondered if he might have been afraid of confronting us. His lack of teaching skills almost made me appreciate Miss Nicholson.

This was Mr. Johnson’s only year to teach in Newton. He may have decided teaching wasn’t for him, or he may have gotten fired for failure to keep discipline in his classroom. We never knew why he wasn’t back the following year.

Seventh Grade was a year of change for all of us. The boys became more interested in sports and planned to take shop or agriculture classes. Many of the girls were eager to take Home Economics and learn to sew and cook. Girls started paying more attention to their personal appearance. Some were starting to wear lipstick and experiment with hair styles. A few girls begin dreaming of when they might be allowed to date. These changes continued for at least another year as all of us gradually became what parents dreaded most, “the terrible teens.”