8th Grade

I’m a good boy. I’ve always been a good boy. But upon further review, it appears my 8th grade year was an aberration. Harmless (mostly), fun, and memorable, but an aberration nonetheless.

In study hall, Ms. Howard "awarded" different colored tickets for bad behavior, such as being tardy, chewing gum, talking, etc. I once received a yellow ticket (who knows) and upon acceptance, I asked, "Ms. Howard, how many yellow tickets does it take to get a red ticket?" Without answering she promptly escorted me to the principal's office. (And I didn't even get the red ticket.)

Mr. Hegwood's science class was anything but. We were flummoxed by a test question about "clear energy." Later we discovered that he hastily copied things from the textbook, and the term "nuclear energy" was hyphenated, with the "nu-" part at end of a line, and the "clear energy" part at beginning of the next line. A scientist Mr Hegwood was not. Also-not really science-in certain seating positions one could drop a pencil such that upon retrieval one would gain visual access up the dress of the singularly next-level good-looking cheerleader {name-withheld}. (Well, maybe it was science: gravity, physics, angles, optics…)

During lunch period, we occasionally (often?) stuffed our small paper milk-cartons with leftover cafeteria food. The best items were gooey vegetables like baked beans, slimy peas, gravy & rice, etc. Then outside behind a concrete shed, we would jump on the milk-carton flat footed to create a food explosion all over the concrete wall. Sort of a Jackson Pollock expression of our creativity. Except in the 8th grade none of us had ever heard of Jackson Pollock. The best result was when Lynn Cooper's food-bomb exploded vertically, painting his entire right and left pants legs with the food slop medium.

One winter day a strange and horrible smell wafted up the stairwells, engulfing the entire three-story school building. The source was never discovered by all the principal's horses and all the principal's men—teachers, coaches, mechanics. But a certain select few science nerds knew it was the sulfur-and-wax cubes we had inserted into the heater system. By the time the wax had slowly melted, the perps were far far away, and the sulfur started to burn...

In the Mechanical Engineering class (there was no such class) some of us discovered a way to take apart a plain-old regular clothes pin (for the young: two wooden stems connected with a spring to make a clamp), then reverse the stems, flip the spring, wrap a tight rubber band around... well anyway, look it up online. Then an unlit match could be "loaded" under the cocked metal spring. When the trigger was pulled, the match would be launched aflame about 10-20 feet in the air. Brainless to be sure, but great fun for shooting at each other, and at dry bushes and stuff. Except when launched from the 3rd floor classroom window, starting a fire in the flowerbed below.

Our math teacher, Mr. Adcock, was very well-liked. In retrospect, he was our Mr. Kotter. To this day I can't explain why, but two of us (David Purifoy?) thought it wise to place wads of toilet paper into the gas tank of his Galaxy 500. And for some reason, this was not good for the car's engine. I never knew the dollar amount of the damage (dollars were not a thing for 8th graders then) but in adult dollars it was probably a lot. We weren't sorry for many things we did, but I felt really bad about this one. (Now, if we had just chosen Ms. Howard's car...)

It was something quite lame, like maybe throwing water-balloons at the stadium walls, getting the bricks and concrete... gasp... WET!... or something similar. The details are foggy, but I actually got paddled by Coach Johnson (yes, with a real wooden paddle. It was 1970.) Far worse than the paddling, was the fact that Susan Margrave—a beautiful, sweet, nice, wish-she-were-my-girlfriend girl—was the emissary who summoned me from class to the coach's office. I'm sure she knew my fate before I did. Through the years it never happened for Susan and me, and I blame Coach Johnson still.

And of course, the 8th grade (then, not now) was a time of great awakening. One Monday morning Howard Dunn announced to us less-thans, that at the movies Friday night he had actually touched a girl's... breast. We were agog. Incredulous. Wanting to believe, but not believing. Wanting to believe, and wishing. Wishing it were true, and also wishing that maybe someday we too could be Howard.

I was a good boy before the 8th grade, and a good boy after the 8th grade. And if every "bad boy" would just have a year like my 8th grade year, the world would be a better place. Water-balloons, gum, and sulfur stink-bombs—today not on any school’s list of infractions—are laughable compared to opioids and AR-15's. I'm officially old now, longing for the good ole days.