How I peaked in 10th grade
I thought I had peaked as a human being in 10th grade.
For me, 15 years old going on 16 years old was a period of maximum confidence. Like a lot of teenage boys, I suffered from premature self-adulation.
Unburdened by self-awareness, I was able to operate for a whole year — 1974 — under the delusion that I was wittier than my friends and smarter than my teachers.
While neither of these things was true, of course, I felt as if I had slipped the bonds of gravity into some superior mental realm. The fact that I had pimples and sold condoms and cashews at Derryberry’s Drug Store did not ding my confidence one bit.
In short, I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and I would pay the price.
My 10th-grade English teacher, Mrs. Bugg, tried to warn me with irony.
“You are a funny boy, aren’t you, Mr. Kennedy?” she would say.
“Why, yes I am,” I would think to myself. “Thanks for noticing, Mrs. Bugg.”
I was a kid with a suitcase full of words who could create some verbal theater and then retreat back into a blank stare that left teachers guessing about my true intentions.
I was a braggart. A truth stretcher. Although not a bully at heart, I probably said some unkind things for the sake of a laugh. I sense this because people occasionally wanted to fight me for no good reason.
All these memories were coming back as I took my son to register for high school last week. He is 15 going on 16, a rising 10th-grader. Fortunately, I don’t see my character flaws in him.
As I looked at his class schedule, memories came flooding back to me from 1974.
CHEMISTRY …
Ah, I remember little of the curriculum but much about my friend George getting in trouble for making up a class quiz — matching questions to answers. If you read the correct answers vertically, they spelled out swear words.
This was stupid. When creating mischief, I knew, you always have to leave yourself plausible deniability. There is no way George’s test answers could have randomly arranged themselves into words you can’t say on the radio.
FOREIGN LANGUAGE …
I remember sitting in French class and watching out the window as a senior “streaked” past the window. For those who didn’t experience the 1970s, streaking was the act of intentionally running through a public place while buck naked. The short-lived fad peaked in the spring of 1974.
This is a good thing, because nowadays such an act would get you 11/29 in a county jail. I am so glad my hubris didn’t outrun my bashfulness.
ALGEBRA II …
The only time I ever got after-school detention was when I tossed a half roll of Certs to a friend in Algebra II. He intentionally didn’t catch the mints, which ended up hitting our teacher’s overhead projector and clanging off like a bullet from .22-caliber rifle.
She was not amused and sent me to detention, where I read “Das Kapital” and pretended to be a Marxist.
Nobody noticed. WORLD HISTORY …
Two 15-year-old guys get into a word fight. One calls the other a “blanking expletive.”
In a fit of panic, the other boy fumes and spits: “I am rubber and you are glue/whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you.”
Time stopped. Jaws dropped. Embarrassment spread through the classroom like a mushroom cloud, broken eventually by raucous laughter.
In a moment of stress, the 15-year-old boy had fallen back on a second-grade playground taunt. From that moment forward, his life was essentially over.
It occurred to me in that instant that it’s sometimes better just to keep your mouth shut, lest you say something demonstrably stupid and wreck your whole life.
And that, in a nutshell, is the most important lesson I learned in 10th grade.
Parlez-vous Francais and quadratic equations notwithstanding.
Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-645-8937.
I took my son to register for high school last week. He is 15 going on 16. Fortunately, I don’t see my character flaws in him.