The Good Ol Days Part II

I went into eighth grade having lost most of my friends because they were mostly ninth graders. So, I made new ninth grade friends, Amy Root (now Hale) being the primary focus.

With the departure of so many Drama Kids, I became one of the main players in the program. I was the dude who got to sit in the booth in the back and screw with the lights and microphone levels. It was awesome. I thoroughly enjoyed doing that.

Mrs. Peralta was the drama teacher. Bless her soul. She is one of the nicest and most understanding women ever, but she was a pushover at times and often found to be unorganized. Needless to say, I felt she leaned on me a lot for support of making sure our productions would come through.

For P.E. that year, I had Coach Humes. According to my brother Mark, he's a big joke. However, to scrawny, eighth grade me, he was intimidating with his bulging muscles and booming voice. I was scared he would actually hurt me if I didn't do everything he barked at us. He had us running countless miles and rolling all over the dead grass in that field doing exercises. He got me into, to that point, the best shape of my life.

I gotta admit, I felt pretty good. I felt like I could run forever without stopping and do one million push ups. It didn't hurt that I got to walk a pretty girl home everyday as well.

The second semester of that year I got into intramural wrestling. Partly because I wanted to be like Mark. Partly because one of my better friends, Alex Villapondo, was also doing it. I was nothing short of atrocious. I wrestled five matches and lost four. But that one I won, I DOMINATED that kid!! Also, I can honestly say I've wrestled with Anthony Robles and lived to tell the tale.

The Good Ol Days Part I

I wanna put on here my recollection of the best year ever. Ninth grade was awesome. I don't wanna forget it.

Start in seventh grade. The summer prior had me worried. Everyone kept telling me how terrible Mesa Jr. was and how I would get beat up everyday for being caucasian. I tried to persuade my parents to enroll me at Taylor, which was deemed to be safer and far superior.

Needless to say, I was in Mrs. Goff's class during the first hour of the first day at Mesa Jr. Mexicans weren't anything new to me. My best friend at Lindbergh was Mexican. I was surprised to hear all the new swear words that cool junior high kids knew.

Anyway, I wasn't into sports much at all. I liked the stage. Drama and theatre. That's who I hung around, The Drama Kids. They eventually let me into their group and I would stay after school, watch rehearsals and learn the finer things of a play production.

Junior High P.E. was a whole new thing. They were finishing up new locker rooms the first part of the semester, so we went to the pool everyday. The coaches seemed like they expected us to get naked and change clothes and shower in front of each other. "We all have the same plumbing." That was their song. It was weird and awkward. And swimming everyday got pretty tiresome.

Once the locker rooms were finished, we started doing other things like basketball, dodgeball and running around the track. I was one of those kids who walked the whole time and ended up with a solid 13 minute mile.

Sports and physical competition just wasn't what I was into. I was the kid who made a strong case to Mrs. Dennison to allow me, a seventh grader, into Biology, a strictly ninth grade class. She considered it, but ultimately left me to deal with the dregs of Seventh and Eighth Grade Science classes.

I missed a lot of P.E. that year because I suffered a fracture of both the radius and ulna in my left arm. When this happens, they send you to the library to do a report for every day missed. I read a whole lot of sports magazines and wrote a whole lot of crappy reports. I even attempted to count the ceiling tiles in there. Well over 700.

As far as getting beat up every day, there was only one kid who was hostile toward me. I don't remember his name, but he was a short Mexican kid with ugly hair. The type who won't do anything unless he has five or six other kids behind him. He pushed me around one day before some of my ninth grade friends saw and came to the rescue. In junior high, the ninth graders are typically A LOT bigger than the seventh graders. Basically Tracy Cipola stood between me and the kid and called him a bunch of bad names. The kid never came near me again.

At the end of the year, there was an awards assembly for each grade class. I was startin to feel a little dejected when it was nearing the end of the hour and I hadn't gotten an award. Turns out they saved the best for last. The winners of Seventh Grade Boy of the Year and Seventh Grade Girl of the Year were me and Cathy Sadar.

I guess my teachers liked me.