High School Daze

By the time you’re my age—lets just say I’m a baby boomer and leave it at that—high school is a dim memory, if and when you think about it at all. Still, if you’re like me, random moments pop into your head, and when you trace them back they lead you to something that happened in the 9th or 10th grade, or thereabouts.

I experience those pop-ups from time to time, and they get me wondering about some of my former classmates: did they actually grow up to lead productive lives? For example, I wonder about Lois S., a ditzy girl who was also confused about so many things. While we were studying sea life in science class, Lois couldn’t quite grasp that sponges are living creatures. She wondered--should she be feeding the ones they had at home? That aside, the real sticking point for her was the fact that the ones her mother had in the kitchen were pink and yellow and green and blue, and didn’t seem to move at all, but the ones we saw in science class were all spiny brownish blobs. Later that same year Lois was confused about sexual reproduction. When asked what species reproduces through asexual binary fission (that’s splitting in half, in case you’ve forgotten), Lois responded after careful thought, “Could it be us?”

Actually, many girls were in the dark about sexuality back then. In the eighth grade it was mandatory for us to attend a weekly “health” class, sexually segregated since back then, nice boys and girls discussed the ‘facts of life” apart from one another. (This was in the 1960s, when the word “virgin” did not automatically bring to mind an airline.) Lynn R., cheerleader and head “popular” girl, was always going steady with someone, so I assumed she was super-sophisticated in the ways of the world. But in the first class, in response to the teacher’s asking if we had any questions, Lynn ventured: “If a girl and boy each take a bite from opposite ends of the same banana at the same time, you get pregnant, right?” (Grammar was also not her forte.)

Perhaps most famous in the annals of our high school’s memories involved our biology teacher, Mr. Gizzy, whose frequent spot quizzes struck fear in everyone hoping for a passing grade. One day, after a particularly tough quiz left us all groaning, Mr. Gizzy said, “Come on kids, that was nothing, it was just one of my little quizzies.” A boy in the back, I believe his name was Ricky but I can’t be sure, said, “Well, if that was one of your quizzies, I’d hate to see one of your testes!” Silence ensued, while the unintended meaning of his words registered, and was followed by deafening laughter. Mr. Gizzy’s wife, another teacher at our school, took a lot of ribbing over that one for years.

And so, sometimes I wonder: Did Lois learn that the pink and blue sponges do not require feeding? Did Lynn ever have children, and if so, was fruit involved? Are the Gizzies alive today, and do they still laugh over his “little testes”? And most of all I wonder, if you said “testes” in a classroom of ninth-graders today, would they even notice?