If Only They'd Had Home School Back Then

Each year as autumn arrives, I experience repressed memories of seventh grade, when every one of my teachers seemed to come from Hades via a Stephen King movie.

Back in my day, seventh grade was the start of junior high. Changing classes with each subject was tough enough in a cavernous old building, but there was suddenly no recess, no Weekly Reader newspaper, and no dress-your-pet-up-funny-and-br ing-it-to-school day. I could feel it in my bones - seventh grade was going to stink.

Worse yet, our school was experimenting with a concept - abandoned after that year - of putting the most promising students in a class called 7-5. I ended up in that class with the movers and shakers while I yearned for my down-to-earth friends in 7-1, 2, 3, or 4. But those kids now hated me.

First period was geography with Mr. Zitkowski. An ex-military man with a ramrod posture and furrowed uni-brow, he'd stomp into the room and proceed to glare at a seating chart on his desk.

"Mr. Smith, what is the principal export of Ecuador?" he'd bellow and then look fiercely around until he located a squirming Mr. Smith, usually known as Jimmy. On the teacher would go, calling out misters and misses from the seating chart, demanding to know about every boring export under the sun.

I don't think Mr. Zitkowski ever learned our identities, but thankfully he got our genders correct with regards to "Mr." or "Miss," except when he messed up big-time with Toni Leland.

U.S. history was ruled by Mrs. Fox, a woman who nervously picked at her face and who determined we would follow directions with excruciating detail. Once, on a multiple-choice quiz, I answered every question correctly but failed to write the words, putting only letters a, b, c, or d.

Mrs. Fox made me an example by announcing to the class that I flunked that quiz for not following directions. I trace lifelong tendencies towards being an obsessive drudge to that moment.

Math was taught by Mr. Simmons. Although his son was one of the cutest guys in 7-5, the teacher sported a potbelly and comb-over. He went berserk if anyone said, for instance, "one hundred and one" for 101, yelling that an "and" always meant a decimal point.

Mrs. Lagoon taught English. While the other seventh grade classes read Huckleberry Finn, Mrs. Lagoon had us wading through David Copperfield and analyzing the metaphorical significance of Mr. McCawber. After that, I hated Charles Dickens like the dickens.

Physical education found us girls wearing one-piece, sleeveless red outfits with elastic around the legs that created a puffy, bloated thighs effect. Everyone looked uniformly ridiculous except the teacher, who was smug in shorts and a polo shirt.

My nemesis was Mrs. Minch, tyrant of the home economics department. Mrs. Minch was disdainful of anyone who happened to be twelve years old and unable to cook like Aunt Jemima and sew like Betsy Ross. I struggled through embroidery, hemming, and gingham apron projects, living in mortal fear she'd term my stitchery "a chewed up mess," which, ultimately, she did - in a loud, nasal voice.

In fairness, I suppose that seventh grade strengthened my character, as in what-doesn't-kill-you-makes-yo u-stronger. And come to think of it, the really mean teachers turned up a couple of years later - the ones who, with diabolical precision, confiscated every Beatles magazine my allowance could buy.

Learn more about this author, Karen Williams.
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