I don’t have many photos of me in school from any year, but the picture below is most likely one of the last ones of me ever snapped within the walls of a schoolhouse. Some kids may have brought cameras and taken more on the last day or something, but I wouldn’t know who, if anyone, has any. This one is interesting because I do not recall ever seeing it before Christi gave it to me a couple of weeks ago. It was apparently taken as a potential yearbook shot in December 1989, but was never used. This was taken when Christi and I were library aides for Mrs. Burger (Mrs. Beecher was the head librarian).
I’m using my final report card (at bottom) as a memory jogger. The Cartooning class (see here), the Scholarship Advanced Composition class, and the Library Aiding all ended with the first semester on January 12, 1990 (although for me it ended on the 10th because I was out sick on the 10th and 11th). Below is Christi’s certificate of completion for the aiding. How she managed to hold onto this souvenir, I have no idea. We helped out in the magazine section of the library. Mostly we just sat there and giggled, drew pictures, and I worked the daily jumble while Christi did homework - as in the picture.
I did fairly well keeping my grades up with all that was going on - although my attendance was so bad, I’m surprised I didn’t have to make up any school in order to graduate. In the last quarter alone, I missed 11.5 days - 22 for the entire year. Somehow I managed to get a C in Art, of all things, during my last quarter. One memorable thing that I do recall vividly in Art Class was painting a large brick in the classroom that was theoretically supposed to be permanent. I chose to paint a photo of me with Laurel and Hardy. I also painted a half-brick with my Brashley character. Unfortunately, when the school was remodeled, the room was razed and the bricks are now gone.
It was interesting to be in Mr. Geer’s class for World Literature. Lance had always been close to him and Geer allowed him (and one time, me) to actually smoke in the teacher’s lounge with him. We had a standing assignment in this class in which we were to write weekly - on any topic - our “Reactions and Reflections.” Predictably, mostly I wrote about parenting. Every day in this class I would read one certain poem (when I should have been listening to the lecture) in the literature textbook. I still have it memorized today: Jade Flower Palace by Chinese poet Tu-Fu.
I enjoyed Trigonometry and did well in that class. Every day, Mr. Gevedon would put music lyrics on the board, so it was always fun to see what was up there when we came into class. I turned in a slew of Cheap Trick lyrics (which was the band I was most into at the time) and he used some of them in a typed-up booklet of lyrics that he handed out. Nicole Perez sat in front of me in this class and I really enjoyed talking to her every day. She was an extremely kind, smart, and beautiful girl. Mr. Gevedon was absent the day I returned to school after we had Ashleigh, so he missed my “Our New Baby” button that I was wearing. Later on, I had a hard time convincing him that I had a daughter.
I liked Government class a lot, too and also did well in it. I was really most interested when we got into the Judicial branch of government (at the time, I wanted to be a lawyer), and hence, did better in the second semester than the first. Mr. Sisson was a great teacher, but he always reminded me of the Animatronic voiced by Rex Allen from the Carousel of Progress at Disney World. Mr. Sisson once met Martin Luther King, which impressed me.
Human Relations was taught by Mr. Marshall, a hippy-type kind of guy if I ever saw one. He reminded me a lot of Bill Murray. A good friend of mine, Mike Minges - who happened also to be Jackie’s current boyfriend at the time - was in this class with me. The class would have a weekly show and tell - and you might guess what I brought in one of the last days of school. Christi met me at the school with Ashleigh. One kid remarked that she had my ears, to which I responed “well at least I know that she’s mine,” - much to Christi’s chagrin.
Although my grades don’t really reflect it, there was so much going on to distract me from school at this time: Christi, Ashleigh, my parents’ divorce, working at Kroger… that school just wasn’t a priority. I meekly and quietly graduated with little concern for school or my grades, but somehow, I managed to earn a letter (seen above) for academics.
Next up: graduation and my college scholarship…
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