I started high school in Sept. of 1965. I had decided I did not want to go to a Catholic high school. I was sick of Nuns, plus our 8th grade nun, Sister Kevin Mary, was a miserable witch.
Coming from a small Catholic elementary school to a large public high school was a shock.
You could choose from three courses. Academic, you took this if you were going to go to college to be a teacher ect. Commercial, mainly for office/secretarial work, which I took. And General...I am not sure what that was for.
I took the bus to school, and walked 3 blocks from the bus stop. The outside of the school was beautiful. My 2 sisters and cousins went there.
I had to get used to changing classes. Sometimes you had a class on the 4th floor, then had only a certain amount of time to change classes, which was impossible if gym was your next glass at basement lvl.A teachers note was required.
If you look up history, it was a very racial time between blacks and whites. College Point was a white town, so I had no dealings with Black kids since leaving the Bronx. This may sound racist, but this is how it was. There were black girls who would gang up on white girls. I was told, never give a black girl money because she would never leave you alone.
I was sitting in the lunch room with a girlfriend when a couple a black girls came over harassing her for money. She said she didn't have any, but she did give them money in the past.
They asked me for money and I said no, before going away one of them punched me in the back.
I didn't even realize that is what happened for a few seconds. My friend left and I sat there finishing my lunch. I guess a boy saw what happened and came and sat next to me, he said nothing, just sat there.
I did like Art class. I had a very good teacher, Mrs.Tupperman. She was also beautiful. She was tall, wore red a lot, she had blue eyes and blonde hair she always wore up in a french twist. No boy every cut her class. lol
I drew a very good picture of a band, like the Beatles because of her. I wish I still had it.
I also loved Stenography, but I was much better reading it than writing it. I liked typing too but back then we only had manual typewriters and it was not easy pressing those keys, especially the pinky keys.
I never had Gym before so this was an experience for me. We had to wear a green one piece jumper, we had a big locker room and we all changed together, This was very hard for me to do. I grew up in a modest house.
I learned how to dress for gym class. I would wear a half slip under my skirt (we could not wear pants to school) and pull that up over my bra and it would cover me while getting the jumper on.
The first semester we had basketball, I loved it. I was a good enough to be a rover, we won 2 semesters and I had two stripes on my gym uniform.
The next term was gymnastics which I hated and by that point I was cutting school alot.
Most of my teachers were old, probably close to retirement and they had no passion for their work or students. I had one teacher who never once looked at his students, I know because my desk was right in front of him.
I hated school and did everything I could to avoid it. I cut classes all the time and spent a good amount of time in detention. Instead of going home, you sat in the auditorium doing nothing for a period. How long detention lasted depended on how long you cut.
High school was an 8 hour day and it was rush hour on the way home and dark in the winter.
My parents knew I was going to quit at 16. My sister Peggy did. My sister Barbara graduated, the first one in the family to Graduate High School.
When writing this post, I just let whatever memories popped into my head.
