Setting the time machine for 1969

Recently I reconnected on Facebook with some friends from junior high school days. It's a little strange; in my mind they're frozen in 1969 as gangly adolescents. In reality, of course, they're forty years older (as I am) and have led lives I know nothing about.

So I find myself mentally traveling back to 1967-69, my years at Lefferts Junior High. In the world at large, these were tumultuous years. The war in Vietnam dragged on and the protest movement grew. Civil rights was another touchy topic. Assassinations stunned the nation: first Martin Luther King Jr. and while we were still reeling from that, Bobby Kennedy too was shot dead. We were of an age to recall his brother's murder as the first big shocker of our lives. The world was a scary and unstable place.

Our neighborhood was in transition; white flight had been going on for a while and each year some of our classmates would move away to the "safety" of Queens or Long Island. At the time it wasn't too noticeable or threatening. But within a few years the white kids had become the minority and felt increasingly targeted by bullies.

My class was the "two year SP" a special program for particularly bright kids to do three years of junior high work in two years. There was also a three year SP, where they took the standard amount of time, but supposedly had some "enrichment" programs.

The years of junior high are probably the most traumatic in even the best of circumstances. It's the period of transition from childhood to young adult and each of us made that trip at a different pace. Looking at the class photo there are some who were already physically mature young women while others still looked like grade schoolers. It's hard to believe we're all the same age; one would guess the ages as ranging from ten to twenty. We probably all felt self-conscious about whatever stage we were at.

Reading the various messages has been fascinating. Everyone seems to have a different view on those times. Recollections of harassments and shakedowns, on the one hand; ugly gymsuits and teachers' eccentricities on the other. Sometimes just a general rose-colored glasses tinged nostalgia; sometimes a grim pride about just having survived those years. Landmark incidents are recalled in very different terms. Like the "sewing machine" affair. Did one of our classmates actually heft a sewing machine out a window? Memories differ; maybe it was just some parts were tossed out. All in all, what was memorable to one person was totally forgotten by another.

One thing that hasn't come up so far in our discussion is the boys (at that age they're still called boys). They were overwhelmingly outnumbered in our class. The first year there were six boys to over twenty girls and in the second year two of those boys had gone. To make up for that disadvantage, they compensated by being incredibly obnoxious. One in particular did his best to try the patience of our ever-cheery ninth grade English teacher. Academically he was brilliant; personality-wise he was bucking for ostracism at best and jail time at worst. I would not be surprised to hear he was either a leading scientist at MIT or a prisoner in Sing Sing.