That Seventies School

I hated sixth grade. And I hated my teacher, Mr. Reinecke, at Aztec Elementary School in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

He was a crappy teacher but sixth grade was expecially bad becasue I was tormented to two bullies in my class. No one but me seemed to object. The dreaded twosome of Shane and Mike did all of the usual things bullies do: they punched me in the arm, gave me noogies, gave me "Indian burns." They called me the usual epithets like pussy, and freak, and fag; the latter altered into a nickname riffing on my last name: "Fagzine." Now this was all in the first half of the year; it got much worse.

The terror twins eventually started bringing pen-knives to school. These knives were little more than toys. But it hurt if you got jabbed and they were kind of threatening to twelve-year-old me. The last couple months of school were abysmal. Shane and Mike thought up a new game. Lots of kids were wearing "waffle-stomper" boots, which had thick rubber souls. Well, Shane and Mike (their initials are S & M; I never thought of that before!) started sticking broken razor blades in the tips of their boots and kicking me, which tore up both my jeans and my legs.

The teachers and principal were no help at all. They suggested boxing lessons! Or maybe a "playdate" so we'd all become friends (otherwise know as drown David in the pool day!) I was getting a little psychologically messed up. I was scared to go to school. I started getting a little obsessive/compulsive, too. I suspect I was trying to gain control of a world I felt was totally out of control.

Oh, you may have wondered where my parents were through all of the above. My Dad was a pacifist who felt victimized all his life and I think he just kind of withdrew from it all. Mom would yell at the teacher and Principal; the teachers would go look for the knives or blades; S&M would look innocent and show their empty pockets. Major dysfunction.

What to do! If Elementary School was this bad; I could just imagine Junior High! Well, Mom started looking for a new school. My Mom at this time had recently completed her doctorate and had accepted a political appointment as the "Executive Director of the Governor's Commission on the Status of Women" for the state of New Mexico. But she remembered that while she had been a TA one of her students was helping to start an "Alternative Education" school. Mom looked them up.

That next fall I was enrolled for seventh grade at The Twelve Gates Free School. What was this private academy for alternative youth like, you ask? Have you even seen AUNTIE MAME? It truly was the spitting image of the school that Mame enrolled little Patrick Dennis in. It was GREAT!

Twelve Gates was modeled on A. S. Neill's Summerhill School in England, and Orson Bean's Fifteenth Street School in New York City. The guiding principle of the school was "freedom and equality" between teachers and students. The school was run democratically by both students and faculty (two Lesbians and a straight woman.) You could take classes or not. You could sign out and go on a self-field trip. It may sound like anarchy; but to me it was heaven! I was even on the school's Board of Directors! After a year of stifling abuse in sixth grade - I was at last in heaven!

I took a year of Japanese. We had extra-curricular tea ceremonies, and cooked Japanese dinners at a teacher's home. Instead of a boring "civics" course we older students got together and assembled a petition to stop this thing called "Senate Bill One" and another to try and stop production of the B-1 Bomber. We then went out to Malls and the University campus and collected signatures and mailed in the petitions. I learned to use a camera and darkroom. We took a field trip to meet singer Alberta Hunter.

We sat around and read what we liked. There were tens of thousands of books at the school. One of our teachers read us certain parts of RUBYFRUIT JUNGLE aloud. Now THAT'S an education.

I learned to play the guitar (sort of). One kid who was about my age was a bit of a capitalist and he decided to start a school store. He bought food at the supermarket and sold it to hungry students with a big mark-up in price. I felt ripped off. So I formed the Twelve Gates Student Food Co-op. And brought back my own supply of groceries which students could buy at approximate cost after paying a nominal "membership" fee. This twelve-year-old's trade war only lasted for a few weeks --but what a way to learn economics, improve one's math skills, and deal with internal school politics!

In the spring we went on a school trip to Mexico. We drove several hundred miles into Mexico to a place called Bahia de Kino (Kino Bay). The bay was gorgeous. Out in the water a Bali-Hai-like island called Tiburon, rose from the blue horizon. But lack of organization on a school trip can be a big and dangerous mess (see my previously posted story Stingray.)

Sadly, the school and my life would soon implode. The adults in the school began to squabble; and so did my parents. That Mother's Day my Dad had a nervous breakdown--and this would lead to my parents divorce later that year.

Why do we feel such an intense desire to grow up when we are children and such an intense desire to return to childhood when we are grown? Life froze in the late spring of 1976 when I was thirteen and my father was fifty-seven. Just as I was reaching out to become a man my father decided he wanted to be a boy. And THAT will be another chapter entirely.

David

When you talk about this blog later, and you will - be kind.

Copyright 2006 D. H. Maxine.