January 1979, Arlington Heights, IL.
First day of school.
I moved from Miami Florida to Arlington Heights Illinois in January of 1979, or the second half of the 6th grade, during the blizzard of ’79. I had spent the previous three years at a small private school in Hollywood, Florida called Beacon Hill School. Beacon Hill was an extremely diverse school, in all ways, economically and racially, and very family oriented. I knew everyone at the school and knew all the teachers. It was a small school, probably 200 students total and very liberal, especially for the late 70’s. The principal’s name was Mr. Tibberts, and he had a paddle that was in use for those that earned it.
My father was offered a job up North, and it was not even up for discussion that he would take it. The people he worked for in S. Florida were self-destructing. So, we moved.
We flew from Miami International Airport to Chicago O’Hare. When we went to go through security in Miami, we ran into a problem. I had all of my hermit crabs, about 30 of them, in a paper bag with me. As usual, my father had his briefcase with him. When we got to security, they told me that I couldn’t take the hermit crabs. So, we turned around and went back. My father took the contents of his briefcase out and laid them on a table. He dumped the hermit crabs into his briefcase, sand and all. Then he put the papers from his briefcase into the paper bag. Back to security we went. He put the briefcase on the X-Ray conveyor belt with the paper bag and we went through with no problems. Easy solution. We boarded the plane and were off to Chicago.
My first adaptation to the Chicago area was the snow. I’d never seen snow before. I remember landing at O’Hare and seeing the mountains of snow off the runways and thinking it looked like sand. My father assured me it wasn’t. He had already bought me a coat, a large green parka which I soon learned was way uncool amongst my classmates who wore ski jackets. I had no idea what cold was having never been in temperatures below 30° that I could recall.
We got home to Arlington Heights, and settled in. I put my hermit crabs into their aquarium that my dad had built for me, and went about getting ready for school on Monday.
Monday came. My father dropped me off at the bus stop on the other side of the apartment complex. There were about a dozen kids waiting there. As I walked towards the group, about 20 yards away, I got hit by the first snowball. Then I was being pelted by what felt like dozens more coming from all over. One hit me in the face and I couldn’t see anything. I just went down on my knees and tried to cover myself, dropping my backpack. Then it stopped. I looked up and there was the bus and all the kids were getting on it. I picked up my backpack and ran for the bus and got on. There was a seat open in the front and I took it. The entire bus was laughing and pointing.
The bus ride was uneventful, and we finally arrived at Rand Junior High School. I had no idea where to go, so I found the office first. I introduced myself and asked for a schedule and where I was supposed to go. This school was huge from what I was used to and it was made up of pods arranged around a central hub. I was told where my homeroom was and how to get there, so I headed off in that direction. I found the pod and located the room. I was feeling pretty good at this point as I’d actually found the room. I opened the door and stepped into the room. As the door closed behind me, someone said something to me that I didn’t quite get. “Oh, good morning.” I said figuring that was appropriate. The next thing I knew I had blows raining down on me from all angles. I was hit in both eyes, I could feel my mouth being pummeled, I went down on the ground and curled up into a ball. Then the kicks started. I had no idea what the hell was going on. Finally, over a woman’s screams it stopped. The woman, the teacher, knelt down beside me and started talking to me. I couldn’t understand a word through my sobs. I finally got up on my feet and looked around. The kid that had done it to me was standing off to the side of the room grinning.
The teacher had one of the other students take me to the office so that I could see the nurse. The nurse gave me a few ice packs for my eyes and lips and the office called my father at work, which he hadn’t gotten to yet. I waited in the nurse’s office for almost 2 hours before my father got there to take me home.
Home was almost worse. I got admonished for getting beaten up. Why didn’t I fight back? Why did the kid beat me so badly. It was hard to explain that all I did was walk into the room and get assaulted. My father wouldn’t believe that I didn’t say something to provoke the kid.
The next day, my father took me to school. We went straight to the principal’s office. Upon confronting the principal, my father learned that this kid had a habit of doing that to all of the new kids and had been running unchecked for the school year. My father was livid. “If I ever hear of this kid laying a finger on another student, I’m going to come back here and do the same to you.” My father told the principal. I was excused to go to my classroom.
When I got home that afternoon, I went into my room to change out of school clothes. When I looked into the hermit crab aquarium, I was shocked to see that most all but a few of them had shed their shells, which was really weird as they only did that to molt and get new shells, and then only for a few minutes. The ones that had shed their shells were a weird color grey and were molting. The ones that hadn’t shed their shells weren’t moving at all. All of my hermit crabs were dying. When my father got home, I showed him. The only explanation that we could come up with was that the x-rays from the airport security had poisoned them. My hermit crabs had radiation poisoning. It took about a week for all of the ones that were still living to finally die off. Life lesson: don’t put your hermit crabs through the x-ray scanner at the airport. I can just imagine how many other people tried sneaking small animals or critters through security that way and had the same disastrous results.
The only good thing about Rand Junior High is that it had a huge library. I picked up a book a day habit there. They had a wonderful science fiction section and I went from Asimov to Bova in no time reading all of both. I spent all of my time either in the library or in class. Someone from the school called my father at some point and told him that I was anti-social because I sat alone at lunch and read. Of course, I was anti-social, when you get picked on and bullied constantly you kinda learn to stay by yourself. As far as I was concerned, they could all go screw and I made that opinion clear. It was the worst half a school year I could imagine. I don’t remember having a single positive social interaction with another student in the school, ever. And they wondered why I was so angry…
OMG. I just discovered that there is a FB group for Rand Junior High School alumni. I think I’ll join right up.
Not.