Surviving Gateway

I started out my first few days at Gateway a little intimidated by it all, but after a while I got used to the routine, and I was making a few new friends. Most of my new friends were the smarter kids in school. There’s this guy from Westville named Grant Karsner who seems like he could be Mr. Peabody from Rocky and Bullwinkle. Grant is really good with math, something I struggle with. I’m getting to know another kid from Westville. Bruce Zahn is his name. He’s smaller than me and kinda quiet-the soft-spoken type.
I was right about Jack Wiler from Wenonah. He and I share a lot of the same interests. We talk about Marvel Comic books-which artists we like and which super heroes are our favorites. Jack likes history too, so I’ve found somebody else other than Steve Kay I can talk to about World War II and all the other wars I like to read about.
My locker mate, Gary Lundquist keeps pumping me for information about all the girls from Woodbury Heights. I’d like to help him out, but I really don’t know much about them personally, only from what I know when we’re in school. I can tell him that Joyce Hoefers is as good an athlete as any boy and she’s a nice person, except if you’re trying to dunk her under the water, then watch out! I agree with him that Sheila McLaughlin is pretty, and once again I don’t know too much about her as a person. I like Gary, he’s good at making jokes and he seems real intelligent when he speaks. He’s kind of like a junior William F. Buckley; a mini-intellectual. I seem to be able to make him laugh real hard sometimes. Gary tells me he’s interested in a girl from my class that I hardly ever spoke to, Debbie Pryzwara. Her father is working on his house or something, and he thinks that he’d like to get to know her. I tell him that Debbie was kinda quiet and shy in school, and I don’t live on her side of town. I tell Gary he should ask Don Vanneman about Debbie-he lives across the street from her. Whether or not he acts on my advice, I’ll never know. I do know he’s also interested in Sue Burns, the girl I’ve always had a huge crush on. I’m too awkward and shy to ever tell Sue Burns I like her. I thought that I’d get up enough courage to talk to her now that we’re in high school and all, but I don’t.
There are lots and lots of pretty girls to meet and admire. They’re everywhere, but what does that matter to me? I’m this skinny awkward goofball with a crew cut. I look more and more like Jerry Lewis the longer I keep getting my hair cut this way, but I don’t have a choice, that’s how my parents tell me to get it cut, so that’s that. Anyway, when I tried to let my hair grow long a few years ago it was a disaster. It’s better to get it cut off than plastering it down with a whole bottle of hair tonic.
I decide that I’m going to join the school newspaper. I have an interest in writing, and I used to pretend that I ran a newspaper when I was younger. They make me the sports editor. Sports? I don’t know much about sports at all. I know about baseball mostly. I’ve played football in the yard but I don’t know much else about it and I know absolutely nothing about basketball. The few times I’ve tried to play basketball with Jimmy Matsuk and Paul LaPann and some of the others I was just horrible, so I’ve stayed away from it.
Mr. Harvey is the basketball coach. I know Mr. Harvey from Woodbury Heights Elementary school, so it will be easy to talk to him. I write down a whole bunch of questions for Mr. Harvey about the upcoming basketball season and how he thinks the team will do. Most of my questions are pretty open-ended, so he can be free to answer them in any way, and I won’t look like I don’t know what I’m talking about. Mr. Harvey answers all my questions and then some, so I’ve got a lot of good material for my article about the boys’ basketball team. The only thing is, when the newspaper is finally printed, most of our news is so old that nobody really cares about reading it. After Christmas vacation I lose interest and quit the paper.
A lot of kids are choosing activities to join. Football, basketball, field hockey, cheerleading, color guard; everyone is picking something.
I’m not a jock, my athletic abilities usually provoke laughter rather than admiration, so I join the Chess Club. My neighbor Mr. Olsen taught me how to play chess. I wasn’t very good at it, but I loved listening to him speak to me in his Norwegian accent, so I tried the best I could. Since chess is a military game I figured it would grow on me, but somehow my brain couldn’t wrap itself around the subtleties of the strategy, and I couldn’t see the moves ahead of time like you’re supposed to. I lost pretty much all of the time. Years later my long time friend Keith Madden and I would play chess almost every day and every day he would beat me. One day I noticed that I was doing very well against him, and it looked like I was going to win. Keith had reached a point in the game where his next move would decide whether or not I could beat him. I figured he could see that I could win and make the right move to prevent it. To my surprise he didn’t, and the next thing I know I’m calling out Checkmate!
Keith couldn’t believe his eyes. I think he studied the board for at least twenty minutes before conceding the game. I didn’t believe it either.
I didn’t join anything else. I wasn’t confident enough to try out for sports, and I didn’t want to spend a lot of time practicing a musical instrument, so band was out for me. Good thing too, because kids who were in the band seemed to have been placed in a whole different category of nerddom. I never understood why though. I always envied people who could play an instrument. Playing one of those horns or reed instruments is hard to do, and you have to practice as much as any athlete, so I never understood why kids in the band were ridiculed so much.
I was keeping my head down, trying not to get noticed, just flowing along and trying to get good grades. I sat at the lunch table with guys like Bruce Zahn and Grant Karsner, Ken Fell and Ralph Leeds and Jack Wiler. I had pretty much lost touch with most of the boys I went to school with in Woodbury Heights, except for Steve Kay. He and I pretty much kept to ourselves, and after school we contented ourselves with playing Avalon Hill war games and moving Airfix toy soldiers around on the desert we built in his basement.
I’m getting by OK so far. My grades are good and I’ve made a few new friends. Maybe this new school isn’t so bad after all.
Well, I’ve still gotta survive gym class. And let's not forget the cafeteria.
We’ll see.
We'll see.