Chapter 4

The first day of school brought with it a whole new set of jitters. Partly they revolved around trying to avoid people who might know me, but mostly I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to convince my teachers that I was ready to move up a grade.

Well, teacher. I’d forgotten that I was still in elementary school, so most of our schooling was still handled by a single teacher. Mrs. Wilson rang some bells for me, but not enough that I could remember much about her. All I remembered for certain, was that she was a rock hound and had brought samples in to class, occasionally. It soon became apparent that she would be an ally in my quest to move to junior high school. Despite having taught for more than 20 years she was still very involved with trying to help her students learn as much as they could!

For my part I wasn’t quite the model student, but nothing I did was really wrong. I wrote in my workbooks — workbooks for math and English; I’d forgotten all about those — while she talked to the class. Of course she noticed what I was doing but every time she called on me to answer a question I would give the correct answer, in an almost sleepy voice. I also pretty much stayed in class during recess. I’ll bet teachers hated it, but I was prone to doing it on my first trip through as well since being small on the playground was an invitation to bullying. The difference this time was that I was writing away in my workbooks while everyone else was trying to burn off some energy.

Early in the third week of classes I was wondering how to bring up the idea that I was bored out of my skull, when Mrs. Wilson did it for me. During our math lesson for the day she couldn’t take it any longer.

“Jeff, what are you doing with your workbook?” she asked.

“I’m just working ahead, Mrs. Wilson. It’s all been pretty easy so far, but I’m hoping there’ll be something more interesting in the last couple of pages.”

“What! Do you mean to tell me that you’ve almost finished your entire math workbook? I don’t believe you.”

“Actually if you’ll give me another fifteen or twenty minutes I’ll have the whole thing done, and you can check it over. I probably won’t finish the English one until tomorrow, though.”

I think that my bored demeanor, coupled with what I’d said, was just too much for her. She just stood there for a moment doing the guppy: mouth opening and closing but nothing coming out. Needless to say a trip to Principal Jenson’s office was swiftly arranged. He, in turn, called my father.

One week later I started junior high school, and started riding the bus to school with Dave again. It took me the best part of a week to get situated and to catch up on what I’d missed, but within two weeks I was settled in.

Some of my classes this time actually approached being interesting. One of them, an English class, was studying Hellenistic myths and fables. In junior high? It was a great class! I didn’t learn anything new since I’d actually taken a college course on the same subject at the University of Washington, but it was fun nonetheless. I always got a kick out of how human the Greek gods were.

My science teacher, a Mr. Schultz, was a German national and a big fan of Darwin. We spent most of the time that I was in his class dealing with biology, sometimes spending an hour just learning about the differences between two similar species. It was one of the most interesting and fun science classes I’d had at any level in either timeline.

Math was a letdown. I was hoping for algebra and got stuck with the same sort of stuff that I’d been helping Trish with. English was reading and writing — sentence structure, paragraph structure, parts of speech — yawn. Art found me practicing skills honed as a draftsman when drawing, then creating a mess when trying to make pottery. Having a lot more experience didn’t mean I was any more talented!

The biggest problem I had was missing Trish. For the previous two months we’d spent a big part of our time together and I missed it. Spending more time with Dave only exacerbated the problem. I’d have preferred being alone and lonely, rather than having to deal with his mercurial temper. Our families were getting together regularly on the weekends by then, so I was still getting a little of my ‘Trish fix,’ but I really wanted to spend more time with her ... by ourselves, if possible. Just after Halloween, I decided to start working toward that end.

For the first time in this life I took books home from school and actually did homework. My father was pleased when he eventually found out. He might have been less so if he’d realized that after reading each of the books, cover to cover, I was doing every problem in every book and organizing my papers in a three ring binder. None of my classes were difficult, though the science class did make me think, since it had been more than 30 years since I’d last taken biology.

Once again I started to let my boredom with my more tedious classes show through. Nothing overt and nothing that the teachers could reasonably be upset with. Little eye rolls and deep sighs, doodling instead of taking notes — though taking notes was never a strong part of how I learned — and a slightly exasperated tone of voice when answering questions. In the teachers’ minds these all added up to a student who didn’t want to be there. The aced tests and homework were intended to give a clue about why said student didn’t want to be there. My hope was that my teachers would put it all together and decide that I should move up another grade. I was once again laying groundwork — I fully intended to start ninth grade with my new stepsister the following September. Unfortunately, I had forgotten something. Wedding bells were on the horizon.

In early January, John Larsen married Helen Engleman. Helen’s house was too small for all of us and our trailer was smaller still so it was decided that we’d get a bigger trailer — one with a bedroom for each of us kids. It would have been nice if they’d managed to get a slot near our earlier trailer but the huge, 76’x28’, double wide would only fit in some of the slots further south in the park. Unfortunately that meant that we’d be changing schools ... again. All of the groundwork that I’d done was essentially useless when I had to start over in a new school. I could only hope that five months was long enough for me to convince my new teachers.

The plus side of the new trailer, of course, was that I now got to see Trish every day. By then, nobody in the family batted an eye when I pulled her chair out for her at the table, or offered her my hand when she stood up. Some of our new routines did initially cause comment, though. We took turns fixing breakfast for each other before school and always studied together after school before helping with dinner. Trish’s grades, which had already risen after our summer of studying, climbed again. When one of us had dishwashing detail the other would always be there to help. Friendly hugs were given freely, whether because the recipient looked like they needed it or because the giver just wanted to dish one out. Our standard reply when someone suggested that maybe we were overdoing it became, “Would you rather we were fighting?”

In short, we’d each found a new best friend, and we made it a habit to be loving and supportive of each other in any way s in which we could. It might seem strange to some that we didn’t try to push our relationship in more intimate directions, but it didn’t happen. For my part, I didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize our friendship. I fantasized about her every day but I intentionally used those fantasies as an outlet. I was lucky I hadn’t started puberty, yet. I didn’t have that fluctuating wash of hormones trying to do my thinking for me.

None of my classes at the new school were nearly as interesting as the English and science classes that I’d left behind. On the one hand this was annoying. — my new, more involved persona didn’t handle boredom as well as the apathetic version that I was trying to leave behind, and that one hadn’t handled it all that well to begin with. On the other hand it made it very, very easy to appear bored, while still pulling 100% on my assignments and tests, so I felt pretty good about my chances of advancing two grades at the end of the year.

Trish had made some new girlfriends in her grade as well. In particular Felicia Ramirez, Jodi Nelson and Jenny Alexander started spending some time at our place and Trish would occasionally spend a night over at Jodi’s home with the others. If I had actually been eleven years old I’m sure I would have resented the time that they were keeping me from spending with Trish. As a 48 year old though, I was able to deal with it. It helped that they were all nice enough to me. Jenny was very small and she seemed fascinated by a boy only one grade behind her who was even smaller.

That lack of size was the biggest problem that I had during the school year. Even though I’d grown a couple of inches since the previous June, I was the smallest boy in the entire school and only one of the girls was smaller. To compensate for my lack of size, nature had also seen to it that I was bog slow and weak. I think the only reason I didn’t get mercilessly harassed is that I kept my head down and just didn’t challenge anyone. Even with those precautions, I still got picked on plenty.

When I mentioned the problem to my father he suggested that I start making use of the weight room at the trailer park’s rec building. It wouldn’t make me any bigger, but at least I’d get a bit stronger. He hoped that I’d be less intimidated by the bigger boys if I had a little muscle. Since I was under 18 he had to sign a permission form to allow me to use it but once that was done I started using it each day after school. Of course, if I was working out after school my new favorite shadow wouldn’t be far behind. — Trish thought it would help her defend herself when she got old enough to start dating, so she started doing some upper body work after her mom signed a permission form for her. The downside of having her there was that it was a bit distracting, but I know that I worked harder trying to impress her than I would have otherwise. She actually was stronger than she looked and she seemed to add strength fairly quickly for the first couple of months that we worked out.

Around the same time I decided to take Trish into my confidence on my plan to advance another grade. We were just lazing around after dinner one night in March when I brought it up.

“Could I ask your opinion on something?”

“Sure, what do you want to know?”

“Um, I’m still pretty bored in class so I’m thinking of trying to skip eighth grade next year. Would it bother you to have me in the same class? If it would...”

Normally Trish was very polite but this time she cut me off.

“That would be soooo cool! Do you think that Mom and John will go for it? Would you be willing to take some of the same classes that I take? Oh, that would be great! Is there any way I can help?”

Well, I guess I didn’t need to worry about her not wanting to be seen with her new ‘baby’ brother.

I held up my hand to slow her down and tried to answer her questions as best I could.