I'll Trade You For Two Jeffs and a Steve: Step 78

Walking to my homeroom for the first time I wondered what possessed the architect to place a courtyard in the center of the building. One had to wonder what the bench was doing in the glass-encased showcase since no one was ever seen entering or leaving through either of the two doors. Maybe he thought an eagle, the school mascot, would roost out there, but he would have to wait until spring because all the landscaping was covered with snow during most of the winter.

And, why an eagle? With a school newspaper and yearbook aptly titled The Gavel, following the simple logic of garnering a name from the profession of the person for whom the school is named, it seemed to me the football and forensics teams deserved something like the Supremes rather than being named for a bird. All right, so Diana Ross and the girls had the name, but not when the school opened four years earlier. At least Marshall Eagles didn’t seem as blatantly ridiculous as Custer Indians.

If designated up and down staircases and waste of space courtyards weren’t enough structural challenges for someone attempting to get acclimated to his new surroundings the numerous tentacles branching off the parallel corridors made me realize that even though my new classmates had been cordoned off in the junior high wing for the past three years they had a distinct advantage in knowing where to go when the bell rang again. Asking for directions was out of the question since any display of uncertainty marked a student as inept and the target for harassment and humiliation by their peers. I knew it was incumbent upon me to be able to distinguish the music room corridor from the industrial arts wing and the boys’ gym from the girls’ gym. Fortunately, my homeroom was next door to the library, so I had a good starting point from which to map out the rest of my daily route.

Due to the nearly four thousand students that streamed through the halls, everyone at John Marshall Junior-Senior High had to share a locker. While I am not sure with whom I shared a locker I know while others were busy putting away and getting out books and supplies I was already getting to know the students in Mrs. Shultis’s homeroom. Although Ron and Big Steve were in her homeroom, I would be next door for the next year and a half, a period that would see our relationship fade. Instead I started to build a relationship with the two Jeffs who shared a locker and had been close friends since their days at 65^th Street Elementary and Steve M. who would remain my close friend to this day.

Listening to the announcements in Miss Wallace’s homeroom, I started to wonder if my route would take me past the junior high wing and if I might get a chance to see Jan. Even though my path led right past the junior high wing twice that day I had no time to slow down and look because I had to figure out where I was going. It was probably a good thing, too, because in the days and weeks that followed when I did spot her she was not with Renee or Karen. She was with Debbie D, who looked right past freshmen and sophomores to boys in the junior and senior class. It took me a while to realize it, but my time with Jan had come and gone.