Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your Junior High School (or Middle School) Memories

It's time to think of school days for this week's challenge on Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun!

Here is your assignment, if you choose to play along (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music):

(1) Do you have memories of your junior high school (or mddle school) years?  Please share several of them.

(2) Tell us in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or on Facebook.  Be sure to leave a comment with a link to your blog post on this post.

Okay, here's mine!

Junior high school holds a special place in my heart because it was the first time I stayed in the same school start to finish.  I attended all three complete years — 7th, 8th, and 9th grades, 1973–1976 — at C. W. Ruckel Junior High School in Niceville, Florida.

I rode the bus to school most of the time.  It was a 10-mile trip from Villa Tasso to Niceville.  Sometimes during the winter it was too cold (dipping below freezing) or too flooded from rain (washing out the "streets") for my brother and me to walk to the bus stop.  Then my mother would drive us in, or we would go in with a neighbor if the water levels were too high for my mother's Corvair.  Water coming up through the floorboards was never a good sign.

I took advanced classes all through junior high school.  For my first year, my 6th-grade teacher registered me for them, leaving one class period for me to choose my own elective, and I continued with them for the following two years.  The advanced classes were math, English, science, history, and probably something else.  I think I took chorus all three years.  I started Spanish classes in junior high school, with Mrs. Lourdes Adams.  Mrs. Arpke was my English teacher.  (Wow, I dragged those names out of my memory!)  I did well in all of my classes.  I probably still have most of my report cards, although they're buried in storage.

I didn't socialize much, partly because of living 10 miles out of town and partly because I wasn't in any of the social cliques.  I was tall, skinny, gangly, unattractive, too smart, and still pretty new to the area.  My only friends were other students in the advanced classes.  My best friend was Eileen.  We met in 8th grade and have stayed friends since, even with each of our moves to various parts of the United States and around the world.  I just visited her last week.

I did not particiate in extracurricular school activities.  My mother often picked us up after school because she was usually in town by that point.  We might run errands with her before heading home and doing homework.

I helped my brother with sorting baseball cards every time he got a new (to him) bunch of cards.  I practiced piano at home and sewed clothing for my dolls.  I don't remember hobbies beyond that.

I participated in Girl Scouts, as a Junior Girl Scout.  At the end of 9th grade, we had a big trip to Atlanta.  The chaperone who drove the car I was in got lost in the city and freaked out because we ended up in the black section of town.  I was the only one who could read a  map, and I got us to the hotel.  We visited Underground Atlanta and Stone Mountain.  I'm sure we visited more sites than that, but those are the ones I remember.

As my 9th grade graduation present, I spent several weeks, maybe a month?, with my grandparents in southern Florida.  They lived in a retirement community, so there weren't kids of my age around.  I hung out in the sun and got sunburnt but had a great time visiting with them.  It was the first time I flew by myself.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Your High School Years

It seems a little early in the year to be reminiscing about high school, but that's what we're doing tonight with Randy Seaver for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun!

Here is your assignment, should you decide to accept it (you ARE reading this, so I assume that you really want to play along; cue the Mission:  Impossible! music!):

1.  This week we travel down Memory Lane again.  Tell us about your high school years with answers to ten questions.

2.  Put them in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link in a comment to this post.

Okay, here are my answers:

1.  What was your high school's full name, where was it, and what year did you graduate?  Niceville Senior High School; Niceville, Florida (of course!); 1979.

2.  What was the school team nickname, and what are/were your school's colors?  It's the Niceville Eagles, and the colors are maroon and gold (or something similar).

3.  What was the name of your school song, and can you still sing it?  I'm not sure if Randy means the school as a whole or my graduating class.  I remember my class' song was "Fantasy" by Earth, Wind & Fire, which I can still kind of sing.  If the school had/has an overall school song, I have no idea what it is, so I certainly can't sing it.

4.  Did you have a car?  How did you get to and from school?  I did not have a car in high school.  I didn't even have a bicycle.  Most of the time I got to and from school by the school bus, which came out to County Line Road.  Nicevile is in Okaloosa County, and I lived in Villa Tasso in neighboring Walton County, just over the county line.  Sometimes my mother would drive me (and later my brother also) to school, such as in bad weather.  At least once the mother of one of the my classmates, who also lived in Villa Tasso, drove my brother and me to school, because we had flooded roads, and my mother's Corvair was too low to the ground to drive through the high waters.  (When the water starts coming up through the floorboards, you know it's time to use a different vehicle.)

5.  Did you date someone from your high school?  Or marry someone from your high school?  Were you considered a flirt?  Ha!  I had one date in high school (see #9).  I'm still not married, therefore so much for that question.  And I definitely wasn't a flirt.  Social pariah was more like it.

6.  What social group were you in?  Like Randy, I was a social outcast, with the smart geeks and nerds.  My few friends were the other students in the advanced classes.  My school was also heavily cliquish.  The only times the "cool" kids talked to me were when they wanted help with their homework (I'm looking at you, George Skipper).

7.  Who were your favorite teachers?  The only teacher from high school whose name I can remember right now is Mr. Clifford, who taught math.  I really enjoyed his calculus class.  That's funny, I remember more of my junior high school teachers' names than high school.

8.  What did you do on Friday nights?  Stayed home.  I wasn't asked out on dates, I didn't go to sports events, and I was a geek.  Actually, once a gaming club started, which was held at the Niceville/Eglin AFB YMCA building, I think I sometimes did that on Friday nights, although we also gamed on Saturdays.

9.  Did you go to and have fun at the Senior Prom?  My only date in high school was for the Senior Prom.  I was asked only five (yes, five!) days before the prom.  I found a dress to wear at a thrift shop for $5 (I'm wearing it in this photo; I think I still have it).  Even though my date (I really don't want to attest to his name in public) pretty much ignored me at the prom itself, I did have fun, because I ended up hanging out with a friend of mine who was there without a date.

10.  Have you been to reunions, and are you planning on going to the next reunion?  Surprisingly enough, considering the history I've described, I have been to reunions, I think three of them.  I went to the 5-year reunion because I was working at USC in 1984, the year Los Angeles hosted the Summer Olympics, and all nonessential staff were told "you are taking vacation during these two weeks, thank you, see you later."  Coincidentally, the reunion fell during those two weeks, so I figured I might as well go, and it made for a good excuse to visit my parents.  I think that was also the year my brother graduated with his Master's degree, so we all ended up going down to Gainesville for that while I was out there.  I went to either the 10th or the 20th reunion (maybe both?), which I had forgotten about but was reminded of when I went to the 40th reunion in 2019.  That one I had planned to attend primarily so I could again visit my parents while there, but before the reunion took place my father passed away and my stepbrother moved my stepmother to Texas so he and his wife could take care of her there, and I didn't see either one of them.  I did get to visit my stepfather, though, so it was somewhat successful in that regard.  And am I planning on going to the next reunion?  I really don't know.

Kind of like Randy, I really didn't enjoy high school, except for the learning part.  I was not in the right social circles, I'm plain as a mud fence, and intelligence wasn't highly regarded.  Not a great place to be.