I remember seeing some people I hadn’t seen in two years. I just wanted to go up to them and yell their names, but then I realized that would be socially inappropriate, so I just walked to my locker. Even though I was a junior, I didn’t really have any typical junior classes. I took AP English and AP U.S. History. Colonie offered biology for freshmen students, chemistry for sophomores and physics for juniors. At Saint John’s, I had to take Earth science as a freshman, biology as a sophomore, and chemistry as a junior. I was in Spanish 3, when all the other Colonie juniors were in Spanish 4. I took Spanish 1 in middle school, but Saint John’s made everyone repeat Spanish 1 as a freshman. So, for two classes, chemistry and Spanish 3, I was with sophomores.
My biggest fear going to a new school as a teenager was finding out who to eat lunch with. Most teenagers plan this out as soon as they get their schedules. I didn’t really talk to anybody at Colonie, so I just walked in the cafeteria and found a table. My nerves were eased when I saw Ray, somebody I knew from Sand Creek Middle School, who was friends with Eric. Ray was known for his short stature and his off-the-wall sense of humor. Once in seventh grade, Eric and I went to his house to hang out and I waited in his driveway while Eric went inside. I remember smelling something and wondering if I forgot to wear deodorant, so I nonchalantly smelled my armpits. A little while later Eric brought me inside and introduced me to Ray’s mom. After the introductions, he said, “We all saw you smelling your armpits.” Everybody laughed.
A few weeks later, Ray came to my house. We lived on the second floor of my grandmother’s house. Ray went up the stairs first and found my mother relaxing in her bra and underwear. When I sat down and ate lunch with him that day as a junior, he told all the other kids that the first time he met my mother, she was in her underwear. He would speak of this incident until we graduated.
I barely knew the other kids at my lunch table. They would refer to me as “Jewish kid” because they thought I looked Jewish. Anytime they needed their garbage thrown out, they just said, “Jewish kid,” and it was my signal to grab their trash and throw it out. It was humiliating, but I just didn’t have any other place to sit and eat lunch. I couldn’t eat by myself, and I did like Ray. He was really funny, so I just put up with it. I also got picked on because no matter how much I tried, I always walked on my toes. One time Ray was behind me and yelled in front of the crowd, “Luke, it looks like you’re walking with a pole up your ass.”
I was very motivated to get good grades and get into a good college. I was taking two AP courses and another college-level course in business from a community college that the school offered. I was nervous about taking AP English, since most students didn’t take any college-level English courses until senior year. Most high school students would agree that teachers and guidance counselors often try to intimidate students and tell them that AP classes will be the biggest challenge of their young lives. I was put at ease when I met the English teacher, Ms. Miller, who was also the class advisor. Ms. Miller was a very pretty Italian woman who was always encouraging. She greeted her class with a smile, encouraged everyone to do his or her best, and instilled a cando attitude among her students. After a big exam or paper, she would reward us with Dunkin’ Donuts.
It wasn’t long before I saw Eric, Dan, and my other former middle school friends. Eric had enjoyed a rise in popularity once he entered high school. He had a brother four years his senior who was in a band. When Eric became as widely known as his brother, he rose in the high school hierarchy.
Dan was also in my chemistry class, which was made up mostly of sophomores but had some juniors in it as well. Dan had failed chemistry the previous year. One junior, Warren, was a popular football player who was well liked by girls, and Dan, as usual, would try to impress Warren. The first half of the year we got along, and Dan was my lab partner. Then Dan started talking to a friend of Warren’s, and they would write notes back and forth to each other in class. One day I saw these notes, and a lot of what they were writing was about me. Most of it was strange—that I would have sex with goats and other bizarre farm animals. They sat right next to me and laughed uproariously at what they had written to each other. After a couple of weeks, I had enough and showed the chemistry teacher a note I had confiscated. I remember her being very bug-eyed, as she seemed quite conservative and straitlaced. That was the end of my being lab partners with Dan. My other lab partners were just a sympathy group. They felt sorry for me because I had nobody else to work with.
In November, my mother celebrated a huge accomplishment for the both of us. My grandmother sold her house, my mother and
