Sticks & Stones

By the time I entered high school-unconventionally-I’m not sure journalism was my sole focus anymore. I was already sitting in on communications classes at Temple University while still in elementary school. One of our film-developing customers, an older woman attending Temple, had taken me under her wing. She brought me with her to class. I wish we’d kept in touch. I really liked her. Loud, fun, and a little chaotic, she taught me what a food co-op was. Her house was messy, like her long, wiry gray hair. She was short and stocky, and sadly, I always knew to brace myself-she could fall to the floor in an epileptic seizure at any moment.

I loved learning how to tell a story through moving pictures, and I loved the vibe of a room full of communications majors. In high school, I also sat in on law classes offered through an off-campus program. I loved challenging the teacher with hypotheticals and what-ifs. Only a curious, uninhibited girl-naive to societal norms- would do that. Law didn’t feel like memorizing rules. It felt like an invitation to rewrite them. I was definitely different.

The high school I ended up in was unique. It was called "the school without walls." I say I entered it unconventionally because I wasn’t technically supposed to be there. I had started tagging along with my brother, cutting seventh grade because I was bored-and scared. Violence on my street had spilled over into my elementary school.

There were threats to set my hair on fire. I was followed home and swarmed by groups of kids. My home ec teacher once shoved me into a cloakroom for safety. This was especially jarring because just a year earlier, I’d won Student Body President. "By a landslide," my teacher had said. I got a standing ovation after my speech where I promised a communications department, school decorating projects, student-led productions, and to make myself available to hear kids’ problems. Just a year earlier, I had been a popular kid.

It was 1978, and I wrote in my campaign flyer that my friends said I was a born leader. I pitched ideas like separate events for grades K through 8, an art gallery, and auditorium productions written and directed by students. Maybe I was gunning for the principal’s job.

Summer came and went, and I went through some physical changes. I was no natural beauty and identified deeply with Janis Ian’s At Seventeen. I had thick, coarse hair and wanted Farrah Fawcett wings. I had a Sephardic Jewish complexion and what my Bubbe would call zaftig. I started wearing makeup and platform heels. I had my hair cut for the first time, despite my dad’s protests. It was styled like a softer version of Gilda Radner’s Rosanne Rosannadanna.

One thing to remember: I was a bit older than the kids in my grade. My father didn’t believe in kindergarten or sending kids to school until they could tie their shoelaces. The year I was finally supposed to start first grade, there was a teachers’ strike. I ended up about a year and a half ahead of my classmates. So here I was, looking like one of the teachers in my pleated slacks and bouncy blouses, eyeliner and lipgloss, while the other girls wore rock T-shirts and jeans. No makeup. Nothing like today’s preteens at Sephora.

Eventually, the school assigned a plainclothes officer to follow me to every class for protection. My parents were never notified. We only found out because I grew suspicious that a strange man kept waiting outside my classrooms. The teachers began to resent me.

At home, my dad told me, “Stay close to the Black kids. They’ll protect you.” As if they didn’t already have enough to deal with. But he wasn’t wrong. Throughout my life, Black friends have been protectors and allies. So I started cutting class and going with my brother to his high school instead.

After a lot of back and forth, it was decided I’d be tested and admitted into high school-skipping eighth grade entirely. I never went back.