First Day of High School...Quite A Pickle

Today marks the official start of my life as the parent of a high school teenager. I look forward with great enthusiasm to many fun-filled nights, scrutinizing potential boyfriends, lengths of skirts and thickness of make-up, especially eye make-up. My daughter occassionally slathers on the eye liner as though she's trying to capture the look of either an ancient Egyptian princess or a raccoon with a penchant toward prostitution. My old man had the same problems with my sisters and I fondly recall him shouting out with reddened face and bulging neck veins, like a over-zealous Baptist minister from the pulpit,

"You've got too much eye make-up on! You look like a "whoooooooooore!"

For some reason he stretched out the "oo" sound and threw in a couple of extra syllables in the mix, so that a 1 syllable word now had 3 or 4. I have yet to accuse my daughter of "hooking" but it's funny how concerns and worries never seem to change. Just as my daughter is today, I was a little nervous about starting high school but for different reasons, altogether.

In 1979, when I began freshman year at Marist high school, an all boys catholic school mind you, I had only one fear. I had no physical defects, clubbed foot, swollen facial chancres or a wandering sniper-eye, nothing like that at all, which was prime ammunition for upper classmen to give you some terrible nickname that would stick forever. Fortunately, I had "sprouted" pubic hair in all the necessary locales to avoid locker room abuse and I dressed as nerdy as all the other incoming freshman. I was, for all practical purposes, normal. My only fear was riding a school bus for the very first time.

Since I attended a private, catholic grammar school, we weren't allowed to ride the public school buses. It was the 70's, and as I've said before, nobody had any money in the 70's. The luxury and expense of using a bus was out of the question. My parents conspired with 2 other families to take turns each week carpooling us kids to school. We alternated driving with the Hennessy's and the Noonan's. All together, there were 8 kids and one adult stuffed ever so comfortably into the car. I don't recall much of an issue, aside from having to ride with one of your brothers or sisters on your lap, when it was our turn or the Hennessy's week to drive. However, when the Noonan's week rolled around, it was a living hell. First of all, Mikey Noonan was too young to leave at home and had to sit up front, so this added one more body to the already over-populated back seat game of Twister. Mrs. Noonan drove a dark, green Chevy Impala and joining her in the front seat were Colleen and Mikey Noonan. The manufacturer's suggested back seat capacity was 3 adults sitting comfortably or 7 children stacked to the roof, ready to kill each other with a #2 pencil or Little Debbie snack cake. Along with me, trying to survive the crush of humanity in the back seat, were my older sister Kathy and my little sister Beth. As I was a gentleman, I offered to let Kathy sit without having another kid on her lap. Actually, she was bigger than me and not only possessed the physical abilities to kick my ass but tenacity and willingness to drop a beat-down on me at a moment's notice. Even today, I'd rather whack a beehive with my genitals than mix it up with her. That left Beth to sit on my lap. She was small and I could slap her around, if need be, without any fear of retaliation. Next to us were the Hennessy boys, Tom, Steve, Jack and little Jimmy. Since there were 4 of them, they stacked up neatly like patio resin chairs, without incident. In the 70's, child restraint devices were shunned so that more kids could get shoved dangerously in cars and off to school. The cramped ride itself was not the problem, as our limbs were pinched and pressed to the point of cutting off blood circulation and our bodies went numb for the twenty minute drive. Mrs. Noonan was the problem. She was a smoker.

She chain smoked Pall Mall's. In fact, while most smokers took an occassional smoke-break, Mrs. Noonan would try to squeeze in a moment each day to breathe some air. Unfortunately, she never took an "air-break" while driving us back and forth from school, so when we exited the car, we had an amber tint from the free floating tar and smelled like a 60's, beatnik coffee house. Opening a window was out of the question because she needed to have the AC cranked and god-forbid she wasn't completely comfortable, while giving us kids a well-deserved dose of emphysema. Thankfully, I had my little sister on my lap and could place my mouth on her shirt, then breathe, using her shirt as an air-filter, of sorts. I probably should have shared my discovery on battling the second hand smoke with my sisters but Kathy got to sit without a kid crushing her lap, so I figured, "Screw her!" she deserved to be exposed to deadly fumes. Beth, on the otherhand, was my little sister. It was my job, as an older brother, to exploit and torture her in any way I saw fit. Besides, if I warned her about it she may have hindered me from using her as my own personal gas mask. Actually, because of the density of the air-born carcinogens, the smoke was classified as "first and a half" hand smoke, not quite as deadly as hot-boxing a cancer stick ourselves but certainly not as refreshing as a lung-full of second hand smoke. The 7 of us sat silently in the back seat, daring not to speak for fear of the other problem driving with Mrs. Noonan presented.

If, by chance, one of us said something mildly amusing, Mrs. Noonan would laugh. Public expression of merriment is normally nothing to fear but in this case, along with the guffaws from a good belly laugh, came an uncontrolled fit of coughing. And not just any cough. Her's was a smoker's cough, thick with the sound of rolling phlegm that seemed to originate from her feet and eventually spewed forth from her wide open mouth, like a pyroclastic cloud of spittle and lung butter. Again, I was protected by Beth's shirt from breathing in anything disgusting. However, our exposed skin was unprotected from the landing of spit droplets. It was a crapshoot and you just prayed silently to be spared the fallout. Sure, carpooling had its' drawbacks but it was familiar and cancer risk aside, a safe way to get to school.

As I said before, concerns and worries never change, from one generation to the next. My daughter, like me, was apprehensive about riding the bus but for a different reason. She's been riding buses to school her whole life, so that wasn't the problem. Apparently, she heard that part of the high school busing experience included the older kids hazing the freshman in a rather strange way. "Bennying" freshman is nothing new but this rumor she was freaking out about even had me a bit troubled. She's afraid of getting "pickled." I've never heard of that but from what she claims, the older kids make you stick a pickle up your butt, walk up and down the bus aisle and then eat it. Sounds like something I'd try on my little sister Beth but certainly not something to be feared while trying to get an education. After calming her down, I told her she has nothing to worry about and at no point during the bus ride will she have a Vlasic hamburger chip wedged in her crack. Kids...where do they get this stuff from? My fear was much more simple than having pickled vegetables forced into body cavities. I just didn't want to get beat up, which is still a concern of mine to this day. Public humilation I'm comfortable with, it's pain and weeping in front of others that bothers me.

Now that my daughter is embarking on her high school journey, a new batch of problems and issues face not only her, but me and my wife, as well. I'm sure we'll go round and round with her about boys, drinking, curfews and many other topics. As parents, my wife and I are confident that we've prepared our daughter for most situations, save one. If she finds herself in a place where people are smoking, as an only child she'll have no little sibling to use as a human respirator.