9th grade

I was scared to go to high school because my eigth grade science teacher Mr Brickey strongly cautioned me with ideas of being a big fish in a small pond and going to high school I would be a small fish in a big pond. Why was he intentionally scaring me? He thought he should prepare me. He must have had a bad experience.

Ninth grade, I was in a freshman world, but I had Melly with me, and she was always so brave. She was brave enough for two. I had been to university already. I was unusual.

My guidance counselor discouraged me from taking foreign language my freshman year. Obviously she had no faith that I would go directly to a four-year, because I would need four years of foreign language for that. I'm still mad because it's not right for someone to make a judgement like that. I can't think of what she based it on other than my looks and demeanor.

I was kicked out of my honors English class when my teacher asserted that Shakespeare's plays were written in old English. I was furious that she was making shit up and asserted adamantly that they were written in modern English and that old English you can't even read. Rather than sending me to the principal or vice-principal, I was sent to my guidance counselor. And so she hated me even more.

I was friends with the kid who made Ventura High School's Reality Press Weekly, started my own zine the Ugly Aardvark, and had a lot of pleasure with that though it was horrible at the beginning. But I had a lot of energy, and it was a godsend. We were all starved for creative freedom, and even a bad zine is wonderful for an oppressive place. (Or at least it was valuable before everyone had the internet.)

It wasn't until a couple years had passed and the Ugly Aardvark made some nastly allegations about discrepencies in sports funding based on the ethnicities of the players that the administration got really pissed. The white tennis players got new courts, while the Mexican runners were running on an ancient track in need of repair. And the principal's daughter played tennis.

I'm still so mad about these things after all these years!

Anyway, that's how I looked in ninth grade.