The World Turned Upside Down
Posted at 5:40 AM on September 25, 2009
by Dale Connelly
(25 Comments)
This morning I found an e-mail from Wendell Wilkie High School's perennial sophomore Bubby Spamden:
Hi Mr. C.So far, this has got to be the weirdest school year I've ever had at Wilkie, which is saying something, because I've had a LOT of years here. As you know, I'm the poster boy for the campaign against social promotion.
But nobody's even spending any time on school work. All day every day they're talking to us about coughing into our elbows instead of our hands and not touching our faces and don't lick the water fountain and stuff like that.
You probably know I'm not the best student. I kinda have this reputation for taking it easy whenever possible. Usually when I stay home sick, Vice Principal Bender gets on the phone right away, checking up on me, asking lots and lots of questions. I think I wind up talking to her more than my doctor!
But this year, every time I clear my throat she's asking me if I'm all right and do I need to go home and stay there. If I look kinda run down (which I do, every single day), some teacher-type person asks if I'm feeling OK and they come right out and tell me I should leave and not come back until I feel "up" to being in school.
Geez, if I stayed away until then, they'd never see me again.
The whole year is backwards so far. Usually I know just what's expected of me - that I'll be a loud, lazy truancy risk, pretty much constantly. Now ... I don't know. My locker is a mess and I talk during class but the only time I get yelled at, it's for sneezing wrong. When I do that, it gets me a quick trip to the nurse, the Vice Principle and the Principle, and they all tell me I should probably go home and watch TV.
I'm hoping this flu goes away fast so we can get back to acting normal and I can feel like I'm letting people down for all the right reasons. Until then, I'm having a miserable time, and no, I don't feel sick!
Your Pal,
Bubby
Poor Bubby! Change is hard.
Did you always understand and meet the expectations of the adults at your high school?
Comments (25)
I was generally pretty clear on what the expectations of the adults in my world were, and I complied for the most part. Pretty boring report.
Yay! It's Friday! Wishing everyone a great weekend!
Greetings! I, too, was a quiet, compliant, good student -- rather boring. As a tall, thin, mature girl I preferred adults to my classmates many times. I was way too shy to talk to boys and they sure didn't pay any attention to me. Painful times ...
Like Bubby, I confounded expectations in reverse.
My brother and I entered a rural midwestern school as transfers from upstate New York. The adults in charge let it be known they'd have none of our "New York shenanigans." I think they secretly were hoping to see something new and exotic from us, and I wish I'd had a shenanigan or two up my sleeve that could shock them, but the farm kids were far ahead of us in all forms of depravity and misbehavior.
Bubby should be on a field trip to Bloomington, Indiana, where we are having the Lotus World Music & Arts Festival. That would make a great reort for him! Last night Vasen, from Sweden opened the festival. Vasen is a trio, guitar, violin and nickleharpa and they are much beloved here in Bloomington, IN. (They even named a street after them) Perhaps you could play some Vasen one of these days...
Dale, funny that anyone would associate upstate New York with shenanigans. If the adults were that naive, it explains how the farm kids got so far ahead of you. :D
Hey Dale and Mike -- How about some "Ain't Misbehavin'" for Bubby and all us goody-two-shoes. (Wonder where that expression came from?)
High school was bad. I don't even want to think about it. I don't remember that they used the word geek back in the fifties, but I more or less was one.
Teachers didn't know what to do with me. I was fairly well behaved and had limited social skills and some times was a good student and some times not.. Mostly I was very bored. Rock and roll music helped me get through those days.
Just to show what a dork I am, I wanted to point out that Bubby spelled Priniciple incorrectly in second to last paragraph. It should be PrinciPAL, like he spelled it in paragraph 3. Unless I misunderstand the context ...
I discovered in high school (at least my school) that if you were a good student you could get away with a fair amount of "shenanigans" - including playing cards in the hallway (when you should be in class), skipping class and leaving school (with a very flimsy excuse), hanging out with a favorite teacher during their prep hour (when they knew you were supposed to be - wait for it - in another class)...okay, I guess my shenanigans were pretty tame since they mostly involved selective class attendance. Guess that means I was not much of a delinquent. Oh well.
I played by the rules so well they let me skip a grade.....Maybe they were trying to get rid of me because I was always asking questions.
Some habits never die....Yesterday while driving back from the lecture I gave in Pequot Lakes I saw a herd of goats grazing in a field between Garrison and Brainerd.I was going fast but there seemed to be between 50-100 small brown and white goats. They were simply grazing-not getting into trouble or approaching the fences or each other.This is not the behavior I have come to expect from goats on this blog. Can any experts chime in? Is is possible they were bored high school goats?
Go, Cynthia in Bloomington! Vasen beloved in MN too...come back!
I wasn't such a compliant student, but not rebellious either. I tended to be a little more "social" in class than suited most teachers. Paid for it the first semester of college.
Love the Bobby Ferrin Oz...good way to go into the weekend, thanks, Dale.
I was one of the (generally) well behaved -- my dad was a guldance counselor there... had to wait till college to misbehave. I didn't date much in high school, but biggest dissapointment was not getting into Bobettes, the dance team.
Cynthia -- festival sounds great; we lived in Muncie during grad school,and if we were still there I'd head on over!
Thanks Joanne, that's exactly the sort of thing Bubby expects to be criticized for - you're doing him a big favor by putting him back in his comfort zone.
He promises to proof read his work more carefully.
In high school, I was a pretty mild kid, stayed under the radar. Then, in my senior year, there were two times where I was about 20 minutes late to class. (Totally thought my friends and I had time to get lunch off campus). The Vice Principal called me into his office for a talking-to just to make sure I wasn't all of a sudden becoming a rebel. What a tight leash, as if they'd never heard of senioritis.
Have a great morning!
dredging up the high school memories huh. what a fun time. i was straight out of the powder blue button down and navy blue cords of catholic school and into the new modular schedule of the 60's 70's where the concept was to teach responsible use of your time and to allow you to do the things that interested you more than the equal 1 hour divisions in the standard day. we had 60% independant study time to allow for our time management skills to be honed. between photography field trips, band practice, cards in the student union and experimentation with all thise things you experiment with at that age. i have to smile while remembering my vw van and suburban hippy period.
i don't think coughing was anyones concern back then. the teachers were coddeling the goodie two shoes (where did that term come from) and trying to figure the counter culture out. it was a great time and taught independance and consequence but not in the way it was intended.
fun stuff to remember.
great topic hoser.
Tim - your HS memories reminded me of my high school in 70's -- so I'll indulge myself. I went to a progressive, hippie boarding school (oxymoron anyone?) -- it's true.
It was based on Moslow's "self-actualization" principles. Students were from the farms of Wisconsin as well as Milwaukee, Green Bay (me), Sheboygan, etc. Fascinating mix. Some teachers were hippies, the large beautiful campus had forest trails for walking with "weeds", we called teachers by first names, etc. Very cool school actually, but it took me a while to get used to the culture, coming from Catholic grade school.
But it was very small (160 students) so it was a small pool of kids to choose from. It was a great experience in many ways -- just not for dating!
I spent 24 years teaching in high school. Every so often, but not that much of the time, the focus was learning. How odd people thought it was to make learning the focus.
I'm not ready this morning to discuss high school, ahead of the way-too-many-years-to-mention reunion weekend that begins tonight! With a graduating class of 43 (all girls!) we will have a jolly time I'm certain, we gather every 5 years!
I'm not unsympathetic to Bubby but my school was up for reacreditation our senior year, there are worse expectation changes than he's experiencing...
Thanks for playing Allen Sherman for me. He's so much fun to listen to. I think of him as the Weird Al Yankovic of the sixties, making up humorous lyrics to popular songs.
hated hated hated high school
bad at athletics, not too social, good grades tho
it needs to change, kids grow up faster these days and all the stupid rules just frustrate them
good morning, All! nice discussion of HS this morning, but like many of you, i don't like thinking back on it. my sympathies to Bubby, who is stuck there forever. i wasn't a confident teenager (i'm not a confident old person either) and i remember always trying to figure out what people wanted and then trying to do that thing. uffda.
Beth-Ann, those were Boer goats you saw - meat goats - they are pretty. i think they are more docile. but there's a farm near us that raises them and i always see them outside of their fence, having jumped over to explore the vegetation on the other side. i imagine if one is too wickedly tricky, he just goes to market sooner.
send us your rain, please.
good morning, All! nice discussion of HS this morning, but like many of you, i don't like thinking back on it. my sympathies to Bubby, who is stuck there forever. i wasn't a confident teenager (i'm not a confident old person either) and i remember always trying to figure out what people wanted and then trying to do that thing. uffda.
Beth-Ann, those were Boer goats you saw - meat goats - they are pretty. i think they are more docile. but there's a farm near us that raises them and i always see them outside of their fence, having jumped over to explore the vegetation on the other side. i imagine if one is too wickedly tricky, he just goes to market sooner.
send us your rain, please.
good morning, All! nice discussion of HS this morning, but like many of you, i don't like thinking back on it. my sympathies to Bubby, who is stuck there forever. i wasn't a confident teenager (i'm not a confident old person either) and i remember always trying to figure out what people wanted and then trying to do that thing. uffda.
Beth-Ann, those were Boer goats you saw - meat goats - they are pretty. i think they are more docile. but there's a farm near us that raises them and i always see them outside of their fence, having jumped over to explore the vegetation on the other side. i imagine if one is too wickedly tricky, he just goes to market sooner.
send us your rain, please.
my apologies if this appears twice - satellite is pouting (maybe rain is coming!!!)
doh!! so sorry!
Love it love it love it, Barb!!!
Fondly,
D
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