Teenagers are a funny bunch, and freshman are always the
most comical. Over my lifetime, I’ve been one and have watched many classes of
them during 30 years as a teacher. They arrive at high school “wet behind the
ears” but act as if they are seasoned veterans. It doesn’t take long before
those new high school students learn the truth.
Always in a new class are at least a couple of goofballs.
They draw attention to themselves by trying to be funny. Any laughter that
their antics or comments generate comes as snickers about how moronic those
goofballs are acting. Still, these attention seekers believe that even negative
reinforcement is better than none at all.
Other new-to-high school males or females try to survive by
acting tough. They strut and smirk and sneer. Little do they know that persons
tougher than they are also walk the halls of the school. I vividly recall a
freshman in my class all those years ago who brought his mean act and tough
attitude to school. He displayed them one day in the smoking pit that was
located in a corner next to the gym and in front of the shop class windows. He
smarted off one to many times. With lightning quickness, a senior put a halt to
the freshman’s cockiness as he punched him squarely in the eye. The impact
sound like two cinder blocks slamming together. The younger boy’s face became a
grotesque combination of swelling and blood. He retrieved his bent glasses and
struggled to put them on his bruised face. From that time on, he exhibited a
bit more humility in the smoke hole and didn’t try to tangle with seniors who
were much bigger and stronger than he was.
Only a handful of freshmen boys dare to approach female
upperclassmen. Doing so is considered an affront to the girl, something that
senior boys are about to let happen without consequences. The older males step
up to become the girl’s champions and meet head-on the offending party. A group
of senior boys swoop down on the freshman and escort him to some terrible fate.
Sometimes it might entail the pushing of a penny with the nose down a long
hallway. I’ve also heard of incidents where the ninth grader received a
“swirly.” That’s when seniors hold him upside down, dunk his head in a toilet,
and flush. At the old Karns High School, especially egregious act lead to the
boy being escorted to the banks of the creek. There he experienced the “Beaver
Creek Plunge.” The seniors grabbed his arms and legs, began swinging him, and
on the count of “3” let him go so that he splashed into the water. That dunking
into the creek cooled the passionate heart and underscored to the underclassmen
the limits he faced.
I was in yet another group. Like too many freshmen, I traded
in studying habits that I’d developed in elementary school for a life of
laziness that ignored classwork. Grades tumbled quickly, and I scrambled to
come up with a good explanation on grade day. Too many other activities
demanded my attention, and they were much more entertaining than studying
algebra or science. Soon enough, reckoning day arrived, and a summer spent in
school to erase failing grades replaced the freedom that loafers like me craved
so much.
By the time midyear arrived, most freshman settled into the
high school experience. They learned the unwritten rules of conduct in the
large social setting and consequences for violating them. Freshmen began
feeling comfortable in their own skins and with their own groups. They knew
that in just a few months the harassment by upperclassmen would cease as a new
class of “fresh meat” arrived for a new school year. In the blink of an eye, they became the
seniors who enforce those rules by which first year students must abide. It’s
all part of new students learning their places high school during those tough
teenage years.
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