My most embarrassing moment in junior high school

 

Junior high school can be a time when we are easily embarrassed. We want to be liked, part of the in crowd, and not be ostracized by wearing "party socks" or suspenders or, heaven forbid, have green ears.  So this is the story about how I had to walk around the junior high school with green ears for at least two weeks. 

I was excited when I entered the 7th grade to discover that there was a journalism class that put out the school newspaper, "Junior Hi Lites". In this class I would learn to write newspaper stories, get published and even visit the Record and the offices of the esteemed newspaper, the New York Times. The first day of class we were told the newspaper had to put on a skit for the assembly program on student clubs available for the new seventh graders. The cute teacher wanted us to do a skit on Junior High Lites. 

I can't remember who came up with the idea of having Martians promote the paper. I know I wrote the jingle. Myself and Kate B. were volunteered to play in the skit. We would be Martians who liked to eat the school paper. The jingle, which I wrote, had the lyrics, "We always eat Junior Hi Lites, better by far, so everybody get Junior Hi Lites ----today. "

The cute journalism teacher judiciously applied green dye to our ears, and we did the skit in the auditorium. It was a success. The job of removing the green from our ears was left to our parents. 

I came home from school and my mother looked at me and said, "You know we need to get that green off of your ears. We retreated to the bathroom where a variety of cold cream, alcohol and soap could not discharge the green color on my ears. 

"Sorry, but I'm sure it will fade away in a few days." The few days turned into a few weeks. I had to march around the junior high school for an extended period of time with green ears. I thank my classmates who never mentioned my ears after the first day or so. They must have gotten bored with my ears and went on to more pressing matters. 

Happy birthday Wavy Gravy

 I write about Wavy Gravy in my Hard Times blog. 

the chair

 Senior year in high school I had a girlfriend, Marge. We talked about this and that and one day she started complaining about how her new apartment lacked a decent chair. She had been living in a nice house in northern Bergen County but now, after her parent's divorce, she had to move to a garden apartment in Hackensack. One thing she missed was having a decent armchair.

I was walking home from school and I spied a nice old-fashioned chair lying at the curb for refuse. I jumped to the occasion and brought the chair to Marge's garden apartment. Marge was thankful and said "I'm sure Mom will love this chair!

An hour passed and I was home doing my homework to the sound of Dan Ingram. For some reason my father was mowing the front lawn. A late model Chevrolet Nova drove in front of the house. It stopped and Marge got of the car, went to the trunk and struggled to pull the chair out. 

The next second, a comely lady got out of the car and my father rested the lawnmower. He looked surprised. They had a chat. Mother yelled, "Mr. Mustache you better get down here!". I ran to the curb just as Marge scurried to the passenger side of the car and it was off. Mother said I shouldn't give people trash from the street. 

After that my father teased my mother. "That Mrs. Golbfarb is a nice-looking woman", he'd say at dinner. 

"You better keep away from Mrs. Goldfarb" my mother would retort.

As I recount this story in my dotage, it occurs to me that Mrs. Goldfarb could have thrown that chair in her apartment bin. She didn't have to come to our house. She wanted to check out the family of that new boy.💁

Top 100 records

I remember the first time I discovered that radio stations did end of year lists featuring the top records of the year I was a passenger with my brother driving the Ford Fairlane. We were listening to WABC and were trying to guess which Beatles record would be no. 1. I guessed She Loves You because it was the no. 1 record for several weeks in March. It was quite a surprise when Louis Armstrong's Hello Dolly came out to no. 1. 

1965 was also an interesting year, I predicted Downtown by Petula Clark and much to my surprise Satisfaction was no. 1 that year. Apparently, millions of kids bought the record to hear the dirty lyric that was supposedly censored from radio play that summer. Ballad of the Green Berets was no. 1 in 1966 and Lulu's To Sir With Love got the honor in 1967.

By 1967 though, the hip kids were listening to albums and hearing album cuts on FM. The era of teenagers and AM radio was coming to an end. Woodstock killed classic AM radio. 

The town drunk

 

When I was eight years old the folks took me to a football game at Hathenrock High School. My older brother played clarinet in the band, so in the support of him and the local high school we all sat in the bleachers and watched Hathenrock play Paramus High. 

It was a fun game, highlighted by the Paramus half-back who ran the wrong way and scored a safety for our team. At the game an older man kept standing up and shouting "Rah rah Paramus" in the middle of the home team stands. I asked my mother who he was. 

"Oh, he's just the town drunk. Don't pay any attention to him",   I was informed by dear Ma ma. For the first time in my life I met up with a town drunk. I was so proud of my home town. We had a swell hospital, a swell high school band, a winning team, and our very own town drunk. 

The bicycle rack was good

 Here's an anecdote from my other blog which is about my time as a Junior Leader in the 6th grade. 

I missed Woodstock

https://hardtimesmrmustache.blogspot.com/2019/08/i-missed-woodstock.html