My High School Years Begin

        

            My world changed dramatically the Fall I started high school in West Linn.  Wilsonville was at the end of the district, a small town which boasted a grade school, a tavern, Aden’s General Store & Post office and a feed store.  Most of the people who lived in town commuted to Portland by car, though a few rode the bus. 

            At that time, Wilsonville Elementary School had less than one hundred children, serving first through eighth grade students.  There were only seven in my graduating class. 

            Now we were in high school and there were almost 120 freshman alone.  As you might imagine, there were some tremendous differences between my tiny classroom and West Linn High School.

             Instead of being in the same classroom all day, high school students were responsible to attend six different classes, each in a different room.  My best friend, Barbara Workman, and I signed up for General Math, English, P.E., Science, Social Studies and Study Hall and chose to have identical schedules.   We even shared the same locker and that’s where the trouble began.

            No matter how hard we tried, we two freshman girls from the back roads of Wilsonville, could NOT master the combination lock for our locker.  That first week we were late for every class although we did eventually make it to most of them.  Neither of us could figure out what we did right when that gray metal door would finally decide to pop open.  Sometimes kicking the door seemed to help, at least occasionally it did.  We never did figure out the combination.

            One night my brother got mad at me about the whole situation.  “I could hear you and Barbara kicking and banging that door when I was at the other end of the hall today.  I was so embarrassed.”

            I felt heat rise up in my face.  “It doesn’t want to open,” I said.  “Sometimes it does but most of the time—“  

            “It’s stupid of you to hit it like that, too,” he said.  “I can’t believe you’d do such a thing.  What will people think?  Everybody knows you’re my sister.”

            I stuck my nose in the air and glared at him.  I didn’t tell him how much I hated that locker, or that I felt a whole lot more embarrassed than he did about the whole thing.  Nor did I tell him how sick to my stomach I felt every morning as the bus rumbled up the hill to make the last few turns toward the high school.  Or how much I hated the sea of strange faces as they surged past us in the hall and the elbows which pushed and crowded.  To me, a quiet country girl, the noise my fellow students made as they clattered down the hall was unbearable. 

            Barbara and I finally went to the office with our problem.  That afternoon the maintenance man put in a brand new lock and wonder of wonders, it worked perfectly.  37 R, 19 L, two twirls all the way around twice and “bravo” the door popped open at 39.  What a locker! 

           After that we never missed a beat!    We’d proved we could conquer the lock and now we could settle down to life as Freshman in an alien world.   

            What new challenges would tomorrow bring?