HARROWING HORMONES

My 7^th grade year was one of awkwardness, pimples and really growing fast.  I towered over the other boys in my grade and was very self-conscious of my size not realizing what a gift my very healthy body was until much later in my life.

For most of us, 7^th grade and growing up, was a series of dramas interspersed with embarrassing moments.

I will never forget our first “gym” class and a certain brainy friend, a surgeon to be. trying to put his athletic support on backwards and over his underwear to boot.  Matter of fact, most of us wore our required protective apparatus over our underwear – as Mr. Scargle, the gym teacher, was wont to come into the locker behind the Bacon stage to check as we undressed.  Taking a shower after class was totally out of the question.  We jokingly wondered if he checked the girls bras.  Sex was indeed on our minds.  

A week before school started the jock quest  began for me as I made the obligatory visit to Garton’s Sport Center with my mom (the downside of a single parent family) to get my unmentionable. We walked to the back of the store where these items where hidden out of sight - my how things have changed.  Mr. G bellowed, “How can I help you Cal?  I whispered.  “I need one of those (my voice faded)  Can’t hear you son?  My mother blurted – He needs one of those jock strap thingies for school.”  What size, he asked me?  I replied, a…a large?  My mother laugh, “Ha Ha,  No Bob, he may be tall, but he is not large.” I was absolutely mortified and tried to disappear.

Something was going on for sure inside me and this was just the beginning. 

I now know that my male hormones were beginning to escape from the deep recesses of my Id.  But then had no idea what was going on - sex education in my day was peeking at a French magazine that a friend dad brought home from the war.. And it all came to a head (excuse the expression) in my English class about a month into the term.

A very developed girl name Gail sat near me during English class where we were forced fed the first 6 million stanzas of the Evangeline.  “This is the forest primeval, the land of the oak and the hemlock.”  Over the decades, it still comes back to me from the crevices of my gray cells.  What agony to memorize and then stand to recite.  Oh, why did we do this?  Weren’t books invented so we would not have to rely on oral history?

Back to Gail.  

On a particularly boring afternoon of great literature I could not keep my eyes off the back of her fuzzy sweater.   Her pink angora perfectly outlined her bra strap and those tiny mysterious hooks,and eyes that keep her mighty mysteries at attention.  I pondered - I bet buying a supporter for guys is the same as that first bra for girls. Indeed heavy thinking.  (I leaned just how hard it was on a shopping trip with my daughter decades later)

I could not stop looking at that outline.  I had my first fantasy. I think?  I saw myself grabbing and pulling that strap back like a sling shot and letting it go -  SWACK it would go like a cherry bomb in a silo. I could feel my face starting to get hot.  

Miss Lord’s, well in her 60 (and probably never to have a bra snapped on her for any reason) –  stopped reading and looked over her glasses, and caught me staring at Gail.  I knew that Miss Lord knew exactly what was on my mind. Nevertheless, she only got a chance to utter the words, “Mister Iszard” when the bell rang and I bolted for the door.

And unknowingly she had saved me from doing something that would have probably gotten me expelled in my day and jailed today.  From that day I tried to control my imagination - but girls did replace baseball as my most prevalent daydream.  And still do!

And just think – just a few weeks before this  I didn’t even like 'em!