Puberty and High School

I've been taking a class at the local Community College and have to write a paper, this is what I have so far.

Puberty was rather unkind to me, I got the really cool cracking voice, acne and glasses as my eyes went through their own turmoil. I was stuck between maturing and still being the geeky kid for most of my high school career. To add insult to injury, my parents thought that this would be a great time to get braces. I now understand that the delay in orthodontics was mainly due to the lack of insurance, but at the time I just thought that my parents didn’t want me to be dabbling in teen age sex. All of my friends around me were getting their physiques and were having girls chase them. I was always the odd one out.

During school I loved the sciences, I had great teachers who taught because they wanted to be there, not because they haven’t been able to write the next great American classic novel. I thought that I had a better connection to the adults in my life than I did with my peers. The person who had the largest impact in my life was my dad. He taught me how to be a man, camping, working with my hands and how to be respectful of women. “Treat them as you would want your mother treated”, that has stuck with me all these years.

My grand plans for after school was to travel the country. Through out high school, I had a map of the United States with little pins in it marking places that I was going to visit starting the summer of graduation. I had saved most of my money from my jobs that I had since I was thirteen. All of my plans changed the day of November eighth nineteen eighty-eight. That was the day I was called to the principal’s office. When I got there, one of my neighbors was there to tell me that my dad had suffered a massive heart attack and didn’t survive. It was a very rough rest of my senior year, all of my savings went to my mom to pay for the mortgage on the house because growing up, I learned that family came before self. I left the map on my wall though to remind me that I can still go on my trip, it will just be postponed for a little while.

The night my dad died, I realized just how many people he touched, and just how many people I considered friends. Most of my senior class showed up to console me and pay condolences to my family. Our tiny house was packed with kids and adults alike, family, friends, co-workers, bosses, teachers and pastors. I wanted to be alone, but they knew that would probably be a bad idea. They stayed with us all night to make sure that we were going to be alright. It was probably the longest night of my life.

I went back to school the next day so that I could give my mind something to do. I didn’t have a tenth grade homeroom, I didn’t have homeroom throughout high school, but my first period teacher tried to tell me that I should go home, but I told her that I needed the mental stimulation more than being out of school. We had a Mexican stand off, she wasn’t going to teach until I went home, and I wasn’t leaving. She did ask me to stay after class. She told me that I was the most hard-headed, stubborn, mentally strong child that she had dealt with in a long time and then told me that her and the other teachers were praying for our family.

I’m not to sure how much culture came into play during this time in my life, we lived in a very racially and culturally diverse area. There was a large influx of Vietnamese and Hispanic families. Most of the kids I grew up with were African-American, Chinese, Hispanic or Caucasian. The one thing that my parents did teach was to celebrate the diversity, that’s what made the spice of life.

The group of friends that I had and hung out with on a daily basis was the kids I grew up with. Some new ones who had moved into our school, but all welcome. We were lovingly called the "Odd Squad" we were made up of the Jocks, the “Stoners”, the smart kids, the dorks, the geeks and then there was me. I was told that it was hard to classify me, I told them that was because I was me, I didn’t want to try being anyone else.