Here’s what I remember of my first day of high school:
I walked what seemed to be miles to reach the school, in the process ruining the hairstyle that I’d spent hours perfecting. I was with my two best friends from junior high school. And then we parted, desperate that we were not in the same homeroom or lunch period.
Every adjustment felt so scary, so important.
Were we dressed right as freshmen girls? Maybe we shouldn’t have worn the clothes we did. Maybe we should have made our mothers let us wear eye makeup. We were, after all, high school freshmen.
While I can’t remember what I ate for lunch yesterday, I can still remember the green flowered print dress I had chosen, and it soon became clear that it was far too dressy for Overbrook High School back in 1952. Yes, practically Neanderthal times.
Nothing felt right that day. Absolutely nothing. And that probably was the way at least most of the freshman class felt.
Adolescence can be a time of agonizing uncertainty. The scramble to find acceptance, and an identity was on. But what identity? And how to find it?
Of all the stages of life I would not want to return to, freshman year of high school tops the list for me.
There was the added emotion of being at Philadelphia’s Overbrook High with a superstar named Wilt Chamberlain. When he passed by in a hallway, it was almost impossible not to stare. But staring at Wilt wasn’t cool, we would learn. Cool was just to ignore him, as if his 7-foot presence wasn’t amazing. It took some conditioning to make that nonchalance happen.
And by the time I left Overbook, I could fake general nonchalance with the best of them. The freshman self-consciousness had receded, and a certain air of superiority supplanted it in four short years.
All of this came tumbling back to me as I spent time with several grandchildren on the beach this summer, and listened to their conversations on the beach blanket near my more solid and sensible beach chair.
The four grandkids we’ve dubbed “The Smalls” because they are in the same age cohort while the three others are already collegians and beyond now consist of two middle-schoolers and two high-schoolers. And they were actually conjecturing about who they would like to be this school year.
“I’m definitely going to change my personality,” decided Emily, the eighth-grader. That change would involve becoming more cool than she’s ever been. Precisely how was not clear.
Carly, Emily’s seventh-grade sister, had no such plans. She was sticking to her artistic, quirky self. “Right on, Carly,” I wanted to cheer, but I kept my mouth tightly shut.
Jonah, on the surface a comfortable and confident rising high school senior, was already plotting how he’d win a major role in the school’s fall musical, especially because he’d been relegated to the chorus last year. “I’m not taking a chorus ,” Jonah told the others on the beach blanket. “They’ll have to beg me…- and I mean BEG me!”
Yes, Jonah had finally assumed the Big Man On Campus high school senior status, and he was going to use it.
And then it was Danny’s turn. The same Danny who has the sunniest personality of The Smalls had a very different game plan.
As his freshman year in high school begins,. Danny, who was diagnosed with Type 1 juvenile diabetes at age 6, has definitely had more burdens to bear than the others. Tethered to an insulin pump, Danny has to think about every morsel of food he puts into his mouth, and weigh and measure and balance so much in his life. He has now lived more than half his life with this condition, and he sometimes says he can’t remember what it’s like not to be connected to his pump. Or what it would be like to just dig into ice cream or a slice of pizza without thinking about carbs and testing.
Yes, Danny’s high school life will be different. And I waited breathlessly to hear what he would say his plan was. I didn’t have long to wait.
“This year,” proclaimed Danny, “I’m not going to just be ‘that kid with diabetes.’ I’m just going to be another kid.”
I tried not to let Danny see that there were tears in his grandmother’s eyes as he said that.
And in another instant, there was Danny racing his brother and cousins down to the ocean.
As these grandchildren I love beyond all reason dashed with Danny into the Atlantic Ocean, I thought about what it must be like to be Danny, to have a tough disease longer than you haven’t had it. And to be a freshman in high school.
This grandson has been accepting most of the time. He’s also been angry sometimes.
And now he starts high school with the determination to be Danny, just Danny. More than just the kid with diabetes.
And as he starts high school, and yet another chapter in a life in progress, I silently wished our Danny Godspeed in that mission. ••
