If you could choose a single year of your life that was absolutely, positively, hands-down the most memorable, which would it be? For me, it was my fourteenth year. So many important things happened, including many "firsts," to make that year stand out in my memory more than any other. My big regret is I no longer have any of the journals I wrote before college. I threw them all out one day in a fit of frustrated depression, declaring them to be silly and not worth keeping. Sadly, in my middle age, I now understand that that adolescent "silly" state is common, and indeed crucial, to everyone's development.
The first thing that made age 14 memorable is that it was the one and only year, my freshman year, that I spent in a Catholic girls' school. Until then, I had not ever been around sisters (religious belonging to "active" orders—teachers, nurses, missionaries, etc.—are technically not "nuns," they are "sisters"), and I had no idea what to expect or even how to address them. Instinctively, I began by calling them "ma'am," but was quickly informed of the proper address by my homeroom sister, who shall remain nameless because she was, in all honesty, not the nicest religious I've ever met. In fact, she was a downright grump. All the other sisters at IWHS were jolly, funny, and easy to talk to; still, they didn't make a big enough impression on me to want to become a religious myself. In fact, I was still an agnostic when I began my freshman year, and it was Scripture, not the sisters, that prompted my conversion a few months later—and that's the second thing that made my fourteenth year memorable. I recounted in an earlier post that reading about St. Paul's conversion in Acts had a profound effect on me and opened my heart and reason to accept the gift of faith. It was the historical, factual aspect of that event that convinced me.
I'm not sure why my parents suddenly decided to send me to a Catholic school, but I'm positive of the reason they put me back in a public school the next year. IWHS used what is called a modular schedule, which is very similar to a schedule one would have in any college; so I would have, say, biology twice a week, English and algebra three times a week, etc., and in between classes were free periods to be used for study. The point was that a student could progress at her own rate; if she were particularly zealous, she could graduate early. Well ... you can probably guess that my free periods were used for anything but study. More often than not, my friends and I would hole up underneath the swimming pool or library to smoke cigarettes. At the end of the year I managed to complete only half of my courses. If I had stayed at IWHS, there was no way I could have graduated in fewer than four years. So back to public school with its traditional schedule! (Not that it made a difference for me....)
I also had my first big relationship at 14, and my first real kiss (I don't count the chaste little peck I received in junior high). Of course, this relationship had to be kept secret, since my parents did not allow their children to date till we were 18. Which is probably why all my sisters married in college.
That year, I entered my first big piano competitions and "placed" in all of them. Not actually winning the top prize didn't bother me; I was the youngest in every one of those competitions, so I was more than happy that I even placed.
That summer, I took my first airplane trip ever for my very first trip abroad. I was one of a group of young pianists and singers recruited and chaperoned by my piano teacher, Myrna von Nimitz, for a two-week tour of the continent, followed by a month in London taking courses at Goldsmiths College. I remember very little of that trip, which makes me regret even more my rash disposal of my early journals. My photographs, too, poor as they were (my first time using a camera), have also somehow been lost. I do remember attending my first and only rock concert during that trip. It was a day-long, outdoor event featuring Van Morrison, The Doobies, and The Allmans. My companions were college age and much more comfortable among the blankets and hashish smokers than little innocent me. The most adventurous I got was smoking a pipe (tobacco). How Niles Crane of me.
A year full of "firsts" and "only"s. Ah, yes, fourteen was memorable, indeed!
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