1. A boy being caught with his shirt tail untucked and hanging out of his pants.
2. Chewing gum anywhere on the school grounds at any time.
3. Not returning an empty cafeteria lunch tray to the dish washing area.
4. A boy’s hair growing over the tops of his ears by a little as 1/32 of an inch.
5. Running in the hallway.
6. Talking in class.
Any one of these crimes against humanity committed within the boundaries of my mid-1960’s high school campus would get one sent to Honor Court.
Honor Court? A group of administration selected so-called honor students who meted out judgement on any student who dared break covenant with any one of the six statutes. Personally one certain judge had it in for me, and would arbitrarily send me to court simply because he detested me. I would never publish the specific court member’s name, Wendell (oops).
Each felony conviction led to one day of after-school detention. Detention consisted of sitting in a room silently for one hour after school was dismissed. From personal experience it really wasn’t that bad for the students, however, there was one person who detested detention more than anyone. This was the male teacher who was scheduled that week to sit in the room with the detainees, thus missing out on happy hour all week at the local Go-Go Bar with the rest of the male staff.
Conviction of any six felonies within any 60-day period led to expulsion, accompanied by a letter from the school administration to the felon’s parents strongly suggesting that the perpetrator might be better suited for military school. Thanks primarily to my nemesis on the court, my higher education locale was sometimes in question.
The six offenses listed above were considered far more serious than what those in authority considered “high school hijinks.” Hijinks could include an upperclassman knocking your full lunch tray out of your hands onto the floor just after you had bought your lunch, or daily hocking giant snot-filled, yellowish-green loogies on the combination lock of your book locker, or yet another forcefully plunging your head into a swirling, recently flushed commode.
Even when these “antics” were carried out in plain sight of a lunch monitor or teacher, no corrective measures would be forthcoming. I guess these stunts were considered only misdemeanors, “boys just being boys,” by those in charge. As long as the offender had his shirt tail tucked in and wasn’t chewing gum whilst pummeling, then per Honor Court bylaws no punishable offense had taken place.
My high school had two completely opposite male social groups; “The Cowboys” and, thanks to The Beach Boys, “The Surfers.” In my later stages of high school, thanks to 1967’s Summer of Love, “The Surfers” evolved into “The Hippies.”
The Cowboys never evolved from their original Neanderthal state. They were known for wearing pointed-toe cowboy boots, and also known for being capable of beating the crap out of anyone in the school that wasn’t a Cowboy. Vitalis was their hair tonic of choice, thereby sufficiently oiling every hair on their head so nothing this side of a tornado would alter its combed state. Their theme song was Merle Haggard’s classic “The Fightin’ Side of Me.”
Surfers and Hippies were those who combed their hair down onto their foreheads sans any 1960’s brand of men’s hair tonic. They would also risk detention by wearing the sides of their hair at a length that came, ever so close, to overlapping the tops of their ears. As this group evolved over time from Surfers to Hippies, their theme song mutated from the rocking Beach Boys “Surfin’ USA” to the more mellow, laid-back pace of The Mamas & the Papas’ John Phillips’ song “San Francisco,” sung by Scott McKenzie.
There was a third group in my high school of which I was a member: “The Invisibles.” It wasn’t a social group because it wasn’t possible to socialize with anyone if you didn’t know they were there. Consequently, no member of The Invisibles ever knew who the other members might be. Generally it was a safe group to be in, unless you made the mistake of accidentally stepping on one of The Cowboy’s boots in Typing class. Suddenly you became clearly visible and in danger of having your torso repeatedly slammed against the classroom wall unless you licked the offended boot clean.
Due to our invisibility we did not have a theme song, but, if we did, The Animals “We Gotta’ Get out of This Place” would have been apropos.
There was also a small splinter group that would make an appearance on campus every September, but would disappear shortly thereafter; “The Hoods.”
I don’t recall ever seeing a single Hood in any classroom ever. They spent their school days in the parking lot, sitting in parked cars. It was difficult to see what they were doing inside due to the clouds of odd-smelling smoke emanating from the cars’ windows.
By November The Hoods had bypassed Honor Court and had gone directly to Criminal Court. Their signature tune was Steppenwolf’s “Born to be Wild,” immediately followed on their playlist by “I Fought the Law and the Law Won” by The Bobby Fuller Four.
The single occasion when all of these diverse male student factions looked somewhat similar in appearance was the day yearbook pictures were taken. All boys were required to wear ties or they wouldn’t be allowed to have their photos taken. Yearbook picture day was the one and only occasion during the school year when The Invisibles became clearly visible, but not in a pleasant way.
Since only the most sophisticated of boys knew how to actually tie a real tie, many of the boys wore clip-on ties for their photos. For anyone under the age of sixty, clip-on ties were ready-made ties that had a small metal clip on the back of a preassembled knot. The clip would slip over and attach to your shirt collar. The clip was invisible to the naked eye so the tie looked as if it had been hand-tied.
As an Invisible I was in no way sophisticated, so I wore the clip-on tie of my older brother, the same one he had worn ten years earlier in his yearbook photo.
Wearing the clip-on transformed me from invisible to visible to The Cowboys, and consequently the tie was responsible for why it was never possible for me to eat lunch on yearbook picture day. On this day my entire lunch period was spent digging for my tie amongst the disgusting half-eaten food remnants, leaking beverage cartons, and other indescribable human spittle contained in the cafeteria’s 50-gallon trash bin, the same trash bin where minutes earlier one of The Cowboys had buried my tie after forcibly yanking it off my shirt collar, removing a significant portion of my Adam’s Apple along with the tie.
When retrieved from the trash bin my tie was a brilliant multi-colored masterpiece of ketchup red and mustard yellow, interspersed with Coca-Cola dark brown with a just a hint of whole-milk white, and was mummified inside a mysterious slimy substance. It also had a noticeable aroma that caused some consternation to the photographer, but at least I had a tie and thus was street legal for a photo.
As far as the yearbook photos were concerned, based on the poor quality of the photos of the day, it really made no difference what your tie looked like. These were the days well before High Definition, and because color photos were too expensive to print, all yearbook pictures were in grainy black and white. You were lucky if you could even recognize the faces in the photos let alone how the students were dressed.
I believe the poor quality of the pictures was why there was always a listing of student names included next to a row of photos. Otherwise it would have been a guessing game as to who was who.
I experienced a couple of blips concerning my yearbook name listing. In my freshman photo I was mis-identified as a female, Susan Carney. In fairness to the student editors, because I was an Invisible the editors had no knowledge of my existence on campus. Consequently, when viewing my grainy photo the editors had to make their best guess as to my identity based on a splattered tie that resembled a flowered blouse, plus in the photo my head was somewhat asymmetrical and my hair drenched, as just my prior to my photo op I was in the boys bathroom cleaning my tie when a Cowboy gifted me an unscheduled toilet bowl submersion. The editors didn’t have much to work with.
The second blip occurred three years later in my senior year yearbook. I ended up being the final student pictured in my class lineup as my last name was mistakenly listed as Zarney. At least I was listed as Steve, not Susan, Zarney.
I shrugged off the two errors as just days in the life as a member of The Invisibles. As an Invisible I was the only student in my class who noticed the female moniker in my freshman photo. Regarding my senior year photo blip, no one but me and one other person noticed the mistake. The other person was a fellow classmate, Zachary Zanderman. He was overjoyed with the mistake and he thanked me personally, as it was the first time in four years he wasn’t pictured last in our class’s yearbook photos.
As our senior year of high school advanced and graduation appeared on the horizon, the bright, sunny skies of 1967’s Summer of Love began to cloud over, darkened by the anxiety of life after high school, and what might the world have in store for the graduating boys of 1968 in light of the military and political events of the time. Belonging to a group became of less import and significance. The false bravado of “The Fightin’ Side of Me” and the unrealistic innocence of “San Francisco” were both supplanted by the solemnity and grim reality of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth.”
In 1978 I decided to attend my high school’s 10th reunion at a local resort, hopeful that my days as an Invisible were in the past. Regrettably I discovered I was still a card-carrying member. Based on the black suit and black bow tie I wore, the reunion attendees thought I was a resort employee. One after another of my former classmates would ask me, “Excuse me, Sir, could you please tell me where your restrooms are located?” At least they were polite about it. I was also polite in return as I guided every one of them to the appropriate facility. In retrospect, perhaps I shouldn’t have completed my distinctive outfit with a cummerbund.
Actually, one former classmate did recognize me, the aforementioned Zachary Zanderman. After saying hello he asked me how long had I been working at the resort.
The discouraging events of my 10th reunion led me to decline invitations to attend my 20th, 30th, and 40th class reunions. I did make plans to attend my 50th reunion in 2018, figuring that via the laws of natural selection there would be fewer classmates around to attend, so maybe I wouldn’t be quite so invisible. However, just prior to making travel plans to attend the reunion I received word that Zachary Zanderman, the one person I hoped might recognize me, would not be attending. Evidently he had changed his name to Anders Aaberg and for the last forty years had been living in Scandinavia as a Norwegian citizen raising reindeer.
Knowledge of his forthcoming absence dashed my self-confidence. I decided to stay home and watch the 1933 version of the movie The Invisible Man on my VHS player.
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Steve Carney is an oft-tired retiree who occasionally overdoses on a combination of strong coffee and bootleg Ensure, thus stirring memories of his 1960s tween and teen years.
His short-term memory is kinda shaky, however, on the opposite end of the memory spectrum he can recite the winners and losers of every World Series played between 1950 and 1970. He can also recall a multitude (he just loves the non-specificity of this word) of 60’s tunes and their performers, as well as the names of the candidates in most (more non-specificity) of the 20th century’s Presidential elections, so he’s got all this goin’ for him.