This week we continue our series of episodes on my experiences growing up in a special education school. We talk about my experiences moving from 5th to 6th grades and my first genuine interest in girls.

Hello, this is Chris Young. Welcome to episode 19 of Contemplating Life.

This week we continue our series of episodes on my experiences growing up in a special education school. We talk about my experiences moving from 5th to 6th grades and my first genuine interest in girls.

We’ve talked in previous episodes about my so-called girlfriends in kindergarten and later in fourth grade but at that young age, I really had no idea what it meant to have a girlfriend or to be a boyfriend. However, at the early age of 10, it began to get real. Well… As real as it can get for a 10-year-old. A girl named Lily had a genuine crush on me.

She was in Robert’s school because she had a heart condition. As I explained in previous episodes, many of the kids didn’t really need to be in a special ed school. Anything that was serious enough to get you out of gym class or to restrict your activities on the playground would get you shipped off to the handicapped ghetto.

She would shower attention on me carrying books, helping me with my coat, and before I had my power wheelchair she would push me to and from lunch. I suspect she was a bit disappointed that I got the power chair because in some ways it put her out of a job. Still, she could see how happy I was to have it.

How bad did bad Lily crush on me? She would take a piece of paper and practice writing her name as “Lily Young”. She showed me a math paper that she “accidentally” wrote “Lily Young” at the top of it. She said she came very close to turning it in before she caught the mistake.

I wasn’t exactly smitten with her but I really did like her. She was reasonably cute and at age 11 was starting to develop a figure although she was a little bit plump. Most of all, I enjoyed the attention she gave me and did what I could to encourage it.

We never held hands or talked about kissing let alone trying to do it. I don’t recall talking to her on the phone although a couple of years later she called me just to see how I was doing so we must have exchanged phone numbers.

I’m pretty sure that by the end of the school year, she already knew she would attend regular school the following year. I would miss having her around and all the attention that she gave me but I wasn’t exactly heartbroken.

Lots of kids who didn’t belong in Roberts left after fifth grade. Grades 6-8 were considered junior high which today would probably be called “middle school”. Although Roberts’ junior high program wasn’t half bad, it had nowhere near the opportunities that a regular school would have.

The transition from 5th to 6th grade also meant moving upstairs. By then, I had mastered navigating the big ramp and enjoyed going up and down every day. It was no longer the terrifying experience that it had been that first time down.

In junior high, we had a homeroom where we had English which included spelling, grammar, and literature. The sixth-grade homeroom teacher Mr. Ron Kohl taught social studies for all three grades. The seventh-grade teacher Mrs. Irene McBurnie taught science and music. The eighth-grade teacher Miss Meta Fogas taught math. We shared a shop teacher and home economics teacher with the high school. There was an art teacher who was in the building one or two days a week and would rotate with other schools.

We would spend most of the day in our homeroom but would rotate to other rooms for science, music, or math. It probably would’ve been easier to just have the teachers switch rooms and leave all of us in the room we started in but something about the idea of switching from classroom to classroom made it feel more like a regular school. Also, we did have a small amount of lab equipment in the seventh-grade science room and of course, we had to switch rooms for shop and home ec.

In shop class, we did some woodworking projects like making lamps or wall decorations, and we spent some time learning mechanical drawing which was fun. If we had had CAD software in those days I might have taken up drafting or architecture as a career. I couldn’t handle any drawing bigger than an ordinary sheet of paper so a full-size blueprint would’ve been out of my capability. The girls did cooking and sewing.

My sixth-grade homeroom teacher Mr. Kohl was a jolly fellow who stood about 5 feet tall and was totally bald. He was a lot of fun but if you got in trouble too often he could be really tough. One time when the class had been getting especially rowdy he imposed on us what he called “The Week” in which he was no more Mr. Nice Guy. We got the message. We could have fun in his class but there were limits and he could take away all of the fun at a minute’s notice.

Like Miss Holmes and Mr. Wright in the third and fourth grades, he recognized how bright I was and I quickly became his favorite. Of course, he also realized how lazy I was and was quick to give me those speeches about not living up to my potential, etc., etc. He was the teacher I spoke of earlier who tried to trick me into joining the spelling bee by appealing to my competitive nature and ego about my intellect. It didn’t work.

I had acquired a passion for politics from my mother and that passion was further fueled by his social studies class. This was 1966-69 so it was an exciting time with the height of the Vietnam War and all of the social unrest regarding that as well as the civil rights movement.

He said that someone once asked him if segregationist Alabama Governor George Wallace ever died would he go to spit on his grave? He replied, “I promised myself when I was in the Army I would never stand in line again.” He had been stationed in Germany but only after the end of World War II. He still had lots of stories about his time in Europe in the service.

I remember how surprised he was when President Johnson announced, “I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your President.” Mr. Kohl had assured us that Johnson would be president again and we teased him pretty hard the day after LBJ announced he was out.

Although Mr. Kohl refused to identify as Democrat or Republican, it was obvious he was a liberal, especially on social justice issues. He was Catholic and probably quite pro-life. He and his wife were unable to have children so they adopted a daughter. She was about the same age as my adopted sister Carol so he and my mom shared a bond. I reconnected with him years later on Facebook but I don’t recall when he died. I doubt that he lived to see the Trump presidency but I’m certain that if he had, even if he had become more conservative, he would have been appalled by politics today and the assault on democracy.

There was something very important missing from my sixth-grade experience.

Girls.

It wasn’t just Lily who left Roberts School after fifth grade. All of the girls either moved out of town or started going to regular school. It just so happened there were no handicapped girls our age anywhere in the city of Indianapolis that particular year.

We did get some excitement for about six weeks. A girl, whose name escapes me all these years later, came to our school. She was a very attractive blonde with a great personality. She described herself as a tomboy and her evidence was that she had fallen out of a tree and broken her leg. She was only going to be in the wheelchair at Roberts for about six weeks until her leg healed. That was enough time for my friend Ted Hayes to go nuts over her but I don’t think he ever got anywhere. I and the rest of the guys were content to just tease her about whatever we could. At age 11, we still weren’t quite girl crazy yet.

Years later I was in the cafeteria at IUPUI and an absolutely stunning blonde athletic-looking nursing student walked up to me asking, “Do you remember me?” It was the tomboy from sixth grade. Unfortunately, I was sitting there talking to a girl named Ellie who you will hear much about in future episodes. If I hadn’t been with Ellie, I would have gotten the nurse’s phone number just to see what might happen. That wasn’t the only time fate sent me a potential girlfriend while I was in the middle of pursuing someone else. Sometimes I would pray, “Come on God… You give me these long droughts with no women in my life and then you send me two at once. Can’t we get better timing?”

My all-male class continued throughout sixth grade and a couple of months into seventh grade. Then we heard we were getting a new girl at last. She was a very sweet African-American girl named Donna. I think she had a heart condition or asthma or something that didn’t put her in a wheelchair. All of the black guys chased her but never got anywhere.

I think it was in February or March of seventh grade one day we were in the eighth-grade room at math class when word got around that we were getting a new girl. As I rolled into homeroom after math class and headed for my desk.

The students in wheelchairs sat at custom-built tables designed for two wheelchairs side-by-side. They had plenty of clearance underneath for wheelchair footrests and there was a shelf below the table where you could stash your books. The height was perfect for someone sitting in a wheelchair. We had an odd number of wheelchair students and considering I was continuing my role as teacher’s pet, I was awarded the privilege of an entire desk to myself.

The new girl was sitting there in her wheelchair at my desk.

My initial reaction was, “Oh crap no, I’m gonna have to share my desk with some girl!”

Then I saw the girl. Now it was, “Oh holy shit! I gotta make sure I sit next to this girl!”

Sitting there in front of me was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in a wheelchair. She had sandy blonde shoulder-length hair, blue eyes, high cheekbones like some Scandinavian fashion model, and a broad smile. She was wearing a pink sweater over a white blouse, a gray pleated wool skirt, white bobby socks, and penny loafers. I was totally smitten.

In addition to the normal wheelchair desks, we had ordinary school desks but the chairs were not attached. You could sit at one of them in a wheelchair although they would be a little bit low. At one point it looked like Mrs. McBurnie was going to seat her at a single desk. I spoke up immediately and insisted I didn’t mind sharing my wheelchair desk with her. Fortunately, I got my way and she was assigned to the other half of my desk.

The teacher had been talking to the girl’s mother. The teacher then introduced her to everyone as Rose Ellen Shewman. At first, I wasn’t sure if Rose Ellen was one word or two. Her mother called her Rose Ellen and when the teacher began referring to her as Rose Ellen you could see her cringe. It didn’t take long to understand she wanted to drop her middle name and be called just Rose.

She was initially quite shy which is to be expected coming to a new school and not knowing anyone. However, she wasn’t shy about answering questions in class. She was smart. I noticed she was constantly flipping to the back of the book and looking at the glossary to find answers to questions. That was something I was too lazy to do. Prideing myself in being a know-it-all, I always had the attitude that if you have to look something up, it was an admission of failure. I gave her points for being clever enough to be able to look something up before the other idiots in the class could prove their ignorance by giving a wrong answer.

It didn’t take long for all of the other guys to know that I was first in line to get her attention. I didn’t have any competition.

The question was, “What next?” How do I get her attention? How do I show my intentions? I was a clueless 12-year-old. Some suggested that a good first step was to buy her a friendship ring. That would be a challenge. I couldn’t exactly save up money from a paper route, hop on my bicycle, and ride to the store.

One day, there was about $10-$15 just lying around on top of the TV. I concluded that they had paid the paperboy with a $20 bill and this was the change. My problem was, it was sitting back too far for me to reach. I asked my sister Carol who would’ve been about 4 years old at the time to hand it to me. Then I had to figure out an excuse to get to the store. There was a discount department store called Ayr-Way on Lafayette Road that was the 1960s equivalent of K-Mart or Walmart. I knew they had a jewelry counter full of cheap costume jewelry.

Before I could hatch a plan, I got caught. My parents confronted me and asked if I took the money. I confessed. When they asked why, I said I wanted to buy a model car kit to build. I said I was going to ask them to take me to Ayr-Way to buy it. They told me if I needed money in the future, they would give it to me. They took me to the store but I didn’t have the money with me anymore. I picked out a car kit and they paid for it.

Eventually, I had a couple of bucks from my grandma and I traded that along with the promise of all my desserts at lunch for a week to my buddy Teddy. He had a cheap friendship ring that was a metal band with hearts all around it.

I wrote a mushy love letter to Rose, put it in an envelope with the ring, and handed it to her on the way out the door at the end of school on a Friday. Monday at the end of the day, she handed me a note on the way out the door. She said she didn’t want to go steady with me. She wasn’t interested. She already had a boyfriend who lived in her neighborhood. She concluded with the sentence, “So what if I am cute?”

Naturally, I was pretty crushed.

My only consolation was that once I told all the guys she already had a boyfriend, none of them tried to step in where I had failed. I always had hope that this situation would change and I would try again. Throughout the rest of seventh grade and into eighth grade I had to just bide my time.

Eventually, Rose just became another one of the gang. We all enjoyed teasing one another. I once wrote that if our desks still had inkwells like in the olden days, we would’ve been trying to dip her ponytail into it. Rose liked to show off that she could pop a wheelie in her wheelchair and balance on her rear wheels. It took a while before she realized that we enjoyed her balancing skills so much because we could see up her skirt. After that, she never did it again.

My next chance came on Valentine’s Day in eighth grade.

We always had a party on Valentine’s Day. You would buy a package of mixed Valentines and send one to everyone in your class, including guys sending to guys and girls to girls. You had to choose carefully so that the same-sex cards were more friendly than romantic. I carefully sorted through the package that my mom got for me and picked out the mushiest one for Rose.

In eighth grade, I wasn’t sharing a desk with Rose anymore. I shared one with my best buddy Miguel “Mike” Rodriguez. Rose sat at a single desk directly in front of us. At the Valentine’s party, I leaned over to Mike and whispered, “I’ve got to keep an eye on Rose. I sent her a particularly mushy one. I’ve got to see how she reacts.”

He gave me a thumbs-up and whispered back, “Good luck bro.”

Rose opened my card, read it, turned around and looked at me, and said, “Do you mean it?”

I nearly choked on my Brach’s candy conversation heart. “Huh?”

“Do you really mean it? What it says on the card?”

The obvious response would have been, “Of course, I meant it. I picked it out special just for you.”

That’s not what I said.

Instead, I said, “Uhh… I forget what it says.”

She rolled her eyes in disbelief and then held up the card so I could reread it. Satisfied that it reflected my intent as best an out-of-the-box Valentine’s card could do so. I finally said with belated confidence, “Yeah. I meant it.”

She smiled but I think mostly it was her laughing at what an idiot I was. Meanwhile, Mike is laughing so hard he’s got his head down on the table pounding his fist. I was worried he was going to fall out of his wheelchair he was laughing so hard. I probably turned the same shade of red as the icing on the heart-shaped cookies we were eating.

In our next episode, we will continue the saga of my romance with Rose and other somewhat darker stories of my school days at Roberts School.

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