This week we continue reminiscing about my high school days traveling back and forth between a special education school and my regular neighborhood high school. I tell the tale of my friendship with a girl in my senior year.

Hi, this is Chris Young. Welcome to episode 28 of Contemplating Life.

This week we continue reminiscing about my high school experiences attending a special education school and my neighborhood regular school Northwest High School. We are going to start off with a story from my senior year.

During my sophomore and junior years, I attended RobertsSchool for the Handicapped in the mornings and Northwest High School in the afternoon. However, this being my senior year, there were things that went on during the homeroom period that were important for seniors. There would be information about senior photos, class rings, renting your cap and gown, and other important information. The homeroom period was a short 15-minute period wedged between the third and fourth periods. Freshman through junior classes were assigned homeroom in various classrooms but for seniors, we all gathered in the cafeteria so they could make the same announcements to all of us.

So we reversed the schedule. I would take physics with Mr. Irwin during the first two periods with a lab during the second period every other day. I would then do English during third period followed by homeroom. Then my mom would pick me up and take me to Roberts for lunch, social studies, calculus, and typing. Then I would ride the bus home from Roberts at the end of the day.

I would arrive each morning at Northwest about 20-25 minutes before my first class. Students arriving early were not allowed to wander the halls. We were supposed to gather in the main lobby until a bell rang 10 minutes before the first class. Only then were you allowed to go to your locker or go upstairs. I never had a locker assigned to me at Northwest. I just carried my books in a bag on the back of my wheelchair. I wouldn’t have been able to operate the locker and I didn’t need it. I could also hang my coat on the back of my chair.

The bus would drop me off outside the music wing and I would proceed straight to the lobby. While there, waiting on classes to begin, I met a girl.

I was going to tell you the story of my friendship with her but I’ve already written that story three times as an assignment for the online writing seminar I’ve been attending for nearly a year. That program is presented by Hugo and Nebula award-winning author David Gerrold. He got his start as a science fiction writer when he wrote the script for the famous Star Trek episode “The Trouble with Tribbles”. He also worked on the television series “Land of the Lost”, and the first season of “Star Trek: Next Generation”.

One of our writing assignments for David’s program was to write a scene or a small story using three different tenses. I begin by writing the story of my friendship with that girl in first person past tense. That’s the form I find most natural as a blogger, podcaster, and author of autobiographical magazine articles. In first person past tense, I’m telling you the story of something that happened in the past. That’s what I’ve been doing throughout this podcast. David noted that writing in the second person present tense is very rare for most fiction. However, it is the way you write a script or a screenplay. You are describing the action as it’s happening. I’d never attempted to write a script or screenplay so I decided to give that a try as part two of the assignment. For part three, I wrote third person past tense as if an omniscient outside observer is telling the story . The problem with that when telling a two-story (or let’s say mostly true) is that you have to figure out what the other person was thinking or feeling. In this instance, I didn’t have any idea how she experienced the events.

I’m going to read you the first person present tense version of the story. It’s my account of the story and although I have somewhat dramatized it, the basic facts are true. On my webpage for this podcast, I will include the second person script as well as the third person account. The third person version is highly fictionalized because I’m speculating about her thoughts, motives, and feelings.

So without further ado, here is my 99% true story that I call “A Hunting Melody”.

According to the song by Irving Berlin, “A pretty girl is like a melody that haunts you night and day.” In this case, the inverse was not true. No boy in the high school would’ve described Melody as a pretty girl. Still, the memory of my brief friendship with her haunts me 50 years later.

It was early in my senior year of high school when I met her. The wheelchair bus from the special education school dropped me off at the regular neighborhood high school each morning about 20 minutes before my first class. Students arriving early were sequestered in the main lobby until the bell rang five minutes before the first class. Only then could you proceed through the rest of the building to go to your locker or your first-period classroom.

I would park my motorized wheelchair with my back to the wall of the lobby out of the way of the traffic of students gathering there. Most days I would blankly stare into space trying to wake up or I would engage in some girl-watching.

One day I noticed a young girl sitting on the steps across from me waiting for the bell to ring. We made brief eye contact and then both quickly turned away, each hoping that the other did not notice that we were looking. Peripheral vision is not very good at a distance of about 40 feet so the only way to see what the other person was doing was to look directly at them.

After several failed attempts to not catch each other looking, she stood up and started walking across the lobby toward me. Oh shit! She’s coming over to talk to me. What the fuck do I do now?

Her face featured bushy unkept eyebrows and lacked any positive features such as dimples or freckles that might have made the word “cute” applicable. She wore no makeup or jewelry. She had frizzy, shoulder-length, deep brown, naturally wavy hair pulled back from her face by a pink plastic headband. Her fuzzy pink sweater had barely perceptible curves where her breasts were. A plaid wool skirt that ended just above her knobby knees somehow managed to stay up despite the lack of any apparent curvature of her hips. Her white bobby socks and penny loafers did nothing to enhance the appearance of her legs.

With the hindsight of 50 years of perspective, I could accurately characterize her as exceedingly plain and homely. To my much less generous 17-year-old eyes she was just plain ugly.

I was anticipating the usual litany of questions about why I was in a wheelchair. I’ve always tried to be generous with my explanations. Many of my disabled friends responded to such queries with sarcasm and a huge chip on their shoulder. I always felt that attitude widened the gap between us and the larger community which was often ill-equipped to know what to think about us. People are genuinely curious even though they often express such curiosity with cringe-worthy condescension. Why confirm their fears with a snarky attitude?

“Do you need any help getting to your first class?” she inquired in a genuine tone of concern and helpfulness. It lacked the typical tone that implied, “You poor helpless thing… what can I do to ease your suffering in your horrible condition?”

Less than a second after she offered to help, the bell rang. I quickly responded, “No, I can get around on my own thanks.” I sped off in my power chair to my physics class, thereby escaping in a demonstration of my mobility. My only thought was how literally the phrase, “Saved by the bell” applied to the incident.

As I feared, the next day I was not so fortunate. Immediately upon my arrival, she crossed the lobby from her usual position sitting on the stairs and began engaging in small talk.

I learned her name was Melody. She was a 14-year-old freshman. I never knew if my status as a 17-year-old senior was a plus or minus in her calculations.

“What class do you have first period?” she asked.

“Senior physics,” I replied.

“Ewe… science is my worst subject. I just can’t get interested in it.”

Well, cross that off as a possible common interest. I could tutor her but if she doesn’t care about science I’m not wasting my time on her.

Sensing the kind and sincere person she was I suggested, “Yesterday, you asked if I needed help getting to class. I do have one thing you could do. I need help getting my coat off.” She accepted immediately and followed my directions carefully on how to extract me from my coat.

Having survived our second encounter without too much awkwardness, I didn’t approach the next day with the same level of dread. This time upon seeing me enter the lobby, she sprinted across the room sporting a broad smile expressing an eagerness to see me. She quickly proceeded to help me with my coat and exuded great joy at the accomplishment.

Holy shit this ugly freshman chick has a crush on me!

Careful not to give her any encouragement, I continued to engage in small talk. She complimented me on how smart I must be to take calculus and physics. Other than that and her daily enthusiasm to see me, I didn’t sense any more worrisome infatuation.

A few weeks into the relationship, I don’t recall if we were talking about Halloween or Thanksgiving when she explained her family doesn’t celebrate any holidays because they are Jehovah’s Witnesses. This includes not celebrating religious holidays such as Christmas or Easter as well as birthdays and other anniversaries. When I said I was Roman Catholic she didn’t say much but the expression on her face spoke, “Well… Nobody’s perfect.”

The religious revelation began to put pieces of the puzzle together. Her timidity, lack of self-confidence, and absence of fashion sense, makeup, or jewelry took on new meaning in the light of her restrictive, conservative religious upbringing.

I was already struggling with doubts as to why I continued to participate in the Catholic Church which seemed to lack relevance in my life. I was beginning to think that any faith was at odds with my rational, scientific mind. Being only marginally tolerant of my own religious traditions I found it hard to be sympathetic towards her faith that I felt to be so repressive of self.

I eventually found the courage to tell my disabled friends about Melody.

Because the high school had no elevator, it was impossible for me to take math or social studies classes upstairs. Each day at noon, my mother drove me across town to the special education high school where I would take classes that were inaccessible to me in the neighborhood high school. The wheelchair bus then brought me home each afternoon.

My friends at the special education school looked up to me in the same way small-town folks admire someone who escaped the tedium of a dead-end existence. Having no idea what it was like to attend pep rallies, homecoming festivities, and other extracurricular activities some of my buddies lived vicariously through the details I brought them.

When I revealed that a freshman girl seemed to be infatuated with me, they immediately asked, “Is she hot?”

“Unfortunately no. Quite the opposite.”

“How bad can it be?”

When I described her to them, they sought to help me salvage the situation with the advice, “Maybe she’s got good-looking friends she can introduce you to.” Another friend noted, “Yeah… The hot chicks sometimes hang out with the ugly ones so they look even better by comparison.”

I’m embarrassed to admit, that I took their advice and asked one of her better-looking friends for a phone number. Worst of all, I did so in front of Melody. I struck out multiple times.

Gradually, I began to enjoy the simple pleasure of my daily conversations with Melody. Just as I was beginning to appreciate her friendship, fate (or was it karma?) removed her from my life. When the spring semester began, our class schedules changed. She didn’t have a first-period class and so she could stay home an extra hour. She explained it didn’t make sense to come in early just to sit in the study hall.

I suggested perhaps we could meet at a school event. I knew better than to think her parents would let her go on a date with me or meet me at a school dance. Perhaps she could come to a basketball game and we could sit together. She said her parents would never allow her to go alone and definitely not with a boy. We had already established the fact that phone calls were out of the question.

Throughout the remainder of my final semester, I would occasionally see her between classes and we would smile and wave but we didn’t have time to talk as we rushed between classes.

At age 17, hormones, social conditioning, and a dogged determination not to lower my expectations in the face of my disability all conspired to blind me to the unimportance of physical appearance in a meaningful relationship. In the decades since then, I’ve beat myself up considerably for my selfish, cavalier, and disrespectful attitude toward her. I still carry her photo in my wallet lest I forget the lessons learned.

Multiple Google searches and Facebook searches have turned up many Melodys with her last name but none were her. Should such searches someday yield results, all I want to do is apologize for how poorly I treated her. At age 68, that apology occupies a prominent position on my bucket list.

Irving Berlin concludes his song with the words, “She will leave you and then come back again, A pretty girl is just like a pretty tune.” However apparently, when you fail to recognize her beauty, fate conspires that she doesn’t return. But the memories and the regrets linger forever.

So, that’s the story of what a jerk I was when I was 17 years old. I described it as 99% true. I think in real life, she didn’t take off my coat until about the third or fourth day. Also, I’m not really as haunted by the story as I let on. I do regret how I behaved and I would apologize to her should I ever see her again. But, I would hardly call it a bucket list item. Attempts to locate her on Facebook have been unsuccessful.

As I mentioned in the introduction, the screenplay version and the third person version are much more fictionalized by their very nature. I’m not going to read those here but you can find them on the Contemplating Life website.

Next week, I’ll discuss more events of my senior year. As I teased at the end of the previous episode upcoming topics include: the senior prom, another town hall meeting, and more stories about my mentor Mr. Irwin. I will go on actual dates with (spoiler redaction). And I’ll relive the joys and fears of graduation.

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