You could smell it on their clothes. In junior high the most outwardly scandalous things someone could do would be smoking. Occasionally I would see someone pull out some cigarettes in class while the teacher was out of the room. It was mostly for the shock value to it. But I never saw anyone smoking at school. Never. Sure, there was plenty of other bad things going on in the junior high. But all I ever saw…or smelt rather, was the stench on their denim jackets. I guess if they ever got caught at school with it, they were suspended.
Where did they get the cigarettes? Did older siblings/friends buy them for them? Stealing them from their parents? Cigarette vending machines? I had no idea. I suspect they got older friends to buy it for them. Or there were some corrupt gas station attendants who sold cigarettes to 14 year olds.
In high school chewing tobacco and dip became more apparent. Seeing a big wad of dip in the school’s water fountain was a common site.
So there was a certain amount of shock value in “Stand By Me” seeing the kids smoke. “They’re smoking????” I thought to myself. But then again now, the shock has worn off somewhat.
How do they start smoking? Well obviously they start sometime in school…either junior high or high school. I did have one friend who started smoking in college. I rarely visited him because of it. Actually I never visited him.
I don’t know if smoking is a problem in school anymore. Rarely do I see anyone smoking. Its pretty much become the old school rule. Surely there are younger people smoking these days…or the cigarette companies would have been out of business by now. But I guess the crowd I run around with don’t have that nicotine addiction problem these days.

I haven’t had a tornado drill in years. Years. It must have been 1986 when I last did one of those. Elementary school. The principal comes over the intercom and says “Teachers, we will be having a tornaod drill.” Off to the hallways where we huddle down…our heads against the wall. The most uncomfortable and undignified postion imaginable. We’d stay there for a good 5 minutes or longer. Enough time for the principal or TEMA or whoever could time it to see if we were doing it right. Thankfully we didn’t have to do it for real. We were in school when there were tornado watches. But they never resulted in us having to take cover.
Fire drills, on the other hand, are much funner than tornado drills. Walk outside in a straight line in an orderly fashion. Teachers were always concerned about doing it in an orderly manner. They’d always get onto us when the fire drill would ring.
In college we had firedrills during the most inconvenient times. 12:15AM when everyone was back in the dorms. A friend of mine hid under his bed so as to avoid having to go outside in the cold air. It was fairly inconvinent in college. You could expect a firedrill at least once a year during college. If not once a semester.
I remember one time we had a real fire alarm go off. I think it was due to the steam from the showers or something. Happened at 7AM in the morning. And everyone pretty much ignored it.
When the tornado hit downtown Nashville in April of 1998, I was working at Nortel in Metrocenter. We crowded into the stairways to wait out the storm. No damage. My car was still around. And I went home slightly early. The interstate system was backed up. It was something out of U2’s video for “Last Night on Earth.” People getting out of their cars and trying to call on their cell phones. I just wanted to get home to see if my family was ok and if my house was still standing. And it was, thankfully.

I rode the school bus on occasion during elementary school. Always for the ride home. Never to school. Since I lived only a few miles from school, my bus ride was never all that long. Mrs. Davis was my bus driver. Bus #6. I had a few friend who rode that bus. I was the type to sit in the first few front seats. Never had enough guts to sit in the back. Didn’t want to. Didn’t need to. The back few seats of the bus was where all the trouble happened. The bus driver was always yelling at those in the back few seats.
So next came junior high. I rode the bus 80% of the time then. To and from school. That was a real pain since it seemed to take forever to get to school with all the stops. We got picked up at 7AM and arrived to school at around 8AM.
Our bus was truly an experiment in race relations. We started off in the suburbs where we’d pick up the white kids. Then on to Needmore Road to pick up the black kids. Race relations where never all that good on the bus. But no one was carrying a rebel flag or anything. I think we got along as best as anyone. Being the first group that was picked up, the suburban white kids sat in the back, unless you were like me who just wanted to stay away from all the trouble. I sat in the front. That left the middle for the black kids.
The ride home was a free for all. Whoever got on the bus first got first dibs on where to sit. I sat in the front. I carried my trombone with me and got made fun of for being a band geek and being forced to carry around a over sized flute for those uninformed.
Our bus driver was Mary Ann. She reminded me of Whoopie Goldberg. She liked to tell us she was 52 years old, but she looked 20something. She told us to call her “Freddy” as in Freddy Krueger so that she’d come after us with her fingernails. I guess it helped that she knew some of the kid’s parents personally and she could potentially use it as a bargaining tool to get good behavior.
I can remember on the last day of school we had a paper wad fight just as we got out of sight of the school. Everyone had their old papers from school. And they were more than happy to make them into paper wads when our bus driver gave her approval. Great fun. By the end we were knee-deep in paper wads.
Then there were the bus rides in high school. During my sophomore year I caught rides with friends to and from school. I had band after wards so I had to find my own way home on those days. Usually it was my mom who picked me up then. Things changed the summer before my junior year when I got my drivers license. So my bus riding days for the most part were over. Except for those band trips.
We rode the big yellow buses on our band trips. There were always 3 of them. We signed up beforehand on the desirable bus. As I remember it, bus #3 was where you wanted to be. Bus #2 were for drummers, while bus #1 was for those people who signed up at the last minute. It was always chaos on those buses. Between the hassle of trying to change into your band uniform and getting ready for the band contest, it was a wonder we had time to think. And I can remember those buses could get very cold in the wintertime.
It has been a while since I actually rode a bus. About the only time I ride buses is on those Ocoee rafting trips where they load you onto the buses to take you to the river. Roll down the windows going down. Roll them up coming back. Things can get cold when you’re in river soaked clothes.
Those are my bus experiences. Nothing outstanding or anything. Just the bus ride experiences.

It was true. I chose classes in high school, not according to what I was necessarily interested in, but what classes I was most likely to see my friends in. Band was like that. Sure, sometimes I enjoyed the concert music. But mostly it was one big social affair. Physics was the same way. I had no interest in the air speed velocity of an African swallow. My friends were taking it, and it was the next step up in this slew of science classes (right after Chemistry). It was either Physics or AP Biology, where they disected a cat through part of the semester. I had no interest in disection. So it was in my interest to take Physics. And by some strange phenomenon I got the Physics award for having the highest grade in physics during that particular class period. Wow. Never knew I had that in me. And I’ve probably forgotten everything there is to know in that field.
In high school smart people took French. Practical people took Spanish. “I’ll have more of an opportunity to use it,” they thought as they were making out their upcoming schedule with the school counselor. Yep, they were right. I’ve used Spanish way more than French ever was used and ever will be used. Apart from a quick business trip to Ottawa, Canada, there was no reason to use my French. Besides, no one ever really needs anything from a French person anyways. I was influenced to take French because my sister took French. She loved her teacher. He had a doctorate. Should have been teaching at the community college instead of a public high school.
I believe I know more Spanish than French. It was crash course in Spanish during my trip to El Salvador. Nice language. Somewhat easy to learn. I guess.
Practical classes to take. Say….Economics and Typing…were where you’d be less likely to find friends. I took both. Both were dull classes. I am glad that I took typing, because I’m still using it today.