My parents bought the marigold-colored house with black shutters because of its proximity to good schools. At the end of Westfield Drive, through a row of trees, was a footpath that led to both Enders Road Elementary School and Eagle Hill Middle School. For the kids in our neighborhood, moving on to middle school meant a slightly longer walk to and from school. There was a creek between the two schools that was the source of much afternoon entertainment. After a rainy spell, we would sail sticks downstream or test our manhood by lifting the heaviest possible rock and successfully splashing it into the water. The finale of any creek session was the running long jump to see who could span the rushing water at its widest stretch. Occasionally, I would overestimate my jumping ability and plunge my red and white Nikes into the creek. I hated walking home to the awkward sound of squishy feet, and wet socks were always grounds for a cross-examination from my mom.
The creek was more than just pre-homework amusement and socialization; it literally divided the two schools and the worlds they represented. On the one side was the expansive playground where we spent recess in our elementary years. It was home to the monkey bars, girls jumping rope, and the imposing red metal slide that burned your thighs in the summer. On the other side were the rigid borders of soccer fields and foul lines shaping the baseball diamond. These fields were the setting for physical education when you have to change clothes before class. This was also, on weekends, where we played organized soccer and began to establish the athletic pecking order that would stay intact through high school. There was a naive freedom and innocent exuberance when we sprinted out to recess after lunch, but after fourth grade, we all had to “jump the creek” and move on to middle school.
Middle school was a relentlessly efficient feedback machine which let you know that you were not as popular or smart as you thought you were. It was an academic and social centrifuge, separating us into educational tracks and lunch tables. In seventh grade, I was placed in a pre-algebra class that put students on pace to take calculus their senior year of high school. If you stayed on this track through eighth grade and passed the New York State’s Regents Exam, you started high school with one credit. Academic-minded youngster that I was, I thought getting a “head start” was some sort of cheat code.
As I looked around the room at my mathematical peers on day one, I saw the faces of classmates that had been impressing teachers for years. We may not have made for a very formable dodge ball team, but the Dungeons & Dragons club and viola section of the orchestra were well represented in pre-algebra. For seventh grade math, this was our Top Gun “Best of the Best” group of students. Unfortunately, I had not yet developed into the mathematical juggernaut I am today. At the outset of seventh grade, I couldn’t hang with the Greg Farrelmanns and Vince Chus, and I fear my name may have been on a plaque of alternates in the ladies room.
Our teacher was Mrs. Edwards and she was professional, soft-spoken, and unflappable. Even though she was pregnant, she dressed well and moved gracefully. While some of our teachers would fall victim to chalk dust marks on their pants suit from leaning against the chalk tray, that would never happen to Mrs. Edwards. If there’s anything funnier to a middle school boy than chalk marks on his teacher’s butt, I haven’t found it yet. When you gave our pre-algebra teacher an incorrect answer, Mrs. Edwards would respond with an ironic half smile as she repeated your error for the class to hear. “72?” she would clarify with both affection and a hint of arrogance.
Every Friday, she would assess us with the Fundamental Fitness tests–30 arithmetic calculations to be completed in 5 minutes. I’m not sure I have the exact time right, but it was a fire drill of paper and pencil computations and a challenge for most of us to finish. Students who scored with 90% accuracy on three consecutive tests were exempt from taking future Fundamental Fitness tests. They also got their names added to a poster that was labeled “Fundamentally Fit.” Cari Logan was the first name to be deemed “Fundamentally Fit,” and the boys got a kick out of that because Cari was the first to exude fundamental fitness in other areas as well.
As for me, I couldn’t knock out all 30 calculations in the given amount of time. Typically, I would be a little more than halfway when Mrs. Edwards would pick up her head from grading and call “time” without passion or prejudice. I would look around the room shocked that human beings could complete this task in the time allotted. I was struggling not only with Fundamental Fitness, but with the class as a whole. Up until this point, I only received bad grades when I felt like not doing any work. Now I was actually trying and barely hanging on to a ‘B.’ And it wasn’t so much the grade, as it was my awareness that I was being passed by my classmates. As names were added to the Fundamentally Fit poster, I was increasingly aware I was not one of smartest people in the room. Had I overestimated my ability? Was this an ill-advised creek jump that would result in wet sneakers? The middle school centrifuge was spinning me away from the student I thought I was.
Mrs. Edwards announced her maternity leave at the end of the third quarter, and I shouldn’t have been surprised. Given that she was pregnant most of the school year, I could have “done the math,” but then again I was having trouble with that particular subject. I was devastated because I viewed Mrs. Edwards as my sole support system in the class. Fundamental Fitness seemed unattainable as did the potential of earning that early high school credit. I’m not proud to admit it, but I went home and cried to my mom. That’s right, I balled up on my bed and shed actual tears over math.
Given my anguish over Mrs. Edwards’s absence, I’d like to think the school board held an emergency meeting to determine who would guide our class the rest of the way, but that wasn’t necessary. Mrs. Ratner was that substitute who was in school every day. While other subs seemed like they were hired by virtue of being 1) an adult with a pulse and 2) a means of getting to and from school, Mrs. Ratner was different. You would see her multiple times a year, and she more than likely knew your name. But at the start of the fourth quarter, all I knew was she was wasn’t Mrs. Edwards.
Compared to Mrs. Edwards’s smooth, soothing delivery, Mrs. Ratner had a sharp, halting way of talking and overemphasized certain syllables. She had a faster rate of speech and gestured dramatically at times to make her point. Not only was there a new energy in class, getting one-on-one help at the teacher’s desk also had a different feel. Maybe it was because she was already a mother, Mrs. Ratner had more patience in explaining word problems. Mrs. Edwards doled out guidance accurately but devoid of much cheerleading. When I was lost with proportions, Mrs. Ratner made me feel like I had fallen on my bike in front of her house and she was going to get me a cookie. While I knew Mrs. Edwards liked me, it was obvious that Mrs. Ratner cared.
And it was either that level of care or the fact that my mathematical hormone kicked in that spring, but things started to turn around for me. All of a sudden, I understood why Suzy and Tommy took 3.75 hours to paint a fence. I started raising my hand almost as fast at Greg Farrelmann and Vince Chu. And finally, on one of the last Fridays of the school year, I earned the right to add my name to the Fundamentally Fit poster The sharpie ink of Cari Logan’s name had already faded with age and sunlight, but I had finally exempted myself from all future tests–I think there was one left.
With our pre-algebra final looming, Mrs. Ratner pulled out all the stops. She gave us extra help and even added a major incentive. To anyone who stayed after school to study for the final, she offered a walking trip to Lipes Dairy for ice cream. Lipes Dairy was the nearby convenience store where neighborhood kids would bike for Twinkies and Gatorade. Lipes ice cream was nothing special, but the offer by our permanent sub to walk us down Enders Road for that ice cream certainly was. We ate our ice cream with the sun on our shoulders and felt like mathematical kings, lords of all improper fractions and alternate interior angles.
After feeling like the “dumb kid” for most of that year, I got an ‘A’ in the fourth quarter. I moved to Algebra in eighth grade and completed the track through calculus my senior year of high school. After passing the AP Calculus exam, I took a math credit with me to college. I liked getting a “head start” as I headed off to Bucknell University. Seemed a little bit like a cheat code.
On the first day of ninth grade, the Top Gun math programs from the two feeder middle schools met in Honors Geometry. Sitting a couple rows in front of me, as fate would have it, was Mrs. Ratner’s son. That was the beginning of a lifelong friendship–Todd and I would stand up at each other’s weddings and participate in Zoom calls during a pandemic some years later. But in high school, Todd was part of a group of friends who were everything to me. These were the friends who filled the booths at Pavone’s Pizza and played epic ping-pong games in my basement. In the winter, we’d scrape away ice and snow in Ted Ballard’s driveway so we could play basketball in 40° weather. They helped me figure out who I was and who I wanted to be.
Many of these friendships grew out of taking classes together, which were the more challenging offerings at F-M High School. So, it was by virtue of surviving pre-algebra that I wound up in high school math classes with my circle of friends. We were intelligent and funny at best, pretty dorky the vast majority of the time. When we wanted adventure, we drove to the “rough part” of town to an arcade that had our favorite selection of video games. Would you expect anything different from honors math kids?
I remember a game we invented at Geoff Robertson’s pool late in our senior year. It involved jumping as far as you could off the diving board while catching and then subsequently landing a volleyball into a floating raft at the other end of the pool. This bizarre, vaguely athletic spectacle had all of the appeal of the NBA dunk content with absolutely none of the star power. As far as afterschool entertainment, it was the new and improved version of jumping the creek. I wasn’t the best pool ball jumpy guy, and there were still times I overestimated my ability, missing the ball and splashing flat on my face. Years ago, my wet socks and squishy feet were signs of making a mistake, miscalculating my trajectory. But jumping and landing in that pool, with that group of friends, was exactly where I was supposed to be.
