My Jr. High School days…SUCKED!
…It was spent at this girls’ only school… (1952–1955)
We’d trek to Glenmore Street. There stood “our decaying old Fortress” …the wretched P.S.84. It loomed gloom, its shadow darkening the street.
(We couldn’t have known that we would be the last class of girls to attend this strange, hideous building). Thank Goodness it was razed…after us! 🧨
The exterior dark, blackish brick with small windows that let in only minimal amounts of light. It was a relic of factory-like building of the 1900 teens. Pack the immigrant masses of kids in dungeon-like public schools. (They don’t deserve better).
Its interior contained shellacked dark wooden walls that were on floor tracks, that were moved to form various classrooms, then rolled back. All the walls were gray!
Our teachers were spinster matrons in corset “strait jackets” that pushed their bosom forward & ample rears, swashed into prim bleak frocks. Black leather laced oxfords completed their dire ensemble. They truly belonged in this monstrosity of a school!
My friends & I felt stifled- distained. We surmised they didn’t like us, (first- generation American), developing young girls.
*** …That was OK… as we didn’t like them…either! 😛
We ate our brown -paper -bagged sandwiches carried from home. The dreary auditorium served as our lunchroom, too. Students were not allowed out of this prisonlike school at lunchtime.
Friday, Assembly Day, we all donned uniform stiff -starched middy blouses. Navy scarfs tied in a knot around its square neckline, and dark-colored pleated skirts. The standard “ugly beige cotton- old lady -fucken -seamed stockings” Bagel-ed 🥯 around our legs. Its brown seams crooked always…on our skinny legs. (The garter belt holding them up was not all that efficient). NO pants were allowed in P.S.84! 😣We marched in lockstep into the auditorium it reeked of our Tuna fish salad/with onion, egg salad, or garlicy salami sandwiches, & pickles. Yuck! 🧄🥒
On its rickety stage Miss Clark would bang out her “Oh say can you see…” on the upright piano, while her irritating soprano voice rang out.
🎹🔊😱
Meanwhile Miss Smith would wave her thick short arms forcing us, her captured audience, to sing along. 🙄😫🎵 The old stage microphone would screech in its protest…every few notes. 🎤😝🙀
Sometimes we would put on a play for the other classes…usually it was about the holiday approaching like Thanksgiving, or a President’s Day. Miss Trimel would help us make crepe paper ridiculous costumes, with oaktag hats, etc. Since P.S.84 was an all-girls institution…we would be dressed as Pilgrims, or Indian chiefs, or George Washington, or Abe Lincoln… or as stupid turkeys. 🍗🙄YUK!
Gym was on Wednesdays, which required poison-green cotton gym suits with loose bloomer- bottoms. We thought we looked fat in them…. Eck! Our exercises were done indoors… volleyball, jump rope & stretching. Boring! 🙄 P.S.84 teachers were old-fashion strict and demanded we did our schoolwork perfectly. 😣 They were humorless & sour!
At the school day’s end at 3:00, we girls would meet up outside to walk home together books in hand…always pulling “our fucking ugly damn stockings” up. We were all 12-year-olds when we started at P.S. 84 as the term progressed, we got our periods.
😮Now it was the damn Sanitary Belt with a Big Kotex pinned to it, AND the garter belt hooked onto “the fucken- beige -seamed -cotton -old lady stockings”, at the same time! Talk about uncomfortable! 🙄😣😱
