O! Miss Larsen!
That first year at Junior High School was more than I could handle.
With gas rationing, no parent considered driving kids to school, and there was no bus. On cold days -- and there seemed to be many of them -- it was a very long bike ride. Yet, it was not the distance or the weather, but the girls I met when I got there, that often caused me to want to stay in bed on school mornings. Having discovered that their tongues were quicker than those of most boys, many girls imposed brutal scorn on their vulnerable inferiors. Today, we might call it reverse sexual harassment; maybe a boy experiencing such treatment today should sue the school district for not protecting him from the cruelties practiced by girls on their less mature male classmates. But in 1942, it was just the way twelve-year old girls treated twelve-year old boys.
It has been my pleasure as an adult occasionally to reflect cheerfully on the possibility that some of those verbal bullies had bad marriages. Some may even have been the object of physical abuse. If so, it was likely imposed by men unable to compete with their wives’ enlarged talents for making males feel inadequate.
The junior high girls were mean to just about all the boys, but I think I got more than my share of abuse. One reason was that I was only eleven. I was rather a shrimp at the time, and some girls never let me forget it. I was also rather baby-faced, while many of the other guys were beginning to shave. They didn’t let me forget that, either. So my mother often had to scold me to get me up in the morning. I would rather have gone to the dentist for a painful filling than to school.
The girls used to circulate something called a slam book. It was just a spiral notebook with ruled pages. But they would put a name on each page, generally one page for each kid in each home room. Then they would write calumnies on the pages of the many kids whom they did not like, and adoring accolades on the pages of the few whom they approved. Anonymously, if the author chose, as they generally did. Then they would pass the slam book around, so that even I was invited to write comments about classmates if I chose. The real purpose of this invitation was, I supposed, to assure me an opportunity to read all the scornful utterances recorded on my page. I don’t remember any admiring accolades of the sort that some boys seemed to attract.
Relatively few boys had much stomach for defaming girls, quite possibly because many sensed that they were no match for their contemnors. Many wisely obeyed the ancient wisdom counseling us to avoid pissing matches with skunks. Alas, that lesson did not come easily to me. I was prone to repay complements in kind. A reason was that in the verbal exchange, I could often give as good as I got. That circumstance did not diminish my visibility as a target for abuse.
All those who tormented me openly were girls who had attended a different elementary school. The girls with whom I had shared Bradfield School did not abuse me, perhaps because most of them were too embarrassed to admit that they knew who I was. It was those whom I had never known before who so quickly identified me as a suitable target for abuse. There were several, maybe more than several, who liked to whisper insults to me in class. Or stage whisper to other girls so that I could not fail to overhear. When I reacted, as I always did, they would reach for ever more degrading comments.
When I actually get an upper hand in this competition, the satisfaction was brief. Triumph was generally followed by having the matter called to the attention of the teacher. Perhaps because it was wartime, all the teachers except Mr. Sheldon, the principal, and Mr. Roberts, the shop teacher, were women. I don’t think many of the women teachers liked twelve-year old boys. There were several who seemed to take a special dislike to me, and I was often sent to Mr. Sheldon’s office for discipline, having been convicted of disrupting class by questioning the wit, beauty and virtue of a maiden presumed by a teacher to be the gentle victim of my aggression.
Not all the girls were mean to me. There was Ruth Buckner who invited me to go home with her one afternoon. It was miles out of my way. Her mother gave me a glass of cider and a pretzel while we did math homework together. We played checkers and I told a few jokes I had read in Texas Brags, a joke book circulating then. Ruth’s dad was in Morocco with the 36th Division, which was the Texas National Guard, and she topped my best Texas joke. Her dad reported that General Clark had instructed his division before they went ashore at Casablanca that they would meet some ignorant Africans who would argue that Africa is bigger than Texas. Of course they are wrong, the general assured his troops, but he said, we have come to Africa to fight Germans, not Africans, “so humor them.”
I think Ruth let me go home with her because many of the girls were not so nice to her, either. She was a pretty girl, but her complexion was dark, suggesting a non-standard ancestry. I could not tell, and did not ask. It didn’t seem any more important to me then than it does now. But the event of my going to her house became known and the words “nigger lover” appeared on my page in the slam book. I don’t recall seeing much of Ruth after that. I don’t think I made any decision not to go to her house again. Maybe she thought we each had enough problems without being seen together.
And then there was Janet Merriwell. She lived near me, and had attended Bradfield Elementary School. We occasionally rode our bicycles together to and from school. Some of the other guys were having dates, so I thought I should have one. I invited Janet to the Saturday matinee at the Village Theater, and she accepted. When we got to the theater, we held hands while waiting in the ticket line. Then I was faced with the cruel dilemma I had been dreading all week. The theater charged twenty-five cents for adults and ten cents for children under twelve. I knew that Janet was twelve. If I had put two dimes on the counter, the cashier would surely have sold me two children’s tickets, and the usher taking tickets would have asked no questions. But not only would that have been a fraud, it would have risked looking cheap and dishonest to my date, my very first date. I could have given the cashier a dime and a quarter, which was the right amount of money, but that would have called attention to the fact that I was only eleven and therefore an unsuitable escort for her. So I took the third alternative of paying fifteen cents more than was required, and bought two adult tickets. For a brief moment, I even felt like an adult, but before we got to the candy counter, Janet remarked, “Why did you do that? You’re only eleven. You just wasted fifteen cents.” So I was emasculated right there in the lobby of the Village Theater! I could hardly watch the screen, so great was my suffering. We held hands some during the double feature, but I never asked Janet out again.
Mr. Roberts, the shop teacher, taught only boys because the girls were given home economics while the boys took shop. He told us that if we would behave and work hard in his class and master the electric jigsaw, he would give us all high grades and tell us how to have our way with women. In the last meeting of the class, having proved our mastery of the electric jigsaw, we demanded that he perform his promise. He assured us that his formula was sure fire: if we would love a woman for her soul, she would give us her body. Great advice, but we were not yet half old enough to understand and act upon it.
The main person who got me through the year was Miss Larsen. O, Miss Larsen! She taught Texas History. She had just graduated from the University of Texas and was in her first year of teaching. She seemed, unlike the rest of the faculty, to like 12-year old boys. In appearance, she was slender, but not shapeless. Her carrot red hair was remarkable. It appeared to be exceptionally soft. I longed to get close enough to smell it. She often lectured while sitting on her desk. She had a way of arranging her legs -- they seemed very white and very long for a person her size. I often concentrated on them and tried to anticipate their movement, with much loss of attention to her instruction.
At the end of the first week, it was announced that on Fridays, in lieu of the daily meeting in our home rooms, there would be an elective hour. Each student could elect an interest group. Each teacher announced a particular interest she would be prepared to share with students for that one hour a week. We could then choose whichever topic seemed most likely to lighten the burden of attendance. I do not remember what topics might have been on the menu, in part because it did not matter in the least. I was much more interested in anything Miss Larsen might suggest than in any topic any other teacher might propose. A weekly laboratory on the art and craft of seducing pretty girls taught by Mr. Roberts would not have distracted me from the chance of an extra hour with her. Alas, that proved to be true for others. In fact, every single boy in the seventh grade chose to share Miss Larsen’s interest, whatever it might prove to be. There were not nearly enough seats in her classroom, so we had to have a drawing. And I lost.
But I did see her almost every day in Texas History, and it was chiefly that prospect that enabled me to get up on a cold morning for a long ride to school. One day, early in the fall, I was called to make an oral report on Moses Austin, the father of Stephen, and thus, I was able to say, in some sense, the Grandfather of Texas. I felt blessed when Miss Larsen smiled her approval. But more, much more, she touched my arm. No orgasm has ever been more intense than the sensation she caused to surge through every one of my body parts. I did not lose consciousness, but I lost awareness of all else save her. Luckily, I got back to my seat without the swelling in my knickers being noticed by anyone mean enough to comment.
Miss Larsen did not touch me again, but on several occasions, we had brief private conversations in the hall. She had a way of making the briefest exchange of comments about the weather into a form of intimacy. I observed that she always stood a little closer when speaking to me than did others. It was almost an invasion of my space, but a very welcome invasion. We were then about the same height, and I remember one occasion in the hall when I looked directly into her eyes -- curiously, I do not recall their color -- and noticed that if I leaned forward only a few inches, I could almost kiss her on the lips. The thought sent me into rapture. For days, I contrived to find more opportunities to get that close again, but without success.
I lost all contact with Miss Larsen after that year. In fact, the year came to a stressful close. On about my dozenth visit to Mr. Sheldon’s office, he remarked that my sister was a very nice girl; the comment was a preface to the question: “What’s wrong with you?” The only thing I could think to say was, “I’m a boy.” I did not hold Mr. Sheldon in high esteem, and perhaps it showed in my voice. What, after all, I had wondered to myself, was he doing for the war effort? And I detected bovine stupidity in his unfailing belief of any hearsay a teacher would pass on to him about me. In any case, he got unusually angry at my reply, or perhaps the tone in which it was presented, and that day he called my mother to tell her that her son, unlike her daughter, was not a nice person. So the next year, my mother sent me to the a military school, where, to tell the truth, I was for a time much happier.
But I never forgot Miss Larsen. In fact, I mentioned her a time or two to my wife, and maybe to my sons, although not, I think, to my daughters, and certainly never to my mother. My wife seemed mildly amused by my account. Last year in Santa Fe, we had dinner with Ray and Martha, two of my classmates at Bradfield School. My wife asked Ray if he remembered his seventh grade history teacher. Did he ever? His brows arched and his jaw went slack. “Miss Larsen,” he sighed. “Miss Larsen, my, O, my, Miss Larsen!” Ray confessed that he had fantasized about her for years. And for months that fall of 1942, he tried to find where she lived, in the hope that he might go there and gain some delicious reward. But Ray had never found the courage to pursue that hope, and now he could no longer even recall her first name. And neither could I. Amazingly, Martha, although she was herself a secondary school teacher for many years, had no memory of her Texas History teacher, or of a slender young redhead.
When I returned home, I thought to call Jack, the other Bradfield classmate whose address and phone number I still possessed. He is retired and lives in Naples, Florida. I had not spoken to him for several years, and thought he would be please to know that I had seen Ray and Martha. In describing that dinner meeting in California, I reported that the conversation had turned to our experiences in the seventh grade. Did he, by chance, have any memory of the person who taught Texas History? “Brenda Larsen!!!” he exploded. “How would I ever forget Brenda Larsen!” Once Jack mentioned her first name, of course I knew he had it right. How indeed could I have forgotten that blessed name? But Jack went on, beyond his knowledge and beyond the truth: “She taught in hot pants!” he announced, expecting me to confirm that it was so.
No, Jack, a thousand times no. If ever a teacher has appeared in hot pants in a public school in Highland Park, Texas, it was not for more than one day, and it did not happen in 1942-43. Not a chance. She would have been sent away forever. Your fantasies are more outrageous than mine, even more than Ray’s. Forget it.
Nevertheless, I was so pleased to have her first name that I called Ray to share the cherished name with him. Ray did not answer the phone, so I left the message on his machine, and added derisively that Jack thought she taught in hot pants. Twenty-four hours later, Ray returned my call to thank me for recalling Brenda’s name to him, which he promised never again to forget, and to advise me that Jack was right about the hot pants. Having thought about it for a day, he, too, remembered her teaching in scant garb!! Baloney, Ray! Not to be believed! “But I am absolutely sure,” he said, backing down only a little, “that we saw more of Miss Larsen than of any other teacher. Especially the legs.”
The next month I attended the wedding in Maryland of the daughter of my oldest nephew. All three nephews were there and all had grown up in Highland Park. One was fifteen years younger than I, one was twenty years younger, one twenty five. While standing around waiting for the bride to cut the cake, I asked the father of the bride if he remembered studying Texas History in junior high school. Of course, he had. And do you remember the teacher? “Of course. How would I ever forget Brenda Larsen? I learned about sex from her!”
“You actually had intercourse with her?” “Heavens, no,” he said, “but I thought about it a thousand times. And it was rumored among the boys that when you got to the ninth grade, if you were chosen, she might take you to her house and show you things. I desperately hoped to be selected for that honor, but I wasn’t.” But you knew of those who were? “Well, no, but I wished it were so.” Was she not married? “No,” he affirmed, “she was famously unmarried. Someone said she might have lost a boy friend in the Korean war, but no one knew. It just seemed probable because she was the sexiest person any of us knew. Or, in my case, ever did know.”
After the cutting of the cake, I found my youngest nephew and asked if he had ever heard of Brenda Larsen. “Heard of Brenda Larsen? Saint Brenda? Angel Brenda? She was my American History teacher in the tenth grade. I always wished they’d put her in charge of sex education, because you just knew she could show you a thing or two. I couldn’t get it off my mind when I was in her class.” Was she that easy to look at? She must have been in her fifties by then. “Well she was still the right shape, and beneath the veneer of age, you could sense a special pulse. About 1972, she was made the Assistant Principal of Highland Park High School. We all supposed she got the job by sleeping with the principal.” Was there any evidence of such corruption? “Not really. But she just had to be enjoying the attentions of some ardent male. You could never make us believe that she was the old maid school teacher the school district presented her to be.”
Finally, I gained the ear of the middle nephew, who had graduated from Highland Park High School in 1968, and in 1988, had been elected to the Highland Park School Board. What did he know of Miss Larsen? To his great sorrow at the time, he had as a high school student been assigned to a different American History teacher. But he, too, had been aware of her. When Miss Larsen passed you in the hall, he recalled, she was transmitting signals. Moreover, he reported, she had concluded her career in the 80s as the Principal of the high school. He knew men who believed that she acquired the promotion by sleeping with the Superintendent, although again, there was never a crumb of evidence to support this hypothesis. It seemed to be yet another thought fathered by a dream, in some cases, I have no doubt, by a wet dream.
I supposed that this was the end of my story, and perhaps it is. But I called Ray again to tell him what I had learned at the wedding. He was much gratified to know that so many others had shared his fantasies. Yet I was surprised when he returned to the subject a couple of weeks ago. He had been stretching his aged muscles in a gymnasium in California, and was drawn into a discussion with a somewhat younger woman riding the next stationary bicycle. She proved to be from Highland Park, too. Did she have Brenda Larsen for American History? No, but Ms. Larsen lives in the same retirement home in Dallas with her mother. Brenda and the mother are close friends and often share lunch. She never married, and, indeed, so far as his informant knows, is a virgin. I would almost like to think so.
Ray and I are thinking of going to Dallas and buying Saint Brenda lunch. But should we, like Jimmy Carter, confess to the lust that was in our hearts? How could one do that with delicacy? When we have an answer to that question, we will go.