(36 Weeks)
The excitement began to build sometime in mid-August long before the trees turned or brisk mornings signaled the change of seasons. While back-to-school shopping, nervous enthusiasm ruled, anticipating the changes that the new school year would bring.
Those hopeful feelings waned after MBS, my school from K though 8 (which I wrote about back in April). I chose a high school that was contrary to the decision of the majority of my Catholic school friends who enrolled in Immaculate Heart Academy (known as “IHA”), one of Bergen County’s two premiere all-girls Catholic High Schools.
While a public school was out of the question (because my parents were wary of the “drug problem” plus a general lack of morals, I assume), I was done with school uniforms and couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to spend the school day without boys around. My search for a compromise ended at Neumann Prep, a co-ed Catholic high school in neighboring Passaic County that didn’t have uniforms.
My high school experience wasn’t what I anticipated it to be. I have probably become more friendly with my high school classmates over the last fifteen years than I ever was with them in high school, thanks in part to social media. But for the first two years I hated high school. I became more confident and self-secured as time went on but on the day of graduation, I still exited with an Irish good-bye, and vowed never to see anyone again.
As a high school student, I blamed the bullies who harassed me on the school bus, or the star athletes who made me feel inferior on the basketball court or softball field, or the kids that didn’t make room for me at a cafeteria table or didn’t invite me to a party.
As an adult looking back on my high school years, I took more responsibility for the role I played in my experiences and the benefits I garnered from even the worse of times. I told the “high school bus story” maybe 25 years ago to a group that included my parents, and my mother asked why I would share that (honestly, I think they regretted not picking me up). My response was that it was actually a good experience; made me the person I was. I never could have had the fortitude for a career in sales and fundraising if not for the thick skin I developed then.
Playing basketball and softball (I made varsity both my freshman and sophomore years), put me in a group with the “jocks” although as a “bench warmer” I wasn’t in the same league. Yet I was a member of the girls’ basketball team that won the State Championship twice and have the jacket to prove it. But by day, whether at a table in the library, the cafeteria, or walking to class, I was more likely to be spotted with the group who would have been labeled as the nerds. But I didn’t have strong friendships within either group really.
All my time outside school-related activities was still spent with my MBS friends, now at IHA, at their parties, with their friends, and boys from Dom Bosco. So much so, that 30 years later when I joined Facebook, many of the IHA girls I didn’t know that well sent me friend requests thinking I had been a classmate!
So maybe I didn’t follow my mother’s advice (“you only get out of something what you put into it”) and made my time at Neumann Prep less than it could have been, but I now feel like I got more out of it than I may have deserved.
I think about Elmer the school bus driver who seemed like my only friend on that journey freshman year. And then Geralyn, who I shared a bus seat with one day at the beginning of sophomore year and how our shared love of the Yankees blossomed into a friendship that has lasted all these years.
I laugh about Mrs. Bombeck, the school secretary, calling herself to the office! And the time we all danced in the cafeteria to Working in a Coal Mine in support of our classmate who was suspended for doing the same.
I am grateful for the decision to leave basketball and softball behind and taking on the role of statistician for the boys’ soccer team my senior year. The coach let me practice with the boys and that experience helped me improve much more so than the practices with my all-girls all-star rec team (my high school didn’t have a girls’ team).
I went on to play NCAA D1 soccer on the inaugural La Salle University women’s soccer team. Neumann Prep, academically, was certainly my steppingstone to La Salle. Neumann was also where I launched my career thanks to a work-study program during the last quarter of my senior year, but that’s a story for another day.
Neumann Prep closed its doors at the end of the 1989-90 school year.
Although I didn’t do much to nurture many friendships while there, I’ve been fortunate to reconnect with many of my classmates on social media and in real time. I am grateful that I finally attended a reunion, the 30th, 11 years ago. That’s when I realized we were all adults, not jocks or nerds, preppies, bullies, or merely the immature kids we were in the early 80s. One guy, who I barely spoke to back in high school, even said he thought I was the most interesting person there! I was disappointed we never had a 40th last year.
Did you really think this wasn’t going to include a fundraiser? It’s me. Of course it is! Over the course of these 60 weeks, I am hoping to raise $6000 for the children of Mercy Home for Boys & Girls (that’s just $100 a week!). To learn more about Mercy Home and my why, please visit my fundraising page. Thank you.
