My family moved from Vermont to California in 1972 when I was 12. I started eighth grade on the second day of school, knowing absolutely no one. Seats were already assigned, lockers and books distributed, and cliques formed. Starting a day late, I stood out like a sore thumb: a chubby sore thumb wearing all the wrong clothes (red, corduroy bell-bottom pants with silver stars on the bells, as I recall), an Archie Bunker for President T-shirt, and torn Keds sneakers (forgive me, it was the ’70s, after all).
I’d broken my black, plastic-framed glasses days earlier and had repaired the bridge over my nose with the only tape I could find- white, adhesive tape from our car’s first aid kit. I was 140 pounds of painful shyness writhing beneath a bad haircut, needing only an “I’m a dork” sign, taped to my back to complete the ensemble.
Thankfully, my homeroom and social studies teacher, Mr. Moore, kindly pointed out that I was new to the class in his slow, Southern drawl. He then stood me in front of the room and announced that, as a way of introduction, I should read the newspaper story he had handed me in front of my new classmates.
Marvelous, I thought, feeling the sweat erupt from every pore of my chubby, dork-wrapped being.
I talk fast even now, but spoke much faster that day, perhaps the fastest I have ever spoken. I was aware that my red corduroy pants were sticking to my fat, sweaty legs and were riding up to nearly mid-calf, much to the delight of the other students. The sweat drenching my face was causing the white tape to come apart, and as I read the last paragraph, my glasses fell into two pieces. Thankfully, my dork outfit came complete with an elastic “sports band” on my glasses, which prevented them from hitting the ground.
Blinded by nearsightedness and sweat, I had no choice but to hold half my broken eyeglasses up to my eye like a monocle to complete my reading.
After the laughter subsided, possibly an hour or two, Mr. Moore said, in his slow and measured drawl: “Paul, I’m sure that was a very fine presentation, but I, for one, did not understand a single word you read. Where y’all from?”
Gathering what shattered remnants of wit and pride I could, I announced proudly and clearly, as if he were deaf, as well as cruel: “Vermont!” I nearly shouted.
He rubbed his chin and asked, “And what state is Vermont in, again?”
The classroom erupted in howls of ridicule and derisive laughter. By now, I was approximately one inch tall, causing my flood-length pants to fit better as I shuffled back to my seat, chubby thighs rubbing together loudly in a chorus of corduroy fatness. After a while staring down at my desk, I was able to fix my glasses enough that I could sneak a look around me.
What I saw were the eyes of twelve-year-old kids, white faces, yellow faces, brown faces, and black faces. A wider variety of kids and faces than I had ever sat in a classroom with before. A few eyes looked at me with derision, but most looked at me with sympathy and understanding: Every 12-year-old is an outcast with broken glasses and uncool clothing. Every pre-teen speaks a language that adults have trouble understanding. Every kid is a dork. I had stood in front of them and suffered the shame they all felt, and I did not run away or begin to cry.
I was one of them now.
A boy came up to me later that day and introduced himself. He said he couldn’t believe that a social studies teacher didn’t know that Vermont was a state. What an oaf, an imbecile, an embarrassment to the California Public school system. That’s why everyone was laughing… at the teacher, not at me, he said.
He was, of course, lying, trying to lessen my shame, and we both knew it. I almost joined him in berating Mr. Moore. But then I thought, he does have a Southern accent and doesn’t know Vermont is a state, but he is my elder and at least cares where I hail from. My parents had taught me never to push others down to make myself appear taller. Shifting the “shame” to another “victim” just didn’t seem right. It still doesn’t. So I kept my mouth shut. It wasn’t easy, but I did it. And never forgot about that day, or a few days later, when I learned Mr. Moore had lost his wife and daughter in an auto accident earlier that Summer. And here he was, caring where I was from.
Later in life, I read what a man named Xenocrates, who most likely had a wicked Greek accent, wrote around 300 B.C.E: “I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.”
Thank you, Xenocrates, and thank you, Mr. Moore. I get it. I’m still a dork, still talk funny and too fast, and I’m still proud to be a Vermonter, a place where the cold Winters make our skin grow thicker than most.
A native Vermonter, Paul’s first and “hardest ever” job was delivering newspapers during the ’60s in Burlington. Semi-retired now, and also in his 60s, he’s finally made it back home to Grafton, Vt., and back to newspapers after a brief stay in California (45 years), where he met his wife (and photographer) Angela. They have an adult daughter, Cassie, and two cats.