April Fools’ Day, 1968: Worst Day Ever
Don't Ask, Just Read Some Of What Happened On My Day That Will Live In Infamy
FROM MY BOOK “WON’T BE SILENT — DON’T STOP ‘TIL IT MATTERS”
1968 was such a volatile year, between the heart-of madmen and body counts from the raging Vietnam War. College students were protesting warmongers, and Hippies were still tweaking on acid from the Summer of Love. But nothing was as intense as the critical, life-changing moment when—at the tender age of eleven—I had to start attending a new school on April 1st of that turbulent year.
We had recently “moved on up” from the dregs of Weehawken to the upper-middle-class hamlet of Englewood Cliffs, far from the Yeshiva of Hudson County where I was miserable. The horrific reality that I would have to change schools in the middle of a semester created high anxiety. Chubby people don’t like drawing attention to themselves, and I was being hurled into a whole new world on—of all days—April Fools’ Day. I cannot overstate the gravity of that reality.
“I don’t want to go.”
“You’re going,” my mother said sternly, having just polished my black penny loafers. Here.”
She forced my black-and-white checked blazer on my arms and handed me a crisscross tie to finish the look.
“They’re going to love you. Everyone loves you. I love you.”
Cringe.
She had no clue as to the level of dread I was experiencing at the prospect of having to walk into a new environment alone and fat. Yet another example of my fears falling on deaf ears because once you’ve survived a concentration camp, nothing else comes close. We walked up the street in silence and entered the main office, where heads turned as if they heard my heart pounding in my chest. I looked out to the hallway and noticed a few kids wearing jeans and sneakers. “That’s odd,” I thought. The mandatory dress code at the Yeshiva was a white tailored shirt, tie, jacket, proper slacks, and shoes—no sneakers. Who knew that kids in the suburbs went to school wearing street clothes? Jeans, T-shirts, sneakers. Boy, was I overdressed. Panic set in.
The principal, a stocky Mr. Peterson, came out to greet us, and we followed him into his sterile office. The desk held mountains of manila folders, a large round Rolodex file, and a family photo. Middle America, here we are. Upper Middle, anyway. After a few niceties, my mother left me there. Mr. Peterson’s assistant, a short, frizzy-haired woman dressed like a Tupperware Lady in a burnt orange, triple-knit, polyester pantsuit, walked me through a seafoam-green tiled hallway with a gray-speckled linoleum floor.
Next stop: emotional breakdown.
I arrived at a faux wooden door with a narrow vertical window that gave me a glimpse into my immediate future. I took a deep breath as the Tupperware Lady swung the door open and we became the focus of attention for sixty adorable sixth-graders sitting in an unconventional square arrangement of desks. There would be no hiding behind Larry Bortniker as I had done at Yeshiva. I sensed that being the class clown as I had been at my last school could be helpful here and now.
“Breathe,” I told myself sotto voce.
Barely dipping a toe into the brightly lit room, I froze, as did the sixty students clad in an array of Easter-egg-colored shirts. Their faces looked confused, as though they’d seen the ghost of Christmas past or, in this case, a chubby nerd dressed for church. You could have heard a pin drop for what seemed like an eternity. The silence ended with one identify the jerk who thought this monstrous moment was funny. I also tried not to make eye contact with anyone as my stomach began to churn. On the right side of the room there was another muffled snort by some other insensitive jerk.
God forbid that the whole room exploded into laughter. That would have given me no choice but to activate my desperately needed, latent superpower and zap these motherfuckers, one by one, get arrested, charged, and sent to jail for the rest of my life. Prison suddenly sounded like a better option than being stuck in a room with this group of horrible, entitled, suburban brats. Eyes closed, I saw my life flashing by, and sadly, it wasn’t interesting.
Two pretty women in their early thirties rushed to my side and introduced themselves as the “team teachers,” part of an experimental concept. Unlike the traditional classroom structure I was used to, Group Dynamic Theory was the suburban rage. Miss Shevlin and Miss Jackson were well-dressed, spirited, single women. These teachers were a refreshing change from the disheveled, paunchy, Conservative rabbis in wrinkled black suits with tzitzit hanging out who taught Hebrew in the morning, while decrepit battleaxes taught English and math in the afternoons. Spending eight hours a day in an environment where I felt so out of place was partly to blame for my becoming an assimilated Jew. My negative attitude was intensified by having parents who gave me nightmares about what they had lived through during the Holocaust.
What happens next is what made me the confident, outgoing, happy-go-lucky person that you see and know today!!!!
If you want to read the rest of that chapter, DM ME and I will send it to you. If you want to buy the book, of course, click here.
Love…ABE
PS… I started as a chubby kid and was determined to change my life. We all have the power to be out best selves and not stop till it matters.
