Went to a training program on how to run a junior youth program this weekend. Junior youth age is 12-15.
At one point during the weekend, it suddenly flashed over me just how skewed was my own history of that age, and just after that age. Age 12, 7th grade, we were still in Indiana. I attended a regular “junior high” or middle school which in those days was 7th-9th grades. High school was 10th-12th.
Age 13, we moved to Germantown, PA. My school suddenly was 50% black and I rode a train to school. The main shock though, was the school itself. It was run like a home for juvenile delinquents. We were not allowed to talk in the hallways, had to go to our next classes in a silent file, were not allowed to talk at lunch! I was miserable. Time on the playground, where there was no equipment and nothing to do, kids spent fighting and girls walked around together. A few played hop scotch with rocks and sticks. We rode a bus to another school for “shop” and “home ec”. I sucked at home ec. A sewing machine might as well have been some object from outer space, I couldn’t figure it out. I was elected President of my class and quit when teachers expected ME to discipline MY CLASSMATES as president. Ridiculous. I never hated school so much. We moved the following summer, to put us in a different school system, thank God. Education was important to my parents, and I remember the day my dad called my teacher and told her off.
Age 14. 9th grade. Things went pretty well. 10th grade, my first date, age 15, I had a few friends. Then 2 weeks after my 16th birthday, my father died of a massive heart attack. Changed my life forever, changed all our lives. My mother became an alcoholic and things were never, ever the same.
Suffice it to say, my progression from one stage to the next as a junior youth, and then youth, was totally whacko skewed. Some of the things they talked about in our training I could not relate to. Other things, like all the forces hitting at our youth from all directions, I could understand. Each of us has our challenges, our tragedies, our hurtful things that happen to us. I think I was a particularly unprepared youth for what happened to me. I was sitting there thinking about the age of 15 being the beginning of the age of maturity. I feel like I only matured at around age . . . 45-50. And I wonder how few youth of age 18 actually made it to that age without a major tragedy in their lives.
Doctor Grandma 
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