Jr. High Talents and the lack there of…

In Jr. High, I attempted many things for the first time. First up was Woodshop. I went in pretty excited as I had heard that I would get to play with power tools. This was big, up to this point the only machinery I was allowed to operate was the lawn mower or our creepy crawly factory. I was now going to saw, drill, and sand stuff. This was awesome!

So I reported to class ready to unleash my creativity on some unsuspecting wood when the first thing I hear from the shop teacher is “for this first quarter we will be focused on learning to draft”

WHAT, Wait, your kidding me right? But no we spent the first two months learning to draw and print.  I could have cried. But its November now and we finally get to work with wood and my first project would be to cut out a kidney-shaped piece of wood and drill two holes part way through it to hold the family salt and pepper shakers.

So I went home to make incredibly precise measurements of the base of the salt and pepper shakers. I mean I used a ruler and even a set of calipers that my dad had. I was going to nail this project.

So at school I did my drafting making sure that everything was within acceptable tolerances for the kidney and holes. I selected my piece of wood carefully, and then proceeded to cut, drill, and stain to make this an incredible looking finished product. I was dang proud of what I had accomplished.

I don’t remember my grade, because that wasn’t important. I do remember the pride I had though when I took the stand home, proudly displaying to my mom my handiwork. She told me it looked nice (uh-oh) and then sat it on the kitchen island. I tell her to wait, and I grab the salt and pepper shakers and the stand . I place the pepper shaker in its stand and it fits perfectly!! See Mom this is useful! I take the salt shaker and stick it into its spot and it doesn’t fit even a little bit! What I goofed up! I couldn’t believe it. So I took it back to school to fix and discovered that if I made the hole big enough it would basically go right through the side of the base. OOPS.

It was at this moment I knew I would never be a worker of wood.

My next talent was music. There was no way I would be caught dead resurrecting my skills with an accordion, so I had to pick a different instrument, unfortunately the time I had available for music was for string instruments only, and I picked up the violin. To this day I have no understanding on why I chose the violin. I think my mom was happy, I know I wasn’t.

To make matters worse, I played (loosely defined) that instrument both years I was in Jr. High. But since I chose this class the least I could do was my very best. And so I tried and I tried, worked hard to be my very best. We were each assigned a certain position based on talent. I started as 4th chair and through challenges, I worked my way up to 3rd chair. This ended up being the best I could do. So I was at least the 3rd best violinist in my class, something to definitely to be proud of.  So when school let out for the last time, I said good-by to the violin section and watched them walk off. All 3 of them…..

While at Doig, I had the opportunity to demonstrate my intrapersonal skills in dealing with people. One of the school bullies, was busy tormenting one of the smaller kids, I accidentally got in the way and caused him to slip and fall. No big deal, I thought. Then he got to his feet and he was pissed, so at that point I realized I had two choices, I could try to talk to him and explain it was an accident, or I could run. So I ran and looking back on it I now realize that I probably would have been okay if I hadn’t been laughing so hard while he chased me, it seemed to upset him. So weeks later when he finally cornered me, I had to apologize, which I did, and I think my whimper convinced him of my sincerity because he immediately let me go and walked away. So note to self, don’t laugh (out loud) at people, even if they deserve it.

And finally Soccer. During my 7th grade year Doig tried to implement an intramural sports program with other schools in the area. For some reason, they picked soccer. Which is funny as no school at that time had anything closely approaching a soccer net. Well since I loved to run around I went out for it. I can vaguely remember playing a few games and at least one bus ride to another school. Now I know that the coach at that time knew less about soccer than I did and what we were really playing was a bad version of bunch ball. So my only soccer playing experience was at the age of 14 playing soccer as well as todays 5-year olds.

But now that I was off to high school I knew I would find my new and better ways to improve myself and prepare myself for college.  Santiago here I come….