Coop’s Youth Part 1 – Puberty Pressure Cooker | Lefty Parent

Coop’s Youth Part 1 – Puberty Pressure Cooker | Lefty Parent:

Coop’s Youth Part 1 – Puberty Pressure Cooker

July 12th, 2014 at 16:04

My 7th grade yearbook picture

Our mom, my brother and I returned from two long full developmental weeks of our vacation on Cape Cod, beginning to find some equilibrium as three still emerging human beings, without a male parent in the household, now in mostly positive relationship with each other. I was now pretty much transitioned from my childhood, where one fully existed in the orbit of their parents and their parents’ worldview, to my “youth” (as the term is now used to describe the years generally from age ten or eleven until adulthood), where one begins to achieve the escape velocity (to continue the astronomical metaphor) to leave that orbit and explore the greater solar system of a community beyond ones home.

But stressful challenges were ahead for all of us. Our mom still figuring out her persona now as a single adult woman, “divorcee”, and part of the progressive community that existed around the university. Peter entering third grade still wrestling with his weight issues but emerging as a talented artist.

And me, matriculating into junior high. The start of school each fall had become the yearly low point for me, and now doubly so because of a big new school full of loads of kids that I would not know and may or may not be comfortable with. I had survived my last couple years of elementary school without too much psychic damage, though I got through it by being more of a trained seal than a fully engaged person. My emerging approach to my academic school work was exemplified by my zeal for working my way through the color-coded SRA reading program, reading their generic, homogenized, level-rated prose pieces and taking the comprehension test after each, before moving on the next piece and eventually up to the next color level. What I was reading was not particularly interesting to me, the whole point was to try to “level up” relative to my classmates, which had some self-esteem boost for me.

I have no recollection now of the first time I set foot in the institutional halls of Tappan Junior high for my first day of homeroom and six different classes each day, probably one of the youngest kids there given I was a year ahead of myself in school, having skipped kindergarten many years back. The building Coop’s Youth Part 1 – Puberty Pressure Cooker | Lefty Parent: