How excited I was to start high school at Mac! I had spent years poring over my older brother’s annuals about the people and activities I could expect: pep rallies, dances, clubs, football games, band and lassie performances …. I was still at Garner when I decided I HAD to be a lassie. Their uniforms were just so snazzy. Two years of Garner were enough. I was ready to move on.

I still remember the bright orange Jackie Kennedy style dress made from a vogue pattern that I wore on my first freshman day. My non-stretch garter-held hose were pulled up SO TIGHT that the knees split open after lunch. I had planned my wardrobe and hair many days in advance. At least my legs were shaved, unlike my arrival at Garner in 6^{th grade. For sure my hair was ratted up and then plastered with hairspray and the makeup was as perfect as I could get it. That was a long process each morning.}

^{I did NOT have to ride the wretched cattle transport …. Oops! I meant school bus, that first day. Vicki Brown’s mother drove around and picked up a small group of us and chauffeured us that first morning. We didn’t want that Texas humidity to ruin our "do’s" or get our carefully prepared dresses all wrinkled up. Mrs. Brown was kind!}

^{At first period P.E., we encountered LaNeal Tankersley who promptly scared the wits out of all of us, and did so every day for the rest of the year. We didn’t dress out that first day, but boy did we learn that if that gym suit was not starched and pressed every Monday morning, would we catch it. Years later, I am wondering what difference did a starched and pressed gym suit make? All we did was run around and sweat in the things and they looked like hell by the end of class on Monday. I cannot remember the name of our gym teacher at Garner, but she was always kind and supportive. None of that coddling nonsense at Mac. But we did get to experience some new activities: dancing the polka and waltz with other girls, archery (which was pretty interesting), and soccer. Patrice Dye was the hands down best girl partner for the waltz. That girl could move and had no problem bringing her partner right along with her like the dancing scene from "The King and I." Archery was fun and different. NOT fun was trying to learn and play soccer. We kept fouling about every 60 seconds, got chewed out and refreshed on the complicated rules, which we simply could not remember . Then about another half minute of play and we fouled again. I think they gave up on us after about one or two sessions of that. Occasionally, we didn’t dress out and just sat on the gym floor for the whole period. On one of those boring days, some other girls decided I was in desperate need of some sprucing up and did a make-up job on me, complete with golden glitter eye shadow, heavy liner, and curled eyelashes. I was so proud! In 7th period English I silenced the room when I walked in. I looked like a whore, but didn’t realize it until I got home and my brother took one look and told me so. He was such a sensitive guy.}

^{Second period was geometry with Mr. Kiels. I was amazed to see that we were sharing that class with sophomores . Let me back up and explain this. There was a group of us who were placed one year ahead of everyone else in math and science. I was so backwards that I did not even realize this until late 7th grade when I peeled back the book cover of my math book and saw grade 8 printed plainly on the cover. Now what was that doing there? I was a 7th grader! Fortunately I had figured everything out by the freshman year, but it sure would have been nice if my 6th grade teacher at Wilshire had at least told me they were going to jump me ahead like that …. We had gotten Algebra 1 (a true trauma) out of the way at Garner, and entered Mac taking sophomore geometry. The other sophomores were NOT amused by having to share class with us. We stared a lot at each other those first days. After they got used to us, we were accepted. It was the same story in sophomore biology with Mr. Kuykendall. I was amazed when a sophomore boy, Tommy Berry (Jimmy’s older brother), turned around in his desk in front of me and started a conversation. We had a lot of conversations that year and I always remembered his kindness, especially since I was painfully shy. Tommy patiently explained to me the difference between the AFL and the NFL and how it resulted in the Super Bowl. Mr. Kuykendall’s class was right after lunch and on test days, we spent our lunchtime cramming and reviewing each other. We didn’t have time to go through the lunch line, so we would buy a big red and a bag of cheetos, wolf it down and go into the test tanked up on that.}

^{Being "accelerated" like that in math and science was both good and bad. I was part of a group of incredibly intelligent 14-year olds. Just take a look in our annual and look at all the National Merit finalists our class produced. I am sure there could have been many more, but they probably didn’t care. Their accomplishments pushed the rest of us to excel. I have to be honest and say that my intelligence was in the lower end of that group and no national merit finalist, therefore I was behind everyone else and often had to struggle. I pulled a lot of D’s and one F in Algebra 2 under Mr. King. But I kept on plugging away anyhow. We even got hold of our official IQs. Carla Thrasher worked in the front office and came across that information and shared it with us. There were several of our classmates with IQs well over 130: profoundly gifted. These people are quite rare, and I was certainly not one of them.}

^{We had some interesting personalities. Mark Beaulieu learned Pi out to one hundred places. Keith Valone taught himself the alphabet in American sign language and taught the rest of us the next day. We spent several days signing to each other until we grew bored. We didn’t know there were signs for entire words and it took too long to spell everything out. Douglas Axelrod ran around with a slide rule holder attached to his belt.}

^{The first foreign language I ever took was French with Mrs. Moynihan, who passed away last summer. She hit the ground running with us on the first day. We learned to say Good day, how are you, and I am fine. She went down the rows making everyone speak and practice. As soon as I opened my mouth, Mrs. Moynihan asked me if I spoke Italian. For some unknown reason, I always spoke French with a pronounced Italian accent. My throat was actually sore after about a week because I was using muscles in my mouth that I had never used before …}

^{To be a Lassie, I had to be a bairn first. Bummer. The uniforms were lousy, and all we did was sit in the bleachers at Virgil T. Blossom and learn songs (kumma lotta kumma lotta kumma lotta vista ….), and practice hand signals and flash cards (Signs UP). Nevertheless, we all joined up and trained that following summer, every morning for several weeks from 8:00 or 9:00 a.m. until noon or so when it started really getting hot. BORING, but I was determined to do whatever it took to be one of those marching Lassies! We even had to sell boxes of Hershey bars for a fundraiser. Just what we all needed for our emerging adolescent acne: chocolate.}

^{The freshman year also brought huge football games, the first I had ever attended. My brother Wes would haul a couple of my friends and me along in his car to Virgil T. Blossom Stadium and promptly ditch us at the entry gate. We were instructed not to embarrass him by following him around and trying to sit with him and his cool friends (I had the hugest crush on many of his friends and would have LOVED to sit with them …). He did not know us until the end of the game, at which time we could meet him at his car and he would deign to drive us home. If we had been late, he probably would have left us behind in the parking lot. Wes did explain the basic rules of football to me so I went with some background knowledge of what was going on, else I would have been totally lost.}

^{The freshman year was probably the year I enjoyed the most at Mac. We were young, excited and enthusiastic. The sophomore and junior years kind of blurred together, and by Senior year my feet were getting itchy again and I was ready for more new horizons.}

Once again our classmate Shirley Burleson Espinosa continues to 'jolt' our memory banks and remind us of those many details of our youth that have not surfaced for years.  Thank you for writing your MAC stories in such an entertaining and funny way.  When I read them I am smiling and saying, 'Yes, I remember and I did that, too!".   Your stories are a gift you give to us all !!!  

Someday I will attempt to write a forum story again, .... but my suggestion for you is to 'Continue On'.....   :)   Thanks Shirley.

MAC '71 Hugs,

Jenice Graham Benedict

9-2013

Thanks again, Jenice, for your compliments.  I truly enjoy coming up with all those stories and I have several more new ones to upload.

I was really happy when you contributed your story on women's rights, and when Steve Clark did his on dating.

Stay tuned.

Shirley