When I was in seventh grade I had the best Social Studies teacher. First, she was hot. I don’t think anyone should underestimate the power of education or teaching when hormones are involved. If she had asked me to read the dictionary I would have a report completed and on her desk by 7am the following morning.
It was seventh grade I was a preadolescent, hormonal kid with his eyes wide open. Really wide open. When the day came for the teacher to introduce to High School students who had been to Russia on exchange I was sold like a vegetarian at a bean festival. They’d crossed into enemy lands and come back excited, alive and beaming with a chance to tell their stories.
This breached anything school had ever offered me. Exposure to something special - I wanted in. Two years later when we were to pick a language - it was a done deal - no brainer - Russian.
Woodbury High School was in the suburb of Saint Paul Minnesota. Built mainly to host a community for 3M (at least in 1984 it was). When the teacher’s asked the class whose parents don’t work at 3M I was one of 4 or so kids who raised their hands. In hindsight, I imagine my Mom picked Woodbury because of the education system which was top ranked, undoubtedly by no accident due to the involvement of 3M but I cannot quote any sources to that affect.
The community wasn’t growing as fast as predicted and so they had closed the Junior High School and put all of the seventh and eighth graders together with the high school students. This had its pluses and minuses. Nudging through the halls with giants and beautiful fully grown goddesses was easily enough a plus. But being the youngest, we were easy targets. A lot harder to stand up for ourselves being runts compared to these bearded kings and glowing queens. The following year when they dropped the seventh graders we as eighth graders continued to be the lowest on the totem pole. But when they did it again the following year; well, that’s just mean.
We let it be known as ninth graders and the youngest for the third year in a row - enough was enough. There really isn’t better training for youth then to put them in the line of fire for three years in a row to train resiliency, self reliance and humility.
When 10th grade came along for me the new 9th graders earned more partners and respect from us than the expected onslaught of oppression, hazing and abuse that one would expect. It wasn’t void of complete humiliation, but something had shifted in the normal cycle of internment that high school was wrought to provide.
This digression is to set the stage for my first year of Russian which had many more upper class students than nubes (<- a word my son Taylor has come to use as part of his vernacular and is fun to borrow whenever possible). Our teacher Elizabeth was unique and specialized and so very awesome, she taught one week at our school and the following at the neighboring Park High. The class had three set’s of closed circuit cameras and the whole thing was broadcast between the two schools live. All the students from both schools 1st year Russian through 4th year were taught in the same class. This was original to me. We were kids but expected to learn like College students. No worksheets and remedial hand holding was necessary. As the class progressed from 2nd and 3rd we reviewed the material as new students entered and the novel eyes were also exposed to the more advanced materials. Maybe this was a practice in other schools but for me it was new and I loved it.
The time came in my junior year to choose whether I wanted to participate in the exchange with the Russian students. It had been four years since my first peek at another culture and adventure in distant foreign lands. I wan’t going to pass on a chance like this. When the teacher pulled me aside and told me there was an odd number of girls to boys in the exchange my heart stopped. I thought she was going to ask me to step down from the opportunity. But rather she offered whether I would be willing to take an exchange sister. I was validated for being asked and of course the answer was Yes. Not only was the validation that she asked me, but mainly because I say yes to most anything anyone has ever asked of me for my whole life.
The excitement and jokes ranged from my parents who repeated the “Russians are coming the Russians are coming” to simple and nervous students in the school that were convinced we were inviting communists in to manipulate our system of values. The day arrived we all went to the airport to pick up our exchange students. We made name tags for ourselves and held up big huge signs so the Russians knew where to go. Of course I was terrible at writing and wrote her name completely wrong on the card. Instead of writing her name - Ira I wrote something to the effect of NRA - which as I write this now seems comical. I saw this blushed, red eyed girl talking in Russian at a speed that until then I’d never heard. In all the classes we’d been to, we’d practiced and listened, but hadn’t heard real native Russians speak the language, especially in an exasperated way. I approached both my teachers and her teachers huddled by the airplane doors and they looked at me and Elizabeth rolled her eyes - cause she knew I always mixed up my letters.
“Peter meet your exchange sister Ira.” (End Part One)
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