Sweater days

Sweater Days

We moved to Hopewell Junction, New York in September 1964. God I guess I must have been a delicate child. I mean it was 10^th grade for Christ’s sake, what was I doing lying on the bathroom floor trying to cool my headache on the tiles the first day of Roy C. Ketcham high school. Must have been that new-paint smell, that new house, the cow footprints on the empty lot next door, the stark brown new neighborhood in a former cow pasture, no lawns no trees no fall flowers, dust on the road where I would soon walk to meet the bus where that smirking prick of a fellow 10^th grader, Loren, would sense my weaknesses, the crowded school halls, my mother psychologically beside me, where the gay 10^th grade English teacher named Dick something would have told my mother I should try out for plays to meet people—he didn’t say try out for the tennis team, or soccer, or God, baseball—, aware only of my mother, knocking on the bathroom door, her panicking voice saying it was cool enough out to wear my favorite, lemon-colored, button-down, mohair sweater, wouldn’t that be nice?