Junior High was a real life changer. At our school, Kenmore Junior High School, we were tracked into “blue circle” groups which were all “brains”, thus segregating us right off from the main student body. Most of the kids in the blue circle classes were from upper middle class families and neighborhoods. I remember having somewhat of an inferiority complex, on this account.
One great friendship, for example, which lasted through 9th grade, was with Jason Bowling who, at least to me, had a huge mansion of a house in one of the swankier neighborhoods of Kenmore. On sleepovers I got to see how the “other half” lived and got to be friends with his friends. It was great, like being in another world.
Jay was captain of the football team and very popular. A girl who lived across the street was Lynn Allen (spellings are probably off a bit having lost my yearbook!) who was perhaps the number one, the lead cheerleader. It was a very nice neighborhood of Kenmore with tons of trees and elegant homes.
Jay got a kick out of the fact that I was a “Russian Jew” by ancestry (on my father’s side) and told classmates that fact, now and then, with glee in his face. What the heck, we were all kids then and did and said crazy shit, all playing out our own upbringing and class background. I didn’t take offense or mind it at all. Jay was a thoroughly good chap and an accomplished athlete. Just being in that neighborhood with even semi-friends was ok because it was a breakthrough to another world, a complex one for sure, but substantially different, more opulent, more together both socially and financially. It felt like a breakthough of sorts although I gradually became aware that I couldn’t belong there, perhaps because of my family situation, but also because we did not live in that part of town.