August 1, 2020:
I loved a girl there, for three years. Jean.
She was hilarious, always laughing, brilliant, dark-haired. We were friends, she invited me to dinner, I clocked a bully in the nose with my arm-in-a-cast when he picked on her little brother.
Her father was a John Bircher. The prototype for contemporary ultra-right conspiracy organizing. She spoke of it in class many times. Our teacher, who'd fought in World War Two but was sorry we'd won, approved openly and mightily. He'd wink, nod, grin. His kinda people.
She took to calling our teacher "sir". "Sir" this, "sir" that, "sir" the other thing too. He loved it. Like any other classic petty-bourgeois pseudo-intellectual he valued his pathetic little place in the social hierarchy almost as much as life itself. He felt he'd earned it, struggled for it, deserved it. It was his reward as a middle-aged balding man to be called "sir" by ten-year-old females. After-all, a high percentage of the cadres of the German Nazis before their seizure of power were schoolteachers. Himmler's father was a school principal. If you'd gone to school in San Diego in the 1960s this would all be intuitive.
I don't know why we didn't stay in touch. Maybe I wrote her and didn't hear back. Maybe her father the Bircher intuited I'd grow up red and forbade further contact. Maybe I have no idea. I do though remember her home address. While writing this I used Street View to see that her house is still there.