Memories of Simonds Regional High School, Bayside Drive, East Saint John, NB.
Of Simonds Regional High School, I have vivid memories. Miss Hatfield, who was the most perfect of English teachers, married Mr. 
Bill Bishop.
I remember Ellen Gregg as an energetic French teacher who took a personal interest in each one of us. When I was going with Roddy Belyea, she was on sharp lookout behind doors to keep us on the straight and narrow. She kept telling me, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket". Good advice because that basket broke. Miss Greg used to open class each day with a cheer-leading stunt in French, with great arm waving and a jump. Grand, but embarrassing, as then, we young ones expected the " old" to act their age.
Miss Wright looked over my shoulder one day as we wrote personal essays and said, " I know what your favourite word is..........gentle. I never forgot that kind remark. I was writing..........." There is a hill behind my house, circumscribed with rich green fields. a foot-path leads round the hill, to a secluded fir grove. Here the day is gentle...here the day is filled with the joyous songs of birds.............and so on
This was our cow-boy playing hill. I was Belle-Star, a deadly beauty on a black stallion.
I remember a boy, Trevor, who was so quiet spoken and polite, who was always dressed neatly with style, who seemed to be the height of security, maybe even rich. He was a gentleman and easy to be with, not all barbs and ridicule like some others. What he carried inside, I never knew. His life was tragically rich, a life-time of experience even by that young age. I never knew.
I was hiding my own insecurities. I was the fifth of 10 children and the first to get through high-school. We all scrambled up on our own and knew very little about the social world, except that we had not the money, the clothes or the parental support that the brazen ones had. How lucky we were.........we became persons in our own images.
Lynn Anthony and Alan Dodge were together a lot in school. Lynn was a serious student, always hard at it, while I just used my unconscious mind to wing exams. Turn off your brain and let your hand write the answers always works for me. I remember how Lynn used to walk, with such little, mincing steps. I couldn't stand it, as I had muscles, used to beat up boys in grade six and could have leaped over the moon.
Cheryl O......, was picture perfect. She was smart and well turned out, a girl from a stable family. Joanne B.... was a bully and I learned to stay away from her.
Mr. Fleming, the chemistry teacher found me a nuisance, as I came in late from gym and let him know the chemistry lacked poetic scope. He came up behind me at my first Teacher's meeting, said" Hi, teach", and went away laughing.
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