Word: joshed
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Belmont parental expectations are high. Parents typically work in high- pressure, top-dollar professional jobs around Boston. In many families both parents work full time, as Josh's do. Success is trumpeted at Josh's school, as it is in Josh's family. More than one-third of the Maisels in his father's generation made Phi Beta Kappa. In Belmont some 90% of high school students go to college. Many fear dire consequences if they do not get into the "right" college, and competition for those cherished spots is keen. "In Belmont it's the gold medal or nothing...
Like all the other ninth-graders in Belmont, Josh took a semester-long health class taught by Joan MacClary. Josh filled his notebook with all sorts of facts: for example, alcohol reduces sperm count, though he noted in parentheses that "it will go back up." And Josh knows that because he weighs about 100 lbs. he would be legally drunk after three drinks...
...think that kids think they look good now if they don't have limits, but it's worse in the end," Josh replies...
...next morning, Josh, dressed in his usual school-day outfit of jeans, sweatshirt and sneakers, sits in English class. Most of the girls, who , are taller than Josh, wear short skirts and white ankle-length socks with their sneakers. Between classes, kids primp in front of mirrors on locker doors. Lip glosses glow at the start of each class. An open locker door reveals a picture of a sunset with these words underneath: "Let's get drunk and go to heaven." A few kids kiss amid the shuffling crowd. Over the decades the smooching pose has not changed: girls stand...
...Josh's class is studying Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The play, almost four centuries old, is about adolescent rebellion, a phenomenon that remains eerily constant through changing times. "Back then kids were expected to be adults when they turned 13 or so," says Josh of the play's tragic heroes, who are the same age he is. "The difference now is, kids don't have...