Clayton Cougars (Who) Care
Memory Lane via Clayton Intermediate
A companion piece to my writing about some of my Uintah Elementary compatriots. The junior high version, which is to say: gawkier, more awkward, seemingly unending.
The day of seventh grade orientation, I showed up to the long halls of Clayton Intermediate School with my friend Matt and we sorta meandered around, trying to locate our lockers and classrooms, and strategize our class-to-class hallway routes. I watched one kid there with his mom. They had opened up his red locker door and she was helping him decorate it with all kinds of Beatles stuff. A couple photos of John Lennon (the kid was wearing very Lennon-esque circular glasses). The cover of Sgt. Pepper. I thought, “this kid has it figured out” while I could barely get my combination to unlock once every four tries. Typical of me, I wanted to bring something to tape up in my locker, but could never commit to the ONE thing. So my locker stayed bare. No wonder I’ve never gotten a tattoo.
The second classroom on the right as you walked in belonged to Mr. J. Bell who taught Life Science. Everyone feared the bearded, squatty grump. By design. He spent the first class of every semester hand-pouring molten Fear of J Bell into the quivering mind and heart of each student, reading the proverbial riot act about having so much as a pencil smudge in your Life Science textbook at the end of the semester. When I was hit by a truck that fall, I worried that, though I’d survived my impact with the truck, it didn’t matter because Mr. J. Bell would most certainly kill me for the (probably broken-bone-preventing) damage the impact had done to my book. To everyone’s surprise, he did not, in fact, kill me.
We called him J. Bell because there was also B. Bell, a mustachioed and mulleted gym teacher. In a flip-flop of traditional middle school movie tropes, B. Bell was far less intimidating as a gym teacher than J. Bell was as a science teacher. Doesn’t mean I didn’t still hate the rope climb or dread the weird gym uniform they made us wear. Little red nylon shorts only flatter supermodel bodies. And, shocker, I never had one of those.
JoJo was in my gym class. He was my first exposure to a cholo-type Mexican guy. He had the whole thing crisp and dialed: low-riding and ultra-pressed Dickie-type khaki pants, a flannel shirt buttoned to the top (sometimes only the top), black slip-on shoes, calf-high white socks, slick hair sometimes covered with a hairnet, and—best of all—a bona fide mustache that he’d carefully comb in the mirror after gym class. He seemed, like, 27 years old to me, as he coolly groomed his real-deal facial hair. Meanwhile, I just hoped nobody got a glimpse of me in my boxers, which were just a little shorter than the little red nylon shorts.
Art I was taught by a white-haired crank by the real-life name of…Art Densley. Nominally speaking, teaching art was his destiny. But he sure seemed to hate both art and kids. After several years in elementary school where I’d gotten loads of positive attention for how creative and artistic I was, Mr. Densley handing me genuinely bad grades for ART! was a swift kick to the crotch1 of my self esteem. Definitely a lesson in the ol’ “praise a kid’s effort, not his ability” school of thought. Or maybe an early exposure to “make art because you love it not because you hope for praise.” Or both.
Jamie & I sat next to each other on the back row of Art I. She was the Clayton Intermediate It Girl for a good four or five solid months. People talk a lot about how women’s menstrual cycles can sync up2, but not so much about how men’s hormones do the same. Well, I’m here to tell you, from experience in junior high and high school and college, that male hormone sync is REAL. I can’t tell you how many times all the boys—seemingly independently—were suddenly all super-attracted to the same girl. Just collectively ga-ga over some poor girl for a few weeks. And then, without warning, the hormonal/pheromonal attention would shift to some other girl. Then to another. And another. Anyway, Jamie was everyone’s dream girl for a bit longer3 than your average It Girl tenures. During our days in Art I, she would flirt with me and I would feebly flirt back with the least heat anyone has ever flirted with. One class period we were bantering and it seemed to be going astonishingly non-disastrously when, out of the blue, she coyly looked into my eyes, “Can I tell you something?” And, having watched my share of rom-coms and knowing that this was exactly how every heartfelt confession usually started, my heart fluttered. I sputtered, “S-s-sure…” With a straight face and zero joking, Jamie says, “You have really ugly eyes.” I only didn’t crawl into a hole for lack of shovel. If I’d been hooked up to lab equipment, they could have scientifically proven that my entire being physically shrank right at that moment, that my heart did the opposite of what the Grinch’s did. I may have even temporarily ceased to exist. I don’t know that I even said anything. It was a knockout punch. And, boy, it landed.
Lindsay was the girl I had the biggest crush on, even amid the nomadic male hormone sync (though she also got her share of unintentionally coordinated attention). No mere It Girl, Lindsay had staying power. She was beautiful and kind and sweet and—to a naive and romantically-stupefied boy—perfect. My heart would get all fluttery even just seeing her—in the halls, in class, on the way home, at some weekend party. Lindsay knew I existed, but just barely, as I was a fringe member of the same social circle she was central to. (It’s pretty hard to stand out when you’re as introverted and nervous as I was/am4.) My middle school crush on this Clearly Out of My Universe Much Less My League girl persisted through the years—high school, even college. My first semester back at the University of Utah after my LDS mission, I remember being utterly swoony when she stopped me on campus to catch up. She! Stopped me! The flutter returned with a vengeance. I hadn’t seen her, probably, since graduation in 1994 and this was 1997. And yet if, on that unremarkable piece of sidewalk, she had said, “Look, I don’t know how to say this, but…oh, who cares…. let’s run away and get married”5, I would’ve dropped everything right then and there. It wouldn’t have even been a question. I’ve always had a wholly (comically?) irrational romantic streak.
Mr. Vogel taught Health and had a broad reputation as a, well, pervert. I don’t know if the reputation was just because kids automatically associated the teacher tasked with talking about sex education as pervy or if there was some actual merit to it. Rumor had it he walked around with mirrors on his shoes to look up girls’ skirts. I never saw the mirrors, for what it’s worth, though something about him made me uneasy. But, then, almost every teacher made me uneasy, so I’m not the best gauge as far as uneasiness goes.
Speaking of junior high sex talk, our principal’s name was unfortunately Larry Odom. I think he was nice. But you’re never gonna recover from a name that rhymes with…well…yeah.
Mr. Odom played Bobby McFerrin’s fluke-hit song “Don’t Worry Be Happy” over the school’s PA system between every class period on the first day of school. Back then, I saw it as an attempt to boost the mood of the student body. But, as an adult who’s likely older than Mr. Odom was at the time, I have my suspicions about his sinister/ironic/sadistic intent.
Nate and Denver were a year older than me and the alphas6 of Clayton Intermediate basketball. Nate was a giant—tall and burly and competitive, while Denver was a basketball savant, always the highest basketball IQ on the floor, making the right play, with nerves of steel. He reminded me of John Stockton, in the way he had complete control over the game and was a fantastic passer, but was not afraid to take matters into his own hands as needed. Basketball was (or felt like to me) a big deal at the school. The annual Red & White Game (pitting the best players in the school—selected by the gym teachers—against each other) was the biggest thing going as far as I was concerned. You were never gonna make the NBA if you didn’t first get picked for the Red & White Game. No one who attended Clayton has; that’s a proven fact. Anyway, I was on two Jr. Jazz teams (not related to the Red & White Game) with Nate & Denver in seventh grade—a Monday night league and a Saturday morning league. Nate and Denver (and the rest of our teams) were good enough that the Monday night team and the Saturday morning team eventually faced off in the Jr. Jazz Championship in the old Salt Palace, which made it tricky since Nate, Denver, me, Travis, maybe Barrett, and another guy or two played on both teams. It felt so bigtime to be playing on the same court as The Mailman and Big T Bailey. Sometimes when I’m required to give a fun fact at a party or job get-to-know-you thing, that’s mine: in 7th grade, I won first and second place Jr. Jazz for the state of Utah.
Billy was on the Monday team. We met at 7am a few days a week during the summer to practice basketball at his church. Sometimes we’d meet earlier and I’d pitch in on his paper route. We were determined to get better and we probably did. I worked a lot on my left hand, I remember. And Billy was working on his outside shot (which paid off; he’s still a long-range sharpshooter) and ball handling. Sometimes, when I think about my 16 year-old son and his tireless dedication to go to the gym 6 days a week and eat right and optimize his sleep habits and otherwise dig into his health, I wonder (between scoops of Ben & Jerry’s) where he came from? But then I remember that I did play in four different basketball leagues in seventh grade, with games four nights a week and practices the other nights, along with plenty of games of pickup and dunkball in between.
Through basketball, I made two more of my best friends (to this day) in Barrett and Adam. Beyond basketball, Adam & I had started playing guitar together and wanted to start a band. We put the word out that whoever could acquire some drums would get the honor of being our drummer (uncompromising prerequisite). Next thing we knew, Barrett had acquired himself a drum kit and a band was born. We played in various iterations of The Spiders7 for the next 5 years, rehearing in Barrett’s basement with a karaoke machine cranked for the vocals. Our first public performance was playing U28’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday”9 for an end of year assembly10.
Jesse, who was also in another band, sang for us. Singing in The Spiders was akin to drumming for Spinal Tap—a revolving door with a short shelf life. We cycled through another 3-4 singers before finally deciding that it was easier if Adam and I just sang everything. Anyway, Jesse was cool and really helped us out. He had cool taste. I remember him catching crap from some of the gym bros when he wore pre-Nevermind Nirvana and pre-grunge Screaming Trees t-shirts in gym class. Years later, when Nirvana broke big and Kurt Cobain talked about the dissonance of looking out into the audience and seeing guys just like all the jocks who used to bully him in high school, I always thought of Jesse. It must’ve burned him up to see the jerks who made fun of his hair, his earring, even his Nirvana shirt…suddenly way into Nirvana.
OH, I did make the Red & White team, if you were wondering. Didn’t wanna leave that hanging. And! My team won, for what it’s worth. We were underdogs because the other team had Gary, who was really really good. Also: tall. We all, both as friends and teammates, tried to recruit him to come with us to East High School. He did not. No, he went to our rival Highland instead, where he won the state championship in both basketball and football (I believe he caught the winning touchdown) our senior year, so I guess we’re not gonna question his decision.
Billy, Barrett, Adam, and I (along with our friends Jake, Pat, and maybe Travis and Mo?) put together a team for the Sugarhouse Boys & Girls Club Dunkball league, which basically meant full-court basketball with lowered rims (on shorter courts too). The competition was, for the most part11, pretty mediocre (probably because the really good ball players in the city were busy playing real basketball in AAU or Super League, which none of us did, bless our just-good-enough-at-basketball hearts), which of course made it fun, if not particularly challenging. We sometimes scored 180 or more points in a game, occasionally doubling the other team’s points. It was all dunks and alley oops and three pointers and showoff stuff and now I sound like Uncle Rico12 or the characters in Springsteen’s “Glory Days.” About uncompetitive, lowered-rim dunkball, no less. Oh well. I’ll move on, but first I have to tell you about the greatest block I’ve ever seen in person. A kid on the other team had dribbled past Jake and was going up to shoot a baseline floater. What he didn’t know was that Jake was furiously trailing him. As the kid left the ground to attempt his shot, Jake came from behind and spiked the ball like a volleyball. It hit the wall behind the basket and then brutally ricocheted back and hit the kid who had shot it RIGHT IN THE FACE. I think the kid felt worse when Jake (a super gentle and kind person) apologized profusely. It probably would’ve felt better to have Jake talking trash so he could be rightly pissed.
I also played a little AA competition soccer. We were the club’s B-team, so we always carried a little inferiority complex compared to the A-team (not to mention the untouchable, elite AAA team!), which was the team with most of my friends on it. My position was fullback or sweeper13 most of the time—I thrived as a stopper, my angsty low self-esteem a perfect fit to go up against the high self-esteem forwards on the other team. I reveled in the chance to quietly shut them down, to make a saving slide tackle, to mess up their perfect striker hair, to see the frustration clenching way up in their perfect striker cheekbones. I made friends with a forward named Jeremy; our bond was hot-wired by the righteous feeling that we belonged on the A-team.
That was the jocks, I guess. But Mike was a rocker. Do rockers still exist? Big, long, poofy, scraggly hair. Black jeans and white sneakers. Jean jackets with patches and pins. Always in some kind of black rock band t-shirt. Metallica and Megadeth were the big ones. But you’d see Slayer, Judas Priest, Guns ‘n Roses, or maybe sometimes some butt rock like Motley Crue14 or Bon Jovi or Def Leppard or something. But most of the rocker dudes weren’t into the poppier stuff like that. Mike was pretty genial for somebody who chose to wear black everyday and listen to ultra-aggressive music. These guys seemed scary at the time—and maybe some of them really were—but most of them, if you got to know them, were more in the vein of Eddie from Stranger Things
Speaking of metal, on a recommendation from my friend Ben, I checked out Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin15 Story from the school library. Twice. If you’re not spending junior high listening to as much Led Zeppelin as humanly possible, are you really a suburban white heterosexual American male?
Ale16 was kind of a rocker too, though with less of the stereotypical look—no poofy hair, with a broader range of musical tastes and an enviably cool leather jacket he wore all the time, even with shorts. His dad owned a guitar shop in New Mexico and somehow came to own the PRS guitar that Michael J. Fox plays17 in Back To The Future II, signed my Mr. Fox himself. His dad found out I owned an old 1958 Martin acoustic guitar and offered to trade me for a Charvel18. Looking back, that dude was trying to pull a fast one. Ale was cool, though. Great guitar player. His band (with Jesse as the lead singer) played the same assembly as The Spiders did, but had the guts to play an original song, a thought that didn’t even cross our mind. Ballsy.
Ale and I met in Speech & Drama class, during the brief era in which I flirted (as effectively as my flirting with optometrically-critical Jamie) with thespianism19. The teacher cast me as the villain in the school melodrama, which felt good initially, after countless summers watching campy melodramas at the Playmill Theater in West Yellowstone, Montana. But the memorization of lines and the idea of “acting” in front of my peers terrified me. My anxiety was off the charts and I fumbled/forgot some lines in a big way. I still have nightmares, a few times a year, of being in a play and not knowing my lines or the blocking or where I’m supposed to be.
Eric was a quiet kid. I remember he had these striking eyes, like he used permanent eyeliner and mascara to help them pop (he didn’t). He was the last person I talked to (and thus a primary witness) before I got hit by the truck that fall night. It was right at that dusk/night divide when people are still deciding to turn their headlights on. I had seen Eric in Emigration Market, where I’d stopped to grab a Gatorade after my last night of Jr. Jazz tryouts. We shot the breeze for a bit before I told him I’d probably better get home. I walked out the automatic door, looked both ways, and made a dash across the street. Except it wasn’t across. A Ford Ranger (lights not on yet) saw to that. Thank goodness for my Life Science book.
When I came to in the hospital, it took a good few hours before the concussion let me remember anything. To this day, I have zero recollection of the impact. When the hospital let me go home, I realized I couldn’t remember if I had even made the basketball team or not. So I called my friend David who had also made it through the early cuts to the last night of tryouts. “Did we make the team?” I asked. “You did. I didn’t.” he replied, not-that-thrilled. Our friendship survived, as he and I snuck out of school20 once during a CCC21 party. It felt rebellious but was low-stakes, since they didn’t take attendance at CCC, so we were basically excused anyway. (“Two Good Citizenship Students Skip Good Citizenship Party To Be Rebellious” reads the Onion-esque headline.) We hoofed it up to Dan’s Grocery and bought some lamp-warmed fried chicken. David swore he saw a teacher in one of the grocery aisles. But I kinda think he was just trying to spice up an otherwise underwhelming afternoon.
After I got hit by the truck, the school compiled a bunch of Get Well Soon notes from my classmates and dropped them off at my house. I remember being genuinely touched that anyone even knew who I was.
Mr. Schmul taught graphics. I don’t remember a thing about his class except that one day James showed up with that year’s Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. He had somehow managed to snag his dad’s issue before his parents had gotten to the mail (this was a genuine thing back then; parents had their radar up for when the Swimsuit Issue might arrive so they could take it out of circulation). Kathy Ireland was perched on the cover, her feline eyes looking through the camera into the naive souls and frying hormones of a bunch of seventh grade boys in Utah. Or so we thought.
My friend Jason—the more extroverted, better-looking, hockey-playing redhead in our group whose brother had personal marijuana plants growing in a secret corner of their house—ran for 8th Grade President and, for his skit in the election assembly, strutted onstage to AC/DC’s “Back In Black” blasting from the PA speakers, wearing sunglasses (indoors! how cool!) and some novelty coat covered with mirrors that made him look (and reflect) like a human-shaped disco ball. At the time, it was hard to imagine someone doing anything cooler. Inexplicably, Jason lost.
Lee was a mid-year transfer. Hulky, husky kid who just wanted to be liked, but was also the owner of an ultra-short fuse22. When the dreaded wrestling weeks arrived in gym class, suddenly Lee showed up to the mat in a genuine wrestling singlet, ready to rumble. We all would’ve laughed except Lee was a really good wrestler and, like I said, was known to have a temper. Something non-singlet-related set him off one day and he challenged a kid named Alex to “meet at the church” after school. “Meet at the church” was Clayton Intermediate’s version of “the flagpole.” After school, in the church parking lot, a crowd encircled Lee and Alex. The latter quietly reiterated that it was all a misunderstanding and he had no interest in fighting. Lee, though, was lit up with testosterone and the rush of that many people paying attention to something he knew he was good at. So, even though Alex said, “I’m not gonna fight you”, Lee took ahold of Alex’s head and just started ruthlessly pounding it into his knee. The brutal visual has never left me. It was shockingly violent. And, still, Alex held his ground. Didn’t cry. But also didn’t fight back. Just maintained his position with an admirable stoicism until Lee realized that nobody thought it was cool for him to pummel somebody’s skull who wouldn’t fight back. (Not that any of us stepped in to halt the proceedings.) Thinking back on Alex now, it’s clear that he understood toughness far more than Lee did.
After eighth grade promotion, there was a big dance (a DJ! Streamers! Some colored lights that flashed!) for all the eighth graders. In my romantic heart, I could imagine myself—the protagonist in my own John Hughes movie—daring to slow dance (to, what, Warrant’s “Heaven”?) with Lindsay or Jessica or, who knows, maybe even Jamie Who Hated My Eyes. But, as we left the auditorium after the promotion ceremony, my mom asked if I was gonna stay for the dance. I said, “Nah, I think I’ll just go home.” A safer, vulnerability-averse, socially-scared, anxiety-fueled choice that would become one of my signature moves for decades to come. What’s the introverted Scandinavian version of an Irish goodbye?
A Danish duck out?
A Norwegin’ not-stayin’?
Of course self-esteem has a crotch. Duh.
I believe most research shows that this is not actually a thing that happens.
She was the FDR of It Girl terms.
In almost any given social group, I will typically be the person who speaks the least. If there are two of us, I will speak second-most (unless you ask a lot of questions, in which case, buckle up). If there are four of us, fourth-most. Fifteen of us, fifteenth-most. There are exceptions, but it is most definitely a rule. So, in the case of my hopeless crush on Lindsay, I just wasn’t gonna compete with some of my ultra-loud, extroverted (and handsome) friends, all competing in a bloodsport for first-most.
Just the fact that she didn’t say “you have really ugly eyes” was a victory, to be honest.
They were practically pre-ordained to win the State Championship in 1993 when they were seniors. The team was really good. But it wasn’t in the cards.
The Spiders was our common name. But after awhile, not worried about marketing, we changed names every time we played. Some of the names were:
Fromzie & The Fireflies
The Moondogs
Stoner Al & The Wild Men
Toby Yoders
Swish Fish
But people still called us The Spiders.
Paul Substack BINGO!
We actually auditioned with Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’” but opted for “Sunday Bloody Sunday” when it dawned on us that the three of us weren’t gonna be able to replicate all of the elaborate Jeff Lynne production tricks on “Free Fallin’” and it was gonna just sound repetitive.
Our final performance was, I believe, at the final assembly our senior year at East High School. We covered Free’s “All Right Now” (a real throwback and clearly uninterested in crowd-pleasing!) and The Samples’ (a band that might’ve been bigger at East High School than any other place on earth) “Nothing Lasts For Long.” The house was not brought down. But it felt good. It’s weird to realize now that we were doing it for the last time but didn’t know it.
(Yes, we reunited for one song and a medley for our 20-year high school reunion. But that’s different.)
There was one team named BAMF (I won’t translate) that was really good and made us work. I think we split the season series with them and then won in the championship (only because two of their best players couldn’t play because they had to play in their, you guessed it, real basketball player AAU league).
One coach, seeing my size, had tried me at goalie one game, only to find that I didn’t have the stomach for it. The pleaser in me broke once the other team scored on me. I internalized the failure and was practically incapacitated. It snowballed. It was ugly. No coach ever tried that again.
My sister sees Motley Crue bassist Nikki Sixx around Jackson Hole frequently. His customized license plate? 666.
Was it only my group of friends or did every group of friends in the 80s/90s have a person who had sort of claimed a music group? It may also just have been something I projected on all of them. But it seemed like everybody had their band.
Ben: Jimi Hendrix
Matt: Led Zeppelin (later Eric Clapton)
Harwood: Eric Clapton (later Dire Straits)
Billy: Rolling Stones (later Pink Floyd and The Doors)
Alex: Grateful Dead
Me: The Beatles (or so I thought, at least)
Carter: Aerosmith
Jonny: Rush
Trevor: Pink Floyd (with a Syd Barrett emphasis)
I think Barrett was probably U2 or the Police. Adam might have been The Who, but he liked a pretty broad swath of music, so he was just as likely to get needled for his love of something obscure (Poi Dog Pondering) or “too gay” (this was Salt Lake in the 90s and The Smiths were not exactly doing big business with CIS white jocks).
I know that What Bands You Like is no longer the social identifier that it was in my youth. Kids are more about songs and vibes and playlists these days. Which is fine.
pronounced like Ollie
I poke fun at this guitar, but it looks alarmingly similar to the ugly cherry-red Vester I ultimately got. My point is less that this guitar is garbage (it retails for >$1000 now) and more that nobody would trade my mom’s old Martin for it.
I tried drama again, my senior year, when my high school put on A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum. This time, I was more prepared. I even had my own little song. In a case of casting against type, they gave me (the stake president’s son) the role of…Marcus Lycus, The Pimp. More on this if I ever do the high school edition….
“Sluffing” in Utah speak.
Clayton Cougars (who) Care. It was a citizenship ploy by the administration wherein you could earn different cards from the faculty for good/kind behavior. If you accrued enough cards, you’d be eligible for each semester’s big CCC party, wherein you’d be excused from class to go have root beer floats or something.
Also a redhead, Lee wasn’t helping gingers’ reputation for being hotheads, at all.