Junior High
I learned just about everything I needed to know in junior high. Mr. Litwin (in those days adults did not have first names) was the science teacher. We were using microscopes to identify plant and animal cells. Get your slide, position it on the microscope plate, peer into the invisible world, match what you see to textbook diagrams, decide whether it was a plant or an animal cell, defend your position. Class after class, the right answer was plant cell. The plant cell camp gained momentum. The good-looking students and the members of the junior volleyball team were united in their plant cell verdicts. One science class after a week or so of this pattern, I dutifully placed my slide under the microscope, looked through the eyepiece and, while the chorus proclaimed plant cell, I froze. It was not a plant cell. It looked different. It resembled the textbook diagram of an animal cell. I must have betrayed some inner terror as I walked to the front of the classroom carrying the piec...