The new middle school wasn’t
located in Mark Twain Village, of course. It was located in Patrick Henry
Village, which is another American community (much bigger) in Schwetzingen,
about twenty minutes away by bus. Dad says that more than 10,000 Americans live
here, and that sounds about right to me. It’s the biggest military base I’ve
ever seen, like a small town. All of the apartment buildings are painted
yellowish white, and there are also single-family homes for the higher-ranking
officers. PHV has everything you can imagine: a strip mall with a movie
theater, bookstore, bowling alley, and snack bar. A grocery store (Commissary)
and department store (PX). A large football field with a track around it. An
elementary school, a church, a teen club, an NCO club, an Officer’s club, a
baseball diamond.
Today is
the grand opening of the brand-new middle school designed by my dad, located at
the far West end of PHV. He was invited to be there for the opening ceremony,
so for this first day of school I’m riding with him instead of the regular
school bus.
“Are you
excited?” he asked me.
“I don’t
know any of the kids,” I pointed out.
“But
it’s a brand-new school!” he said.
“I’m
excited that you designed it,” I said. I meant it too. I was really starting to
think this whole engineer thing was a big scam, with mysterious Nazis and East
Germans and Communists and Terrorists and CIA spies around every corner. Today
he was proving to me that it wasn’t. Dad had been telling me the truth.
I could
tell he was proud. They saved a parking space for us, and Dad pulled the
station wagon into the space. A Stars & Stripes photographer snapped
a picture of Dad getting out of the car. Apparently, this really was a big
deal, although you wouldn’t have known it by looking at the students. Hundreds
of kids were roaming around aimlessly. All of them are 6th, 7th,
and 8th graders. I haven’t had to wear a school uniform since St.
Roberts, but all the boys in this school have an unofficial uniform. We all wear
flannel shirts, jeans, and either Adidas or Pumas. My new ones are black Pumas
with an orange form-strip. Pretty darn cool. The girls wear jeans too, the kind
that flair out at the bottom, and some of them have rhinestones or spangles or
something shiny on them. A few of the girls are wearing tube-tops and overalls.
Glad Mom isn’t here to comment on that.
The
structure itself is rather unusual. It looks like three different buildings
merged together, because each section is a slightly different height. When I
asked Dad about that, he was amused.
“It’s
called design,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be boring if it looked like an ordinary
school?”
I
couldn’t argue with that logic.
We were
supposed to meet the principal in the gymnasium for the ceremony, but I wasn’t
really paying attention to the path we were taking because I was peeking into
all of the classrooms as we walked by. It looked much nicer than any other
school I had attended. But after about five minutes of walking, I noticed a
classroom I had seen before. We were going in circles. That’s when I looked up
at Dad. He had a grimace on his face.
“Something
wrong?” I asked him.
“I could
have sworn the gym was this way,” he said. Mr. Rand McNally was somehow lost.
“Didn’t
you design this school?” I asked.
He was
too irritated to answer me.
“Maybe
it’s this way,” he said, more to himself than to me.
We
finally found the gym, and it was packed with kids and teachers. They had a
little stage, and asked Dad to come up. The Stars and Stripes
photographer was already there, waiting for him. He started snapping shots
madly. I grabbed a seat next to another boy on the main floor. He had much
longer hair than I did—like something out of the Edgar Winter Group. These are
kids of military folks?
“I’m
Johnny,” he said.
“Rudi,”
I replied. We didn’t shake hands. We just nodded at each other.
“Want to
share a bowl at lunch?” he asked.
“Um,” I
said. “I think everybody gets their own bowls.”
He
laughed and slugged me in the arm.
“Welcome
to Heidelberg Middle School,” the principal said into the microphone. “Pretty
nice school, isn’t it kids?”
No
response.
“I said,
it’s a pretty nice school, isn’t it kids?” Then he raised his arms up as if to
remind the crowd of its important cheering role. We responded with a smattering
of applause. Tough crowd. “We have a special guest with us today for the
opening ceremony. He and his team were in charge of this project and designed
it through the US Army Corp of Engineers. Please, let’s give a big round of
applause…that means clapping, kids…to Mr. Fred Sieger!”
Dad
cringed when the principal called him Fred. The folks at his office in Campbell
Barracks simply refused to call him Fritz or Friedrich, so they Americanized
it. He hated the new name. The photographer got a shot of Dad shaking the
principal’s hand, and then got in position to shoot his speech.
“Hello
kids,” Dad said. “I’m proud to be here today for this big day. You will always
remember where you were today, when you became the very first class of
Heidelberg Middle School Panthers.”
The clapping was a little better than
earlier, but not much.
“I know I’ll never forget this day,” Dad
said. “It’s a real sense of pride to follow a project like this from beginning
to end. But this is even more special for me. I didn’t just design this school
for all of you.”
Oh no,
please don’t.
“My own
son is going to be one of the students this year too.”
No, Dad.
No.
“He’s a
little small, but believe it or not, he’s in 8th grade.”
I could
feel my face turning bright red. I was slinking so low in my seat I was in
danger of falling to the ground in front of it.
“Rudi,”
he said, as I knew he would, “Please stand up!”
When I
did, I waved like Queen Elizabeth. I don’t know what made me do that, but I
thought that’s what was expected of me. The photographer snapped a photo,
mid-wave. I could feel all eyes in the room staring at me, so I quickly
reclaimed my seat, and looked straight down at the ground.
“Dude,”
Johnny whispered to me. “Your dad is like a celebrity.”
I didn’t
see, hear, or feel anything else after that. I wanted nothing more in life than
to simply blend in with everyone else. That’s clearly not going to happen.
Again.
