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Joe's Yearbook: Chronicles of a teen's last year in high school
BY MARK FONTECCHIO
The Patriot Ledger
Published Sept. 10, 2005
It's 6:45 a.m. on Tuesday and Joe Ruvido's alarm clock is blaring, a wake-up call to the start of his senior year in high school.
The alarm buzzing continues because the 17-year-old isn't there to shut it off. He's already awake and getting ready for classes at Weymouth High School.
After a quick shower, he applies deodorant and dabs on Adidas after-shave. His bedroom is plastered with posters - Lord of the Rings, Blink 182, SpongeBob SquarePants and, in a nod to his teen fantasies, a scantily clad Jessica Simpson.
His mother, Nancy, sips coffee in the kitchen and watches the news. Though her son is too busy this morning to reflect on the day's significance, Nancy Ruvido understands.
Joe Ruvido most likely won't have another first day of school like this, waking up in a home he's lived in his entire life with his mother and younger sister.
Next year at this time, he'll likely be in a dorm room with none of the comforts being in his Weymouth cocoon provides. The safety net will be farther away, the potential drop a lot more precipitous.
"People say it's a cliché, that they grow before your eyes, but they do," Nancy says.
A few minutes later, Ruvido shuffles down from his bedroom with more pressing matters on his mind.
"Mom, where's my sandals?" he says.
He says he's going to test enforcement of a new rule prohibiting students from wearing flip-flops in school. Along with a short-sleeved blue collar shirt and beige cargo shorts, he finds them: brown flip-flops that also serve as advertisements for Guinness beer.
"I just want to see if they'll do anything," he says. "If they'll send me home."
He grabs a granola bar and his keys and kisses his mother on the cheek.
"Bye, ma," he says.
He and his sister, Jessica, hop into his green Ford Escort and gun it down Southern Avenue. They pull into a long driveway to pick up a couple of friends: Katie Smith, a junior, and her brother Stephen, a freshman.
Ruvido backs out the drive about as fast as he pulled in, which is to say pretty fast.
Ruvido makes his way to West Street and then, to avoid traffic on Route 18, cuts through the parking lot of Stetson Place and races past the Nash School on Front Street and back onto the main drag.
In the Weymouth High School parking lot, Ruvido circles around a couple of times, eyeing his designated spot, No. 21.
"There's a cop in my parking spot," he says. "I'm going to have to tell them."
Moments later, safety officer Bob Barry moves his vehicle and another police officer jokes with Ruvido.
"Officer Barry parked in your spot?" he says. "That ain't right."
Ruvido enters the high school and mingles with friends, some of whom he hasn't seen all summer. They congregate in a wide hallway between the old and new sections of the school. They're the seniors, the supposed big men on campus.
"The summer was really short so a lot of the reaction between me and my friends, we felt like it was just an extended vacation," Ruvido recalls later. "It was weird being the older kids. I didn't really think of it that way. I just thought, 'Oh, I have to go to class again.'"
One of the big topics of discussion is the new rule on flip-flops. Ruvido shows his off to a buddy.
Soon enough, 12th-grade dean Michael Lovecchio approaches Ruvido for a chat. He points to his feet and the talk lasts a minute or so.
"I have to go back to my car," Ruvido says afterward to a friend. "I already got bagged."
So he returns to his car and changes into a pair of sneakers, the same shoes he wears when he runs varsity cross-country and track. He's the captain of cross-country.
Ruvido gets to homeroom, presided over by teacher Rob Meader. Again the dress code is discussed.
No flip-flops, no short shorts, and as Meader puts it, "there's the cleavage issue," making quote marks with his fingers when he says "cleavage."
Everyone stands as the Pledge of Allegiance comes over the public address, followed by a moment of silence for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
It seems like a lot has already happened in Ruvido's day. But it's only 7:30 a.m., just an hour after he woke from his slumber.
To emphasize the point, Ruvido rubs his eyes and snacks on his granola bar. He also has a bottle of water.
Before the day is over, Ruvido will have sat through six classes. He will have gone to cross-country practice and run five miles before standing under the sprinklers in the hot September sun with his teammates. Then he'll have dinner at his grandmother's house, return home and chip away at homework.
On other nights, Ruvido will put in time at the South Shore Hospital cafeteria, where he works about 20 hours a week during the school year cooking and serving meals.
The cycle will continue the next day and the day after that, and sure enough on one of those days, Ruvido won't wake up before the alarm starts blaring.
"I think about it," he says when asked about his last year in high school and leaving friends who have been classmates since the first grade. "But I try to keep it in the back of my mind. We have a whole year together. Take one day at a time, you know?"
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