Over 55 years later, I don't remember much else about how my experience at Broad Ripple H.S. during the last month of my first semester as a sophomore in January 1963 differed from my first semester as a sophomore experience at Bayside H.S. in the fall of 1962.
The Biology I class I was assigned to attend at Broad Ripple was one in which the students were not that academic high-achievers, whereas the Biology I class I had been in while attending Bayside, in which I was scoring over 90 on all the multiple choice tests the teacher gave us, was an "honors" class of academic high-achievers. And all I really remember about my Biology classes at Broad Ripple during my sophomore year was that we dissected some frogs in my first semester class; and in the spring semester Biology II class I attended between February and June 1963, the biology teacher was a wrestling coach, who seemed to be more into being the wrestling coach than into devoting much time to trying to interest his class of non-academic high-achieving students into learning a lot about biology.
Eating lunch in the cafeteria at Broad Ripple seemed to be about as much of a drag between January 1963 and June 1964 as eating lunch in the cafeteria at Bayside H.S. had been in the fall of 1962; although the hot lunch food that Broad Ripple's cafeteria staff cooked allowed me to pretty much just eat a hamburger and fresh fries each day for lunch, instead of just eating some bag lunch sandwich that my mother gave me to bring to school, like I had done at Bayside.
At both Bayside and Broad Ripple during my sophomore and junior years in high school, I can't recall ever sitting in the cafeteria eating lunch at the same table with any of the students who were in any of my classes and talking with any students who were in any of my classes during lunch hour in the cafeteria. One reason was that, at least at Broad Ripple, once you found an empty space to sit at one of the cafeteria tables for lunch at the beginning of each semester, that seemed to become your regular, permanent lunch sitting spot for the whole semester.
The only student I can recall ever talking to at lunch hour when I attended Broad Ripple between January 1963 and June 1964, therefore, was the physically heavy white guy who generally sat across from me at the same cafeteria table, which had had an empty seat across from him in January 1963, that led me to sit at that same table during my three semesters at Broad Ripple. What this white high school student guy (who spoke in what sounded more like some kind of rural Kentucky southern accent rather than an urban Midwestern or Indiana accent) talked about most of the time, after we each finished eating our lunches and waited for the bell to ring that sent us to our next period class, were comparisons between cars and motorcycles and comparisons between the various Indianapolis 500 Speedway race car drivers and their racing cars. His big interest, when he wasn't in school, seemed to be fixing his car, driving around in his car, fixing his motorcycle and driving around in his motorcycle; or following what was going on at the pre-Indianapolis 500 Speedway Race qualifying trials and race that was held in April and May each spring at the Speedway race track, just west of Indianapolis, in great detail..
His interest in the Indianapolis 500 race was so intense that he not only certainly attended the race at the Speedway around Memorial Day each year, with hundreds of thousands of other spectators at the race track, but also seemed to go there to watch the Indianapolis trials, whenever that seemed possible for him. One result of sitting across from him each day in the lunchroom cafeteria for me, was that I pretty much was able to keep up on what was going on at the Speedway in April and May, without having to go to the Indianapolis 500 race myself and observe what was happening there, personally.
