I ALWAYS EXPERIENCED the beginning of a new school year as a watershed. Moving up from tenth to eleventh grade was a major one. My class was disbanded among the three other parallel classes. Quite a few students had failed to make the grade, so four small classes were combined into three larger ones.

My high school traditionally had taken only boys. When girls began to be accepted, there were so few of them to begin with that they were not divided equally among the parallel classes, but were assigned to a single class, then later to a second and a third, until they made up a third of each class. There were not enough girls in my year for any to be assigned to my former class. We were the fourth parallel class, and all boys, which is why we were the ones to be disbanded and reassigned, and not one of the other classes.

We didn’t find out about it until school began. The principal summoned us into a classroom and informed us about the why and how of our reassignment. Along with six others, I crossed the empty halls to the new classroom. We got the seats that were left over; mine was in the second row. They were individual seats, but in pairs, divided into three rows. I was in the middle row. On my left I had a classmate from my old class, Rudolf Bargen, a heavyset, calm, dependable chess and hockey player with whom I hadn’t ever spent any time in my old class, but who soon became a good friend. On my right, across the aisle, were the girls.

My neighbor was Sophie. Brown hair, brown eyes, brown summer skin, with tiny golden hairs on her bare arms. After I’d sat down and looked around, she smiled at me.

I smiled back. I felt good, I was excited about a new start in a new class, and the girls. I had observed my mates in tenth grade: whether they had girls in their class or not, they were afraid of them, or kept out of their way, or showed off to them, or worshipped them. I knew my way around women, and could be comfortable and open in a friendly way. The girls liked that. I would get along with them well in the new class, which meant I’d get along with the boys too.

Does everyone feel this way? When I was young, I was perpetually overconfident or insecure. Eit............