Free Appetite for Life: The Biography of Julia Child by Noel Riley Fitch Page A

She wasn’t trying to be funny. In fact she was very modest and unassuming, totally lacking in exhibitionism. She was just reacting naturally to a situation…. What she was thinking, she said, and it was usually very apt. And often very funny…. She wasn’t attention-seeking, nor aggressive, nor competitive, nor ambitious…. She is just herself…. But as I think back, I suppose her complete lack of self-consciousness, her modest natural responsiveness, feeling at home and at ease anywhere, was true of her then and is now, and is the secret to her charm and appeal.
    This lack of competitiveness and ambition that her friend observed was evident especially in her classwork. On national intelligence tests her scores were considerably above average. Yet her limited attention span, her undeveloped study skills, and her willingness to settle for merely passing grades led to an average school record. Why she was happy to settle for average grades could be explained in terms of her parents’ leniency in expecting high performance or Julia’s desire not to stand out (other than physically) in the crowd, but to be liked and accepted as one of the group. One teacher recorded that she earned “good to excellent grades;” another noted that she earned “100 points perfect in school spirit.”
    During these three high school years, Julia experienced a rigid society for the first time. She was awakened in the morning and sent off to sleep each night by the sound of a bell, and moved through the structure of each day. She rejected the religious aspects, but seemed to enjoy some of the traditions of KBS. She was assigned to the Blue Bonnet team and wore a blue cardigan sweater and beret with her uniform; half the girls were Tam o’Shanters and wore red. These two teams, chosen at registration, played against each other in every sport. When the school basketball team left campus to play in San Francisco or East Bay, they dreaded appearing in their hated “bloomers.” The KBS athletic uniform consisted of “dreadful” black satin bloomers bound in by elastic at the knee, white middy blouses, which some girls would starch until the neck bled, a black silk tie, and black cotton stockings inside high white laced sneakers. When they walked onto the court and saw the “cute little uniforms” of the opposing team, said Mary Zook, they felt humiliated. But with Julia as the “jumping center” (the court was divided into three parts), KBS beat Miss Burke’s School 58 to 12. Outdressed, but victorious. Viola Tuckerman, who lived in Circle Cottage with Julia, said that Julia, the captain of the team, was one of the most popular girls in the school, with her “great sense of humor and [so] easy going.” For Julia, the games were play, not competition (another member of the team remembers Julia never being angry when another girl made a mistake). In fact, she was not a great player, just unbeatable in the jumping circle.
    Her personal progress consisted of adapting to the KBS world. “The peculiar nature of the extrovert,” says Jung, “is to expand and propagate himself in every way … If [one] thinks, feels, acts, and actually lives in a way that is directly correlated with the objective conditions and their demands, [s]he is extroverted.” She believed in her group, and they trusted her. At KBS, as in her later life, she would find in community her work and her happiness. Had she done better in French, she would have known that the role she played was as a boute-en-train —one who promotes gaiety and joy in others, the life and soul of the party.
    The KBS “traditions” that Miss Branson carefully cultivated meant less to Julia as sentimental occurrences than as occasions of frolic. She endured the morning march into assembly for prayer, song, and announcements, but threw herself into other communal activities. She became president of the Vagabonds, a hiking group that once a year, accompanied by Miss Branson, climbed Mount