Bullying – NEARING THE END OF THE LINE

EMPTY-DESK SYNDROME: Oh, Danny Boy

Danny occupied a seat in one of my General English classes for a while, way back in the mid-70s.

A sawed-off freshman, standing at maybe four and a half feet, bright blue eyes, a thatch of blond hair, and a crooked little nose that very likely came from somebody’s knuckle sandwich (possibly his old man’s). A scrapper, like most short boys turn out to be, defying all odds in a series of I’ll-show-you-who’s-the short-one dust-ups. A hair-trigger, instantly-ignitable fuse, turning pit bull whenever confronted by aggressive, all-powerful, male authority figures.

But that’s why he liked me so much. I was decidedly not one of the faculty nazis.

I started out as a blank slate when my first signed contract landed me on my feet in a high school English classroom. A blank slate being coached by the administrative cabal to ‘Go in there and show’em who’s boss. Make’em fear you or they’ll eat you alive. Be a General George S. Patton, and give’em hell. They are not your friends. They are them, and you are you. Keep it that way!

And next thing I knew, I found myself trapped in a classroom with thirty ‘they’ll eat you alive!’ predators of all sizes and shapes, and all of’em staring at me at once! Right away I was feeling like Catch 22’s Major Major Major Major—me, desperately striving to fudge being just that All-Powerful Authority Figure… something I was finding out quickLY I wasn’t any good at. Because…

Turns out… I’m a bleedin’-heart empath.

Early on, I became horrified to realize that somehow I was finding myself beginning to (oh no) like them. Even though (and I’m swearin’ this is true on a stack of Bibles here) I was doing my best trying NOT to!

What could be wrong with me, I wondered, spinelessly letting down my defenses like that?

Before long I was becoming known as one of ‘those teachers,’ the patsy who found it nearly impossible to say no when one of’em would ask me for the bathroom pass during class, something that was harped against over and over during just about every faculty meeting I ever attended. And you know, I’ve gotta say I felt pretty damned sheepish and guilty about that. Like I was letting down not just my colleagues, but The American Way.

(But I mean, hell, if it was me and I had to go, I’d be making a bee-line for the men’s room… just like my fellow faculty would if it were them.

(But, REMEMBER, Mr. Tom… “They are them, and you are you.”)

I could barely look at myself in the men’s’ bathroom mirror. But… come on, what was I supposed to do? I mean, they were all little individuals, these kids, weren’t they. Little human beings (kind of like myself actually, what with all their questions, and fears, and joys, their flaws, their baggage, and their disarming and often hilarious senses of humor)! I mean, they all had such interesting little personalities!

Still, from early on I was feeling like the World War II stalag escapee, disguised in a stolen nazi uniform and hoping to pass for a member of the Third Reich.

So. Go ahead. Say it. I was a “teacher” who was never cut out to be a teacher. I’ve accepted that.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So: Danny hated authority figures. And Danny liked me. Even liked my English class.

Well, not the English parts of it so much, necessarily, but the me part. Which was cool. I’d be telling my students stories about my childhood as topics for writing prompts, and now and then read aloud to them parts of their literature reading assignments, to give’em a head start and to tickle his interests. But where Danny was concerned, I would honestly listen to him when he had something he wanted to say (which was often), whereas the majority of the faculty, the nazi contingent? Hell, they weren’t all that interested in him enough to do that. He honestly had interesting things to say though. Plus, he had a wicked sense of humor.

So I came to like him as well. A lot of it was that Danny was the classic underdog and, damnit, I’ve always had a soft spot for underdogs. Still do. Therefore, it was an adventure for me getting to know this angry little hothead over the few months I got to spend with him, getting to begin to know what made him tick. I really felt it a privilege to get to see and know the good-hearted little side of the guy. And I’ve gotta say, when he was in my class his attitude seemed so bright and cheery.

But there was also something about that very thing which saddened me too, something I couldn’t put my finger on. I mean, there were all these red flags hinting at some occasional violence so obviously woven into his past. I mean yeah, he was getting into fist fights at school, but this felt that more than that.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

But then one day he disappeared, was just flat-out gone. And after five consecutive days of recording his seat empty while taking attendance, the kids informed me, “He’s gone, and he ain’t coming back.” They were hazy about the circumstances however and, me, I was figuring despite what the kids told me, he’d more than likely just been temporarily suspended again for something.

Anyway, I decided to drop by the assistant principal’s office to find out what was what. The kids were right— the administration had indeed given him the ol’ hit-the-road-Jack, that’s-all-she-wrote boot.

Turned out our gorilla of a numb-nuts football coach…

(sorry, I just didn’t like him and, yes, he was that very same simian from one of my previous posts, titled “Behind Closed Doors,” who’d provoked the teacher’s little mess-hall-riot with after blowing a cigarette smoke-ring into our science teacher’s face and saying, with all the humanity of Shane’s Jack Palance, “Hey, I know what. How ‘bout I stub this butt out right in that ugly kike face of yours?!”) (yeah— that guy…)

…decided to teach our little boy some proper manners (irony intended) by pinning Danny up against the gymnasium wall during a phys. ed. class and showing him, up close and personal, his big hairy iron fist.

However… unbeknownst to our self-proclaimed, staff Charles Atlas, the little soul he had chosen to manhandle was The Son of Dr. Bruce Banner— that’s right, a.k.a. The Incredible Hulk, Jr. So yes, Coach was taken a little by surprise finding out he had a rabid little Tasmanian Devil going berserk in all directions down at the other end of his arm! And according to the other kids in the gym class, Danny managed to get in quite a few good ones (BIFF! POW! THOK!), before he eventually got sat on and pinned down.

(Oh, what I would’ve given to have seen the look on Coaches’ face when it was HIS nose that took a punch. Go, Danny!)

But… nonetheless Danny was gone. M.I.A. And that hurt. Because it left me with that always unexpected empty-desk-syndrome that all career teachers have to contend with from time to time, often for circumstances much worse than a mere expulsion. But I missed him.

And what stung the most was knowing that his expulsion was so unnecessary. There are so many different ways to handle a potential disciplinary problem other than brute force, you know? Coach, however, didn’t think that way. No, his motto? Always out-muscle your problem (especially if they’re smaller than you) as a first resort.

Actually, it was pretty obvious that Coach and Danny had something in common: an acute need for anger management training. I suspected both of them suffered from secret feelings of being seen and judged as less than down deep inside.

But, oh well. It was what it was. What could I do about it? Nothing apparently.

A week passed.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Then…

STRANGE THING #1 happened.

I was sitting at my desk after school one afternoon when the office secretary buzzed me over the intercom.

“Hey there, Mr. Lyford?”

“Yeah?”

“The principal wants to see you in his office.”

Oh shit! “What…? Right now?”

“You got it.”

“Uhmmm… be right there.” What started going on in my gut right then could have been the perfect inspiration for the Jaws’ theme. I mean, I hadn’t done anything wrong.

Had I?

His door was open.

“Close the door,” he said. So I did that and plopped down in the hot seat in front his desk.

“What’s up?” I asked, feeling cautious.

“Any chance you might be looking for a job, Tom?”

What the hell…? That was just me doing my little internal little double-take. But he was smiling a friendly smile.

“Beg your pardon?”

“Looking for work?”

“Not right at this moment I’m not, no.” I put on a matching smile and hoped for the best, asking playfully, “Why? This where I’m about to get my pink slip so that I’d very well better start looking for a job? Or what? I mean…?”

“Oh no no no. It’s just… I’ve got this job for you, if you’re interested.”

Well, I hafta say I never saw that coming. “What’re you talking about? A job? I’ve got two jobs already. Here, and the Phillips 66 part-time. But you know that.”

“I do. But I’ve got an offer to make anyway. You don’t have to take it, of course. But I figure you might. It involves our Danny.”

Double-take #2. “Danny?!”

“Yeah. His mom and a couple of counselors are feeling he got a raw deal. And they want us to do something to try to remedy that, to find a better way for the kid, to whatever extent we can.”

“You wanna know what: he did get a raw deal far as I’m concerned, considering who the other guy was in the confrontation.”

“Water under the bridge.”

“Sure, sure. He wins football games for you. I get that. So we’ll just go with water under the bridge. Yeah.”

“Tom, we’re here to discuss looking forward. Not...”

“I was just sayin’. But… yeah. Sure. OK. Whatever.”

“And point taken, alright? However, moving right along… turns out you seem to be just about the only teacher Danny seems to’ve been able to get along with.”

“Well, yeah. There’s this: I do treat him like he’s a human being, surprise surprise. And on top of that, I’ve never felt the need to try to ‘break’ him, like he was some wild mustang fenced up in a corral.”

“Well, that’s good.”

“Plus… he’s an interesting kid. Down deep inside. He really is. And the way I see it anyway, he’s been through a lot. At home. And everywhere else.”

“I hear you.”

“See, in the weekly journals I have the kids writing, he’s honestly revealed a lot. His life hasn’t been any picnic, you know. And because I let him write about whatever he wants, whatever he needs to express, freely… and because I, you know, actually read and discuss his journal entries with him, he’s pretty much happy to be there.

“So… we getting him back, or what?”

“No. He’s not coming back. At least this year anyway. So, here it is: the powers that be have prompted me to ask you to consider being his special tutor. Outside the classroom. Outside the school.”

“What? Really? Huh! Wow, I dunno. I guess I’ll hafta think about that one.”

“We need your answer right away.”

“Well, I mean… how much time is this gonna take? Like, what kind of schedule might we be looking at here?”

“That would totally be up to you.”

“What… totally?”

“Totally. You’d be in charge of it. Your schedule. And here’s the rest of the details… in what I hope you’ll see as an offer you can’t refuse.”

“Alright, I guess. Lay it on me.”

“First of all, you can meet with him wherever you like. Well, any place except here. He can’t be at the school. But… you know, your place. A café, over a cup of coffee. A park bench. Whatever. Totally up to you. His mom’s OK with that.”

“Wow.”

“Secondly, you’re a professional. And your pay would be commensurate with your professional status. I can guarantee you won’t be unhappy with the financial arrangement.”

“Ah. Money. The universal carrot.”

“But here’s the frosting on the cake. When it’s all said and done, what you’d honestly be getting paid for is… and you’ll find this hard to believe, I’m guessing… I did— is to be his friend.”

“Whoa. ‘Paid to be his friend, you say?’ Hold on. Did I just hear you correctly?”

“You did. And I know, right? But that’s the way the board put it to me. Verbatim.”

“Wow. That’s… really something.”

“It is.“

“I mean, I’d feel kinda creepy. You know, money for friendship and everything…”

“Well see, the board really just wants this whole rat’s nest out of their hair. Get this whole thing behind them.”

“Well, that figures.”

“You would, however, be responsible for covering four generic subjects with him. History. English. Math. And Science. And we would ask, of course, that you keep tabs on his progress. You’d, you know, do your record-keeping. Work out some way, your own way, of calculating and recording a grade for each of the four… but in the end, it’ll be strictly on a pass/fail basis only.”

“Wow. Curiouser and curiouser. I’d say somebody’s really greasing the skids here. I’m feeling all like…what’s his name, Mister Phelps of Mission Impossible? Only that guy was never baited with such positive inducements to ‘accept his missions,”

“On the contrary, considering the young man we’re discussing here, I can hand you a baker’s dozen of faculty names who would beg to differ with you on that, and wouldn’t want to touch this deal with a ten-foot pole.”

“Yeah. I get that, I do. But if you, or they, could ever have seen him in my class on most days, you’d witness that little… often funny human being that I’ve come to know.”

“OK. So, can we get right down to it then? Whatta you think? You in? Or are you out?”

“Well, I think the damn kid needs a break. That’s for sure. He’s been through so much, and always getting the sharp end of the stick. And I mean, honestly? I’ve been pissed off, if you want to know the truth, about the whole way he was just tossed aside. Well, that’s the way it seems to me anyway. But more than that, this whole fiasco has left me feeling… I gotta say, sad.”

“So… you in?”

“So… this does sound like kind of an adventure. Sounds like something I ought to do.”

“Is that a ‘yes’?”

“Well…I could be wrong.”

“Yeah?”

“But… I guess that’s a ‘yes,’ apparently.”

And so it was.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Despite the uncomfortable, guilty weirdness of being paid for ‘being somebody’s friend’ (I mean, never in a million years could I have been led to believe that such an arrangement might even be an allowable possibility under any circumstances), that change in my job description immediately swept away that dark heaviness of my ‘Danny’s empty desk syndrome.’ More than that, it brought the proverbial ‘ray of sunshine’ into my routine life.

I mean, try to imagine this. On a Monday after school, say, you pick the kid up and swing over to Freddy’s Restaurant… and there, along with the coffee and apple pie on the table, you’ve got your pair of history books cracked open. And you’re both into it, the assignment I mean. Or on a Saturday morning, over at the Chicken Coop perhaps, the coffee and breakfast (which is on you, of course since, with what you’re unnecessarily being paid for friendship, you can afford it) are providing the backdrop for you and him to discuss his latest journal pages.

And always, on the opposite side of booth you have a student who is both (A) delighted to be rid of the school he just was never fitting in with, (B) honestly happy to see, and be, with you, and (C) on top of that, has honestly read or written his assignment and is ready to talk about it.

And then who knows, maybe even on a Sunday the two of you might walk the sidewalks a mile or two of all over town, talking about Life and where it’s taking you… him telling you stories about his life and you telling him stories about yours.

Considering that all during my career, to that point, I’d been off and on somewhat successfully juggling classes of between twenty and thirty kids at once, this one-on-one thing was such a luxury.

He seemed to be loving my English assignments by the way (mostly because he liked me); really liking the history stuff (we were reading Howard Fast’s gripping historical novel, April Morning, about the battles of Concord and Lexington); wasn’t caring much for general science; and really wasn’t feeling any love whatsoever for math (a kid after my own heart, there). So, science and math were, yeah, more of a challenge for us.

But on the whole, this arrangement was great for him, I was sure of that, and good for me as well. Looking back on the set-up we had, the expression ‘happy days’ springs to mind.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

After about three weeks or so of the arrangement running like a well-oiled machine, the weather had started turning colder. And the only sweatshirt Danny had was still hanging in his locker back at school, along with a few other things he wanted to retrieve. So, on a Friday, about an hour or so after the final bell of the day had released all or most of the kids back into the world, he and I pulled up in the school parking lot. We got out of the car and slipped into the building through a side door.

He worked the combination on his locked locker, popped the door open, and gathered up his stuff. My classroom was only a few doors down, and so we also dropped in there for me to grab some things as well.

That done, and with me fishing my classroom key back out of my pocket, we had just started to step back out into the hallway when some deep, thunderous voice bellowed, “God damn it! Just what the hell you think you’re doing in here!”

And there he was! The neanderthal that had really started this whole fiasco in the first place! Marching double-time and charging straight for us!

“Get you sorry ass outta here before I…”

“Hey!” I yelled, stepping in front of Danny, who was half in and half out of my classroom. “Stop right there, Coach! He’s with me!”

“Well he’s gonna be with ME in a second! So get outta my way!”

“No! I said stop! He’s legit! And we’re just leaving anyway!”

“Damn straight you’re leavin!”

Coach and I, scrawny little English teacher me, were now standing nose-to-nose in a near Mexican stand-off!

“He’s not supposed to be here anyway, damnit! He’s expelled!”

“Think I don’t know that!? Look! We’re just getting some things from his locker! He’s not bothering you!”

“Oh, he’s bothering me! You just better believe he’s bothering me!”

My mouth’s open, ready to yell a response, but a bellow from behind me cuts me off!

“You want me to LEAVE, you fat fucker?! OK then! I’m leavin’!”

And before either of us can manage to say anything to that… B A N G! ..what sounds like an echoing gunshot jumps me, and I’m pretty sure jumps the fat fucker in front of me as well, half out of our shoes! Then I’m suddenly aware that Danny’s sprinting for the door we came in through, and that the loud bang that jarred my teeth was actually my classroom door having been whipped shut at Mach 5!

“DANNY!” I yell.

“Let’im go, the little asshole. What the hell’re are you even doing with him anyway?”

Apparently, and unfortunately, Coach hadn’t gotten the memo about Danny’s and my arrangement. Why, I’ll never know.

“ME? How about what the hell’re YOU doing here at all, masquerading as a teacher?! DANNY!” I yelled, taking after him.

But he’d already zipped out of sight through the exit! And by the time I stumbled outside, he’d disappeared! He was nowhere to be seen!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Turned out I hadn’t fully grasped just how disappeared he’d actually become.

Turned out he’d run away from home.

Turned out this wasn’t the first time he’d run away from home either…

I was devastated.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A couple months crawled by.

And so, out of sight, out of mind, the loss of M.I.A. Danny was gradually fading with acceptance.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

OK. One evening, right after dinner, I was sitting in my stuffed chair, reading some book or other, when I heard the phone ringing. I heard my wife picking up the phone in the next room and saying “Hello?” Then I could hear her murmuring something quietly.

Next thing I knew, she was standing next to my chair and looking down at me with a puzzled expression.

“What?” I asked.

“You’ve got a phone call,” she said tentatively, looking perplexed.

“Who is it?”

“The County Sheriff.”

“The who?! The… County sheriff?! Jeez... what the hell?”

I got up, walked out to the kitchen, and took the phone. “Hello?”

“Hi. So… is this Mr. Lyford? Mr. Thomas Lyford?”

“It is. Why?”

“Tell me. Are you familiar with a Danny Brown, Mr. Lyford…?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

End of Part I. Stay tuned for Part II.

I love comments. If you wish, feel free to leave one in the field below and click on “POST COMMENT. “I usually respond…

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

A couple days ago I was haphazardly streaming my way through YouTube heaven when I happened to stumble upon a clip from a 1984 movie I hadn’t thought about in decades, a clip that got an immediate giggle out of me and, at the same time, felt like an old friend. That movie is Teachers.

**TEACHERS (1984)**
**Tagline: They fall asleep in class. Throw ink on each other. Never come in Mondays. And they’re just the teachers.**

And despite being the typical, somewhat cheesy 1984 comedy that it is, it really caught on with us teachers all over the country back in the day, leaving us all feeling somehow exonerated (you know, from always getting ragged on for having such the cushiest job in the world, getting all our summers off with pay, and then forever being the butt of that old adage: “Those who can, DO; those who can’t, TEACH”).

Now, there are a number of great ‘teacher movies’ out there on Netflix, Prime, Tubi, or whichever, a few of my all-time favorites being Up the Down Staircase (1967), To Sir With Love (1967), The Paper Chase (1973), The Breakfast Club (1985), and Dead Poets’ Society (1989). These five are equally as entertaining as Teachers, but seem to have been scripted with just a little more class.

However, whereas they can be characterized as maintaining a sharper focus perhaps on particular aspects of the classroom world, Teachers manages to leave no stone unturned. It manages to hit on practically every conceivable thing that could go wrong (and often has) in that school-calendar-world of students, teachers, and administrators.

And in the same way M*A*S*H and Catch-22 expose the absurdities of war—

and Office Space exposes the virtual Chinese water torture of mundane cubicle-life with its personnel chained to a daily grind of filling out useless forms, fighting with faulty office fax equipment, and putting up with obnoxious superiors—

**…STOLE MY STAPLER… BURN THIS PLACE DOWN…**

Teachers exposes practically every single one of the possible chaotic frustrations of the profession. Basically it’s a comic catalog of all the classic “zoo” foibles common to the professional educators’ world.

And sure, “Zoo” is likely to come across as a little too harsh an over-exaggeration for you remembrances. But that could partly be due to the fact that school boards and administrators always strive to represent their schools publicly as professional ‘well-oiled machines,’ especially in the eyes of the taxpayers, parents, and even their students. In other words, a lot of the (let’s call them) ‘less savory occurrences‘ get effectively swept under the rug of PR.

But hey, what if I’m not even referring to the student body when I say “zoo”? Surprised?

I mean, we can all look back on our high school days and remember our teachers, can’t we. And sure, you loved some. Some were boring as hell. Or even stupid. And some you may remember as being kind of rotten and/or downright mean. But regardless of all that, you felt confident that you knew them, right? And of course you did. To some extent.

To the extent they allowed you to know them. But never fully. Because face it: you were the students, and they were the teachers. They, the adults. And you, the kids.

But… what if I told you (me being the whistle blower here) that behind closed doors, your faculty… yes, your teachers of English, French, Latin, German, Spanish, mathematics, sciences, home ec., orchestra and marching band… your principals and assistant principals… were, in general, surprisingly… not one whit more adult than you or any of your classmates back then?

That behind that faculty lounge door was a bunch of… old “kids?”

Sure. Some were twenty, or maybe twenty-five. Some were in their forties or fifties. And some were shamefully (Good Lord!) still gripping their tenured status with white-knuckled-fists well onto five years or more past their retirement age. Some married, some divorced, and some about to be divorced. Some of them even being bullied, some even doing the bullying? Some ADHD. Some doing drugs. Many needing anger-management classes. And all of them insecure in one way or another.

Well, I kid you not. And yes, I know. They looked like adults, didn’t they. I mean, man, they had looking like adults right down to a science. But let’s get to the truth.

And in so doing, I ask that you join me in watching that clip from Teachers. So for a good time, click on the link below. Then I’ll join you for a little discussion on the other side.

And just so you know, the man in the clip turning the crank on the ancient “office copier” has been nicknamed Ditto by his peers. Why? Because (A) this type of caveman “copier” machine was known as a duplicator, a mimeograph, or… a “ditto machine” (welcome to the past, boys and girls); (B) because Ditto is the one always hogging the office ditto machine with no regard for others; and (C) because he hates teaching, so he’s always cranking off dittoed worksheets to keep his classes busy so he doesn’t really have to teach.

**1980’s CUTTING-EDGE, STATE-OF-THE-ART COPIER**

His classroom management style is this: he keeps all of the students’ desks facing away from him, so they won’t view him while he sits in the back of the room reading the newspaper. His students have been trained to pick up their daily copy of the freshly-dittoed worksheets from his desk upon entering the classroom, to sit quietly at their desks working on that worksheet, and, when the bell rings, to deposit their completed worksheets back on his desk upon leaving. This goes on day after day after day. No other interaction between ‘teacher’ and students.

One day Ditto drops dead from a heart attack behind his newspaper. Still, throughout the day, the kids come and go, come and go, none never noticing that the man seated behind the newspaper is a corpse!

(And by the way, every school I ever worked in had a copier-hog pretty much like Ditto. Yeah, Teacher World in my experience was a lot like the world of M*A*S*H, character-wise.)

Anyway… I hope you enjoy this silly clip depicting a teachers’ lounge altercation (which I personally find much more realistic than you might be inclined to believe):

OK. First, let’s be honest.

(1) The movie’s old. Forty years old to be exact. So yeah, it’s dated.

(2) Dated, and a little cheesy, but not cheap. I mean, just look at the stellar cast:

Nick Nolte

JoBeth Williams

Judd Hirsch

Ralph Macchio

Richard Mulligan

William Schallert

Laura Dern

Crispin Glover

Morgan Freeman

(plus a host of wonderful, now-all-but-forgotten character actors

(3) And yes, this scene is silly. Not quite slapstick, but silly. Meant to be silly. The movie’s a comedy.

(4) But the movie’s a satirical comedy, a lampoon. And satires poke fun at situations that actually… are.

So if you are judging this scene as being totally unlikely, a scene that would-never, could-never–happen in such a place as a work room for professional educators… think again. Because in a moment, I am going to share with you a scene that I once personally witnessed, very similar to the one in this film.

Allow me to present my qualifications, my credentials, to even have an opinion on this:

I served 34 years in the trenches of schools (both public and private), and just like all other lifetime career educators, I’ve had the opportunity to witness a patchwork quilt of sometimes unbelievable ‘situations,’ so many in fact that had some gypsy fortune teller ever shown me in her crystal ball scenes of my teaching career future… who knows? Perhaps I would have remained the hapless gas pump jockey to this day.

But OK, here we go. Let’s take a quick look-around-peek (with the dimming flashlight of my memory) at my past, real-life Teachers ‘movie’:

Oodles of bomb-scares, of course. Wherein I sometimes, along with a squad of my equally untrained bomb-squad colleagues, helped the cops check out every locker in the building.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Breaking up tons of boys’ room fights and, more than once, getting slammed into a wall, so doing.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Enduring a three-weeks-long scabies epidemic that took out three-quarters of the school population (including the teachers) throughout that time.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Getting a surprise day-off from school one mid-morning due to a ‘temperature inversion’ caused by the paper mill’s stench-bucket-smoke from the towering stack right next door, commingling with the dripping 95-degree humidity outside to form actual CLOUDS inside the building (I’m dead serious here), floaters right up there against the ceiling tiles, clouds that actually began drizzling a toxic “rain” down upon us, the hapless school population—

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Participating (yes, illegally) in a couple days of a sign-waving labor strike during our three-years-long contract negotiations.

Not actually a strike photo, just a news clipping of one of our many protests leading up to the strike. (BTW, I’m the menacing, moustachio’d dude in the jeans jacket, 3rd from the left)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Oh, and this one’s a riot: being ‘schooled’ by a (pretty-much “brain-dead”) Special Ed administrator during a mandatory faculty meeting that “It is an infraction, by law, for any member of the faculty to share the records of one of our students with any party outside that student’s family or school counselors.” Guess what. Within a couple of weeks of that presentation, that particular “administrator” (who couldn’t administer himself out of a wet paper bag) inadvertently did just that: he himself inadvertently sent one male student’s private records to the family of a totally unrelated female student! As you can imagine, the parents of said male student threw a fit, and threatened to sue the school.

But see, that’s only Chapter One of the saga. Because in the following school year, right after officially warning all of us teachers again of the legal importance of never giving out any student’s info to any other party, this man, this idiot… (wait for it) did it again! And not only did he do it again… he accidently sent that very same male student’s records to the very same female student’s family! AGAIN! Swear to God on a stack of Bibles! I have old teacher friends who will back me up on this. You can’t make this stuff up.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

At one point in time, in one particular school I taught at, anyone (teachers, students, cafeteria help, custodians, and even students) were allowed (for a while, anyway) to just drop by the main office and place any needed, public, school-related announcement into a designated box. Such announcements (i.e., “The Chess Club will meet tonight in room 222 at 6:00 this evening”; “Wrestling practice is canceled this evening”; “Would Billy Greenwood report to the office at this time”; etc.) would then be read daily, before and right after school, by the high school principal.

This practice came to an untimely end however after some wise-ass kids put the following ‘announcement’ into the box for four days in a row. “Mike Hunt must report to detention hall this evening. If Mike Hunt fails to do so, there will be consequences.” After two days of the principal’s booming voice reading “Would Mike Hunt please report to detention hall this evening!” the third day’s readings got a little cranky: “Would Mike Hunt please report to detention hall tonight! If you’ are MIKE HUNT, I personally guarantee you will regret failing to do as you’re told!”

The message, it turned out, was not repeated on day four. (1) No Mike Hunt was enrolled in the school at that time, and (2) the way “Mike Hunt” sounds if you say it fast… (Uhmmm… ok, sorry… yeah, I’ll let myself out…)

But this is a true story, and that’s when the practice of the open announcement box in the main office ceased forever.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Anyway, after 34 years in front of the chalk boards, I’ve garnered thousands of these never-a-dull-moment, “text-book -looney-bin” anecdotes (to pilfer a Stephen King quotation from his book, On Writing). I’m sure all career teachers have. But the capper of all cappers in my life was that year a certifiable, text-book looney-bin sociopath and career criminal conned his way into the headmaster’s position and took the school for an unforgettable ride.

He lasted almost the whole year, but not quite. And as a result of my calling him out and getting him fired, even long after he had disappeared into the ether, I received a couple of spine-chilling threats from him (that’s over an eight-year period). And as tempting as it is for me to launch into tell you that story, I can’t allow myself to do it. Neither you nor I have the time, since I when I’ve done so in the past, I’ve always become a veritable Rime of the Ancient Mariner storyteller once I get started on that one.

But it’s also a true story, and that man became my personal albatross.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

No, instead, I’ll conclude with the memory of another little account, one that got triggered in my mind by that film clip from Teachers… a dining room story.

Well, calling it a dining room is a gross exaggeration. What it was in reality was an oblong, boxcar-like box with a single door and no window. And it sat off to one side, against a wall like… something out of place, like an afterthought on the floor of the student cafeteria. The cafeteria itself was a fairly spacious hall with the usual kitchen-side, take-out windows where you’d pick up your trays, napkins, silverware, and the daily entree of your choice, and carry your loaded tray over to any of the circular tables surrounded by cafeteria chairs. But off on one side was that box. The faculty’s box.

I’m not sure what its measurements were, but it housed a long table inside, long enough to accommodate probably eight, maybe ten chairs to a side, meaning the room could seat a very crowded dozen and a half teachers at a time. Close quarters. Barely room enough to push your chair back against the wall behind you when you were finished and would be making your exit from the table.

Yes, this is where each mid-day, we of the faculty would come together to commune and break bread together (I’m tempted to say feed— the arrangement, such as it was, so much resembling a trough). Meanwhile, outside the box, a little sea of kids chattered away at their special, clique-designated tables.

Likewise, the faculty was comprised of its cliques as well, only in this setting, all cliques were sardined together around the same table. You had your jock clique (coaches and P.E. teachers); your smug intellectuals from the English wing clique; your politicos (the hawks and your doves, the hard-hats and your hippies); the newbies and the tenured; your misogynists and your pro-feminists; those who loved kids and those who obviously didn’t; and those who felt comfortable in their own skin joined right next to those who obviously did not.

All at one table.

Oh, and by the way… down the middle of the table, among the salt and pepper shakers and napkin holders, you also had the ashtrays because you also had the smoker and non-smoker factions. Which was an ongoing problem. Because back in the 70’s and earlier, the smokers had rights. The non-smokers? Not so much. Just the frickin’ way it was.

So if you were breaking bread at this table and the carcinogenic haze was tickling your throat and making you cough; if it was aggravating your asthma; hey, even if it was slowly killing you: just SUCK IT UP, BUTTERCUP. I think some rationalized it this way: I mean, what the hell? What difference does it make? We all live and work right under the paper mill smokestack anyway, so…

Yeah. I know.

But eventually that little controversial kettle of fish finally managed to get added to the faculty meeting agenda. And as a result of that meeting, after everyone who had something to say had aired her or his particular grievance, the issue was brought to a vote. And wow! The motion to ban smoking in the teachers’ dining area (if only DURING the actual lunch period) actually carried!

It really wasn’t so much though, was it. I mean, if you were already in there on your free period, (actually, we weren’t allowed to say “free period”— we were instructed to always say “planning period,” so it wouldn’t sound like you were sleazing off with nothing to do) you could smoke to your lung’s content right up to the first second of the ringing of the lunch period starting bell. So you know, obviously your smoke would still be right there, in the room, fresh as a daisy as the faculty and staff came filing in with their trays.

So no, it wasn’t much, but it was a start. Better than nothing.

Until that day…

A typical day, really. Conversations about… who knows what?…Richard Nixon, maybe; or who was getting stuck chaperoning the upcoming prom; or Jaws, the movie perhaps; or the long-lines-at-the-pumps gas shortage… whatever.

And then something happened.

We had this athletic coach, OK? He was seated a couple of chairs down from me. And what he did is suddenly pluck a pack of Marlboros out of his shirt pocket. Yeah, he did it just like he’d done it hundreds of times before in there. I guess something like that pretty much gets to become muscle memory after so long. You don’t even have to think about it. Maybe you probably don’t even realize you’re doing it, half the time. It’s a habit.

But two or three people noticed him do it, and somebody said, “Ooops.”

He stared back at her and said, “Ooops what?”

And she responded “Ooops, weren’t-you-at-the-last-faculty-meeting-oops?”

But by now he’d already tapped the ends of three filter tips out of the pack. “Ooops. I can’t remember if I was… or not.”

“Oh, you were there,” the man seated directly across the table from him said. “You were there.”

“So?” Suddenly all the side-conversations had stopped.

“So we took a vote.”

“Huh!”

“And we all voted that there’s no more smoking in here during lunch hour. While we’re eating.”

“Well, no. We didn’t all vote for it. For instance, I didn’t vote for it.”

“Yeah, well… the majority voted for it. And the majority rules. Maybe you haven’t heard, but this is a democracy.”

By now he had a Marlboro dangling from his lips. “So, uhh, exactly WHEN… did you, all in the majority, vote for this new rule to go… into effect?”

Somebody else said, “It automatically went into effect when the vote was tallied.”

“That right?” Coach said, but he wasn’t looking at the person who had just spoken. He was looking straight ahead at the guy seated across from him. The elderly gentleman.

“That’s right,” the gentleman said.

“Funny. I don’t remember anybody announcing that at the meeting.” A grin was starting to spread over Coach’s face, and he’d begun fishing for something in his pants pocket. It was pretty obvious he was fishing for his lighter.

“Didn’t hafta be announced,” said the elderly man (whom I shall henceforth refer to as Mr. Ellison.) “It was understood.”

The Zippo was out now. “What, so… if I didn’t understand, you’re calling me, what, stupid now?”

Somebody with a frown said, “Hey. Come on, Coach…” but failed to explain his point in words. I know I was feeling very uncomfortable. I’m betting most, if not all, of us were.

Coach was smiling, Ellison wasn’t. “You’re not stupid.”

“Well… thanks. For that.“

Damn. It felt like we were in some dumbass wild west movie all of a sudden. The poker game scene in the back corner of the saloon where one guy’s just told the other guy, ‘I’m sayin’… you cheated!’ And the trouble was, Coach really was stupid. And he lived inside this big, muscly body with a great big ego and a little boy-child’s brain. He was a bully. A might-makes-right bully.

A sudden metallic click! His Zippo, popped open now, had a little finger of flame burning above it.

Ellison spoke like some steely-eyed Marshall warning the hot-headed gambler he’d better leave his Colt revolver right there where it was, in its holster. “You’re not gonna light that cigarette, in here.”

“Oooh! I’m not? Why? Oh no! If I do, you gonna run and tell on me?”

A female voice further up the table snapped, “Jesus Christ! Hey, little boys, no fighting on the playground, OK? For cryin’out loud, would you listen to yourselves?! Do you have any idea how silly you sound?”

But Coach went right on. “Hey, who made you my old man all of a sudden?”

Somebody said, “Aw jeez!“

“I said,… Who made you my old man?” And he poked the tip of his Marlboro into the flame. Smoke arose.

After thinking for a moment, Ellison began, “Truth be known, I bet if your father was here, he’d wipe that shitty……” but stopped when he saw the wiggily smoke ring expelled from Coach’s pursed lips traveling across the table toward him.

“You were saying…?”

With a brush of his hand, Ellison waved away the smoke ring as if a fly. “I was about to say… if truth be known, and I was your… daddy…”

Coach tensed at the word.

“… I’d be slapping your punk face six days from Sunday again, wouldn’t I… sonny boy? Now here, stub that cigarette out,” he added, sliding an ash tray sliding over across the table.

“Hey, I know what. How ‘bout I stub this butt right in that ugly kike face of yours?!”

BAM! The back of Ellison’s chair whacked the wall behind him as he struggled to rise to his feet! “OK! Now you’ve done it!”

BAM! Coach’s chair! “Not YET I haven’t!”

Amid tipped-over sodas and shouts of “GUYS!” “CHRIST ALMIGHTY!” “WHAT THE FUCK!” “STOP IT!” and “IDIOTS!” Ellison, caught up in what looked like a wild paroxysm of a Saint Vitus’ dance, was tearing at his sport jacket, futilely trying to rip the damn thing off his shoulders while Coach had already crawled a quarter of the way across the tabletop, only thing holding him back being the grip somebody’d managed to get on the back of his belt!

It was pandemonium! It was a ruckus! It was a…

ZOO!

And when the first teacher to bail reached the door yanked it open, (surprise!) two horrified boys on their hands and knees (having had their ears glued to the doorjamb all the while) toppled inside and pretty much had to be stepped over.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So yeah, I don’t find my Teachers clip to be that unrealistic, although it was a little over-dramatically done. And secondly, I do think that our needy little inner child (I suspect I’m talking about the ID here) remains with us all of our lives, hiding out inside us, right behind that Look-at-me-I’m- an-adult façade we project before ourselves like some medieval shield. And when things get too stressful in our lives, it steps out of the closet and, yes, look out, here it comes!

I guess I’m sounding a little… Lord of the Flies, huh.

So anyway…

When I first decided to focus on my memory of that violent little lunchtime incident for this post (the fight over smoking in the teacher’s “dining room” box), a film clip from another movie-favorite of mine kept nagging at me, wanting in on this discussion. I thought about letting it and finally, yeah, I’ve caved.

The film is of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. And I call the scene, the I Ain’t No Little Kid, Nurse Ratched! scene. And yes, I believe it provides a suitable little capstone for the topic at hand…

Thanks for reading, by the way.

TAGLINE: If he’s crazy, what does that make you?

Please leave a comment if you’d like in the field below, and then click on “POST COMMENT.” I will read it and respond.

SATURDAY NIGHT IN DOVER-FOXCROFT: REC CENTER, 1961

The Rec Center over at Central Hall runs on Friday and Saturday nights. On Fridays it’s open exclusively to the sixth, seventh, and eighth graders; Saturdays, it belongs to the big dogs of Foxcroft Academy. Guests are allowed in only if one of our students has personally invited them, and secondly if the invitation has first been cleared with a faculty advisor of the Rec Center Committee (of which I am now a member— I’m the freshman class of ’64 rep) and a permission pass signed by our principal, is presented at the door upon entry. Yeah. We run a tight ship.

Now, I’ve never ever been a committee-kind-of-guy, but this Rec Center is one of the most important things in my life. I’d be so damn lost if we didn’t have Rec Center to look forward to on the weekends. But being on the Committee does mean that I have to man the check-in table in the foyer for a half hour one evening every other week. Because if someone without the official and required ‘invited-guest’ pass manages to slip on in past, me without me catching it (and immediately alerting the faculty advisor or chaperons on duty), I’d probably get kicked off the committee. And I don’t want that.

So tonight, here I am, happily walking the frigid little fifth of a mile in the snow storm from my house to Central Hall. And when I push my way in through the front doors, I check in with whoever is seated at the greeting table and then begin to clomp up the old wooden staircase toward the second floor, drawn forward by the tantalizing thrum of the muffled jukebox bass.

Forty per cent of the reason I love coming here every week is the music, pure and simple. The other sixty can probably be summed up by the title of that 1940’s book (that I’ve never read) titled The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Because that’s me. Lonely heart. Lonely hunter. But a hunter who’s actually pretty pathetic at the hunting, if you wanna know the truth.

At the top of the landing, I stop to stare in at the dance floor, which I can’t really even see yet as it’s cloaked in total darkness. (Ah. It’s a slow one. Jim Reeves. “He’ll Have to Go.”) I’m not too crazy about bumping into anybody in the dark, so I’ll just stand here listening until my eyes have started adjusting to the change in lighting from the brightness downstairs.

Though love is blind, make up your mind

I’ve got to know

Should I hang up, or will you tell him

He’ll have to go?

When I can partially make out some of the shadowy, slowly-swaying couples leaning into one another in hugging embraces (oh yeah, that must be nice), I venture in. Stepping around and in between them, I hang a right and make for the coatroom door which, when I push it open, lets the lone, 60-watt, bare light-bulb-hanging-from-the-ceiling brightness flash-blind the dancers in the dark nearest the door, as well as myself all over again. The music muffles when I close the door.

This room’s the size of a really small office. And, as usual, there’re mountains of jackets and coats piled up here, there, and everywhere, right on the floor even. I unzip my parka, wiggle out of it, and bury it under a pile over in the far corner so I’ll know where to dig r it when it’s time to go. Then, it’s back out through the door. And the new song starting up is “The Bristol Stomp” by The Dovells.

The kids in Bristol are sharp as a pistol

When the do the Bristol Stomp!

Really somethin’ when they join in jumpin’

When they do the Bristol Stomp!

I drop myself down in one of the chairs over on the left side, the boys’ side, of the hall, and wait for my night vision to catch back up with me again. The dance floor is actually a basketball court with a hoop at either end, one fixed just above the coatroom door and the other, down at the far end, hanging just in front of the stage. The seats are lined up on either side, left and right. And it’s kinda funny, the left side by some unwritten law being the boys’ side. The girls all park across from us on the other side of the hall.

I watch the couples gyrating to the peppy rhythm. “Bristol Stomp” is pretty lively and yeah, some of’em are really going at it. Me though, I’m pretty much a watcher, basically. Not that I wanna be. I don’t like to think about it too much, but each time the music starts up and the couples rise to meet each other out on the floor, our two segregated rows become, by default, the wallflower rows, I guess.

Yeah, we’re the wallflowers, the shy ones. The ones who are not part of a couple. Not really by choice exactly.

Oh sure, I mean physically…all we’d have to do is get ourselves up on our own two legs and just… walk over there. And just ask somebody, if you have the guts. But the thing of it is, some of us have learned that it’s a whole lot longer walk, plodding way back across the floor when somebody just looks right at you and says, “No.” Especially when a fool bunch of her girlfriends all bust a gut giggling like crazy just as you’re turning around and feeling stupid.

And…isn’t it dumb, and totally unfair how it always has to be the guy that asks. The girls can’t really get shot down, can they. Not when they never have tobe the ones asking. Well, unless it was a Sadie Hawkins dance, which we never even have. And then, too, oh yeah, it’s perfectly all right for the girls to just step right out onto the dance floor in two’s or three’s or four’s and start dancing up a storm together to rock’n’roll songs. But you’d never catch a bunch of guys doing that. It’d be pretty much frowned upon, you dig?

So… yeah, at least they have something they can do instead of just sitting over there like a bunch of morons. Like we do.

Anyhow, most of them left sitting over there in their own little Lonely Hunter Hearts row aren’t ones I’d even want to ask to dance with me. Why? Because stupidly I’m a movie-romantic. See, I go to the movies every week on my allowance. Practically no matter what is playing. So I see all kinds: westerns, comedies, gangster-flicks, horror, sci-fi and, yeah, the love stories. I would never admit this to my buddies, but the love stories? For some reason, they really get to me. Basically, because I can’t help identifying so much with the male leads on the screen in all of those boy-meets girl plots. And then I just can’t help fantasizing all the time that some day, some girl, some Sandra Dee or Natalie Wood, is actually gonna take an interest in me. And then… you know, we’ll get together. Dating. Somehow.

Problem is… it’s just never that day.

Oh God, you wanna know something embarrasing? My favorite show on TV (well, next to The Twilight Zone that is) is something titled The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. It’s a silly sit-com starring Dwayne Hickman as Dobie and Bob Denver as Dobie’s comical beatnik sidekick, Maynard G. Krebbs.

The weekly plot is almost always a variation on the same theme: Dobie has his heart set on Thalia Menninger, played by the gorgeous Tuesday Weld (one of the biggest reasons it’s a favorite show of mine) but she’s totally out of his league, see? Sound familiar? Yeah. The Heart of the Lonely Hunter? Story of my life.

P.S. you can add Tuesday Weld to my Sandra Dee and Natalie Wood list.

OK. Enough watching. I’ll come back upstairs here real soon, but as always, first I’ll just zip back down stairs to scout out which, if any, of my Maynard-G.-Krebbs pals have shown up.

The Rec Center is an entirely different planet downstairs. It’s well-lighted, and looks sort of like a little teen-age gambling casino. The card games always consist of poker, cribbage, and black jack. You can also sign out a chess or checkers set, and so usually there’s always one of those brainy games ongoing too, surrounded by its usual small handful of kibitzers looking on. Me, I mostly can be found playing cribbage or chess. But then too there’s the noisiest thing going down here: the ping-pong table. Ping pong is fun.

So sure, I enjoy it down here and all, but I have to say it: my lonely-hunter heart remains up there in the romantic darkness of the second floor, with all Dover-Foxcroft’s Dees, Woods, and Welds practically living out there on the dance floor.

Part of my problem is that three-quarters of the kids who show up here on Saturday nights are the upper classmen. Well, mostly sophomores and some juniors. The popular seniors (and some juniors) what with having their driver’s licenses and their own set of wheel, have obviously discovered better things to do. Like ‘parking.’ Parking out on lover’s lane. Or parking in the public beach parking lot.

OK, ten minutes have gone by down here. I start to take a deep breath, planning to head back up there with my new New Year’s resolution to honestly ask some girl to dance, when the head advisor appears and pulls me aside. “Glad you’re here tonight, Tommy. Eddie hasn’t shown up. So, I’m afraid I’ve gotta ask you to pull a double shift at the check-in table.”

“What? A whole hour?”

“Yeah. Afraid so. 8:30 to 9:30.”

“But, jeez. That’s a lot.” Man, why does this always happen to me? I mean, I just knew, damnit, that between 8:30 and 9:30? With my luck, that’d be the exact same time that the girl of my dreams, whoever she might be, will show up, alone without a date, and would be looking over the dance floor… someone, anyone…”

“Yeah. But… what can I say? It is what it is. So, can you do this for me?”

“Well… sure. I guess.” Me thinking, Oh sure! But… don’t you see? I was planning to make my move!

“Thanks, Tommy. You’re a good man.”

And then he’s gone. With me glaring at his back thinking, Well why don’t YOU do it then! I look at my watch. Oh well, I’ve still got forty minutes or so left before having to man the table. And plus, after that, I’ll still have 9:30 to 10:00 at least. Anyway, I head for the stairs.

As I start jogging up, I’m hit by a very eerie silence up there. Which is odd. Because even if it’s them just deciding what next song to play, where’s the usual loud buzz of conversation? So I’m feeling that old movie line: It’s quiet. TOO quiet. And then too, jeez, what the hey? The lights are all on. Somebody’s turned the lights on! Is the Center what, closing early? Man, I hope not.

I sort of blunder in. Whoa! All the seats are empty! And what else!? I see everybody’s crowded around in a big semi-circle, facing the stage with their backs to me. But… there’s no one on the stage. I can see that! So… what’re they all looking at? Curious, I squeeze myself into the crush and worm my way in to the front. OK. So there’s some guy, some man, standing at the center of the semi-circle. And he’s got a guitar, and he’s talking. But I can’t hear him that well yet. So I have no idea what he’s talking about. But uh… he looks… and sounds… very familiar! But who in the…?

And then it hits me!

Ohmigod! That’s my French teacher there! Mr. Bennett! Reason I didn’t recognize him at first is I’ve never seen him before without a sports jacket and tie. And then again, too, I’ve always only ever seen him in the classroom, never anywhere else, so… well, he’s… out of context here. Especially holding a guitar. And look at him! He’s wearing a very cool ‘dickie,’ like a turtle neck, under his shirt… and he looks… I don’t know, just so surprisingly casual. And cool. And so what’s he doing here then? I mean, he’s not an advisor, or anything.

The Meddibempsters of Bowdoin College, 1960s. Mr. Clay Bennett, 4th row (right). Strangely, James Howard, front row (alone), was also my high school English teacher at the same time…

Mr. Bennett is a super-great teacher. I’ve fallen head over heels in love with French this year. English will always be my favorite class, but French is a close second. And it’s all on him. When he speaks French, he sounds so authentic. And he makes it fun when we practice those… nasal sounds. Like the on at the end of garçon: -ongh… gar ’çongh!You almost have to wrinkle your nose to say it right. Fun, like I said.

And he regales us some with a few of the memories of his sojourn in Paris. And his recollections leave all of our heads dancing with sugarplums of, say, a bicycle parked on the grassy banks of the Seine, and a romantic afternoon consisting of a baguette, fromage Français, a bottle of wine, and… a friend. Heady stuff. And like I said, I love the class, even though oddly I’m barely passing it, thanks to all the strenuous French literature translation assignments, and the verb tenses. But all in all, I am in awe of this teacher, and I really can’t say that about hardly any of the teachers on the faculty.

And now (surprise) here he is suddenly playing the guitar in his hands, his soft beautiful chords floating around us, and now his voice beginning to sing… surprisingly… “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” And no, not like The Tokens sing it. The way he sings it, because he’s making it his own. And it is really working. My God, I love it. His voice is gorgeous.

I remember now hearing that he was a member of Bowdoin College’s highly regarded acapella chorus, The Meddibempsters, and his vocal training is so obvious. I mean, wow. He’s good. You can feel that everybody in this crowd, like me, is totally knocked out by his performance, and we all want an encore at the end of the song but, no, it looks like that one is all we’re gonna get. However, this little one-song concert is something I’ll long remember, I’m sure. And I’ve just made me a conscious decision: I’m gonna go back and spend a lot more time practicing on my guitar.

And man, I’m just thanking my lucky stars this thing didn’t go down when I’d be stuck downstairs, sitting at the check-in table. So happy I lucked out. But speaking of my check-in duty, it’s pretty close to that time. And since nobody seems to be in any hurry to start the Top Forty music back up again (everybody, content to just be standing around in a daze marveling that one of theirs teachers could be so talented), I guess I’ll have to accept the fact that I’m not gonna get to ask somebody for a dance, at least for right now. But there’ll still be that half hour left between 9:30 and 10:00 though. Who knows? Maybe I’ll get lucky then.

Yeah. Right.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So here I am, sitting alone at the table, loose-leaf notebook open in front of me in which I have to log everyone’s comings and goings. And it hasn’t exactly been busy. One set of parents popping in to pick up their daughter. That’s pretty much it, because it’s late. I nod at the guys continuously go back and forth, going up and coming down the stairs. And try rather meekly to engage the giggly girls who are doing the same in clever conversation as they flit by. The restrooms are down at the far end of the hall; that explains the majority of the traffic. Other than that, I’m spending my time contemplating what I’ll probably do after the place closes down. Play basketball upstairs with my brother and his buddies? Join a couple of my own pals and sneak into the movie theater to see who’s there? Oh well. I’ll figure it out.

(yawn) This job is so boring.

Until it isn’t.

The front doorsuddenly gets yanked open, letting in a rogue blast of frigid, wintery wind and a swirl of snowflakes! And right behind that gust, in stumbles four young men, not boys! Their faces rosy. And just bursting with energy. Talking loudly and animatedly about… I dunno, something. Fortunately the door manages to slam itself shut. These guys look like they’re freezing, like they’ve been walking outdoors rather than riding in a vehicle. And they’re too busy yakking to have noticed little me yet.

Even though they’re in their civvies, they’re all sporting their tell-tale Air Force parkas. So. They’re flyboys. Flyboys from Charleston Air Force Base, eight miles southeast from here, up on Charleston Hill. The flyboys? They aren’t too popular with the homeboys around here, as you might imagine. Not enough girls to go around… is the word on the street. But that doesn’t have much to do with me.

So far, they’re so wrapped up in babbling to each other, I don’t even exist. Whatever the topic of their animated excitement, it seems to have something to do with something outside. I decide to introduce myself. “Hi, guys!” They don’t hear me obviously. It’s like I really don’t exist. Before I get a chance to clear my throat and repeat my friendly hello, I hear one of them say, “OK. Let’s go!” And as if somebody fired a starting pistol, all four are swarming up the stairs!

“WHOA there!” I yell (to no avail). I panic and find myself jack-knifing to my feet and bellowing, HEY! YOU GUYS!! I SAID, STOP!!”Miraculously, they hear that one. And freeze, up by about the seventh step. Then all four crank their heads around and let their eyes fall on me. Down here. In the foyer. I don’t say anything. They don’t say anything. A moment passes. They all look at one another. Then down they come. All four. To crowd around my dinky little table and lean their faces in at me with rapt interest. Like I’m a bug or something. One of them leans his face in too close, eye-to-eye, our foreheads nearly touching. His face is a blank. A big, blank poker face. “Well…?”

I find I have to swallow before I can choke out a response. “I’m sorry.” Jeez, I can barely hear myself. “But… see? This is a high school thing. Foxcroft Academy has…”

“A high school thing? So what’re you doing here, shrimp boat? You can’t be what, even in third grade yet? Right?”

I have to swallow twice this time. And I feel a drip of cool sweat sliding down between my shoulder blades. “No… uhmmm, ninth grade. “

“Oh, come off it! That can’t be right. I’m afraid I’m gonna have to ask you show me some ID.”

OK, I don’t like the way this is going. At all. After all. I’m a little chicken-shit, aren’t I. And I’m already wishing I’d just let them pass on by. With, you know, me just ‘accidentally’ looking the other way. But now I have to say… something.

“You gotta be a student at the Academy, to come in.”

“My God. You really talk fast, don’tcha. I can barely understand you.”

“Or Be. Invited,” I manage to add.

“Oh, that! Sure. I know that! That’s OK. Because… I am invited, see? By… Jim. You know Jim, don’t you. Of course you do. Everybody knows good old Jim. Am I right?”

I haven’t been this frightened since that time on my paper route when I got cornered by a growling German shepherd for a half hour. I keep thinking, Where IS everybody? Anybody? Why hasn’t somebody just strolled by…?

“Well, see… you gotta have a signed pass.” I mutter. “Signed by the principal.”

Here, he shakes his head patiently, but with a big wolfish smile. “Ah! So you’re… the hall monitor. Oh my!” And then he does something I really don’t like.

He puts his hands on my shirt. I figure, Here we go. He’s gonna beat the crap outta me, but no. Instead, it’s like he’s just intimately… straightening my collar, and then dusting off my shoulders, like maybe there was something on them, like, you know, dandruff or something, but still all the while smiling at me, like I’m some little kid and he’s my dad, getting me spiffed up to get ready for school. It’s something that bullies like to do.

“You know what I’m thinking,” he says. I don’t say anything. I just wait for him to tell me. “I think… you and me? I think we’ve become friends. Don’t you? Don’t you feel that?”

I’m just looking down at the toes of my shoes.

“So what I’m thinking is, you’ve thought this whole thing all over, right? And because we’ve become such good friends now, you’re going to invite me to go… right on right up those stairs with our other three friends here and… then… hey, it’s all good, right? Am I right?”

I nod.

“Can you just say it? That you’re inviting me?”

I nod.

“Then… please… say it.”

I am so ashamed. “I… invite you.”

“Aw gee, thank you so very…”

Suddenly, the front door gets practically kicked open, letting in another rogue gust of frigid, wintery wind and a swirl of snowflakes! And right behind that gust, in stumbles …a cop. Wait, no, not just a cop. THE cop: Bill Fair!

(OK. I admit it. This image of Robocop is a stretch, but (if you’d ever MET Officer Fair) it’s not that much of a S T R E T C H…)

When you think Officer Fair, think Alpha Wolf. Officer Fair is big. Officer Fair is solid. Officer Fair’s face and neck are a lunar landscape of pock marks and scars. Officer Fair has… a reputation. Officer Fair can be frightening just to look at. I’m frightened just looking at him right now, and yet I’m so glad he’s arrived. It’s like the wind just blew the door in and (surprise) The Abominable Snowman is suddenly standing right in front of you… and studying you!

And Officer Fair has left the door wide open.

What I’m suddenly seeing is these four guys shrinking smaller and smaller. It’s unbelievable. They’ve become one big, cowering, little gang. If they had tails, you wouldn’t be able to winch them out from between their legs with a chain.

“Bill?” says the guy I just invited to go on upstairs. It rocks me that he’s on a first-name basis with Officer Fair. His voice noticeably shaky, he adds, “We didn’t mean nuthin’, I swear to God!”

“Honest-to-God’s-TRUTH, Bill,” whines another. “We just come in here to… find out what time it is! Is all.”

Officer Fair is a man of few words. Right at the moment, Officer Fair is a man of no words. Officer Fair is known as a man of action rather than words.

“We were just leaving, Bill. Really. I’m serious.” All four of them are edging around him now, trying to inch themselves toward the open door. Officer Fair isn’t budging out of their way much, meaning they’re really going to have to squeeze themselves past him to get out, which turns out to be about as easy as being born.

“So… hey. Whattaya say, Bill. Please. We’ll just be on our way. Alright? OK?” If looks could kill, four coffins would be getting ordered from Lary’s Funeral Home right about now.

But then, in a couple of blinks, they’re gone. Just like that. They succeeded in squeezing their way past The Man, and he’s followed them out. The door slams shut. It’s over. Crisis averted. (Well, for me, but probably not for them.)

God bless the U.S. cavalry.

Jesus, breathe, Tommy!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

OK, so now that I’ve half-gotten my wits back about me, and I feel my heart rate slowly and steadily ticking itself back down to near normal… and even though I haven’t entirely stopped shaking yet, everything is becoming crystal clear now. Yup.

So, in retrospect it’s now so obvious that Officer Fair had been tailing these fellas before they’d shown up here. That they’d been on the run, running scared from him for whatever reason or other. And so they’d desperately crashed in here to get themselves lost in a very big building with a large crowd of people in it. Which explains why they so needed to get themselves the hell upstairs and out of sight as quickly as possible: to mingle in with the crowd or, even better, find some little cubby hole to disappear in.

“How’s it going? Did I miss anything?” asks my replacement.

I give him the look. “Well, it is now.”

He frowns. “Uhmmm… OK?”

So I suppose I oughtta tell him the whole frigging story. And I do. About how a squad of four soldiers barged in here and roughed me up but good! And about how, since no one was around here to help me out, I’d decided to string’em along as long as I possible could— you know, acting scared and all, but really? Just keeping them down here, on the bottom floor, with me. You know, so nobody else, upstairs, would get hurt, right? And about how it actually worked. About how I was able to hold out just long enough for the cops to show up and kick the door in, rough them up, handcuff’em, and drag their sorry butts off to jail. And yeah. Now I suppose I’ll probably hafta go in and ID’em and all, in a police line-up or something. Plus, you know, then they’ll probably want me to testify against them in court.

Now boy, let me tell you, wasn’t he some impressed!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

You know what? To heck with hanging around here for the last dance, especially since I probably would never actually get around to asking anybody to dance anyway. Shoot, I’m rounding up Richie and Dale. I’m gonna talk’em into sneaking into the movie theater with me to see if there are any interesting girls, that need to be walked home. And then maybe we’ll hit Rocket Lanes. Mostly pretty much so I’ll have enough time to wow them with my practically unbelievable story along the way. Yeah.

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Category: Bullying

EMPTY-DESK SYNDROME: Oh, Danny Boy

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SATURDAY NIGHT IN DOVER-FOXCROFT: REC CENTER, 1961