Category: Underachievers

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.

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