The Mindstorm
Chronicles:
Chapter Eight
A work of fiction? A work of nonfiction? The work of insanity?
Chronicles:
Chapter Eight
A work of fiction? A work of nonfiction? The work of insanity?
You decide.
By the time I entered into Junior High School in our conservative little town I was already aware that the world was often an unjust place. It was just that, apart from the occasional bully, or the time I saw our sixth grade teacher grab a student and hold him against the wall with his feet dangling beneath him, the world had been pretty fair to me. All that was about to change in the seventh grade.
The first time I sat down to a picnic table in the quad for morning break, a teacher came up behind me, grabbed my hair and jerked my head back and said, "Get a haircut, Liberace!" Mind you, my hair was just a little longer than anyone else's by today's standards, but those were the days when the dress code said that your hair was never to touch your shirt collar or your ears, and had to be above your eyebrows. Him and his flat top haircut walked off and I thought, "At least I grow my hair on the outside of my head!" For the whole rest of my time at that school I was getting in trouble for my hair. My English teacher was especially fond of sending me to the office. But she was one mean woman anyway. One of those teachers who you know hates their job, should have been famous or something if the world had appreciated her true gift, which as far as I could tell was being mean.
Like so many schools, people banded together in one way or another because there was safety in numbers. The bullies over on the side of the quad next to the snack bar, and a sort of descending order to the opposite side where my friends and I hung out. Some of us knew each other from elementary, and we were slowly going from being mod to being rockers, even if we were the sorts who actually read books and had long philosophical discussions about what was wrong with the world. I guess it was because we were so accepting of people that wewere slowly surrounded by other nerds of every type. You know. People who were different because they were smart, or short, or fat, had some handicap or were just insecure about the world. It probably didn't look as though we would fight, but looked as if we could, and that was good enough for them. Anyway, besides safety in numbers there was laying low and being inconspicuous, which worked at least until one braved the watering hole known as the snack bar. God help you if the bullies gathered for a feeding frenzy. That's when a dozen or more would surround you, humiliate you, push you around and then walk off laughing.
There were two friends of ours who always hung out together. One was the biggest and most heavy set guy, and the other was the smallest guy in school. I learned good lessons from both of them. One day the bullies came up and picked the little guy up and dropped him in a trash can. But rather than getting mad he just folded his arms and stood there saying, "Cute. Cute." Which even made the bullies laugh in a more good humored sort of way. Once I saw him get up on a picnic table and dance for the whole school when he was being picked on. Everyone cheered and he was a success. The bullies never could match his wit. His best weapon was his sense of humor.
Our other friend came to my rescue one day in a lesson about courage that I never forgot. The bullies had me surrounded, a much larger crowd than usual, and for the first time I saw the big guy, who never even stood up for himself, go into action. All you could see was his bright red hair tossing bullies from behind this way and then that, and he stood in front of me and informed them that if they wanted me they were going to have to go through him. After that the bullies never bothered him, or me, whenever he was around.
By the ninth grade, the smaller guy and I conspired to put Shakespeare to the test and see if the pen really was mightier than the sword. His dad owned an old fashioned printing press, and we went to work on our own underground newspaper. We denounced bullies for their homophobia, a thought which was way, way ahead of the times. None of us were gay or anything. Well, not at least as we knew, anyway, but being different was sure to get you called all sorts of things. But why couldn't they keep their hands off of us unless they were gay, we asked. We also ran a slander column that poked fun of teachers.
Bullies would be reading the paper in class and nervously looking around as if guilty of something. Some of the teachers devoted the whole hour to denouncing it. But after that, the bullies stopped bothering everyone like it was magic. It worked so well that we never even came out with a second issue. And we had massive respect. Nobody wanted to be the subject of the second edition. Shakespeare had been right.
One day in drama class, the teacher, another fairly mean woman, passed out a poem and we were told that we were to recite it. If we memorized it we would get at least an A regardless of performance. If we performed it well, but didn't memorize it, the best we could hope for was a C. Then a few of us in class happened to notice that the poem was blatantly bigoted towards blacks. The girl who sat next to me, with the really long straight black hair and John Lennon glasses, who always wore white, I don't know, panty hose or tights or something, the ones with little red apples all over them because she had to wear a dress but didn't shave her legs, became outraged and denounced the poem as racist propaganda. After a short discussion the teacher told the class to raise their hands if they objected to the assignment and that they would be given a different one. Right away, I smelled a rat.
Well, the girl with the John Lennon glasses raised her hands, along with another guy in class, and I just looked at them, "It's a trap!" I wanted to say. But then she looked at me and shouted, "Raise your hand!" And so I did. Not that I needed anymore suspensions right then. But as I suspected, instead of new assignments we were reported to the office. But the school counselor let us off and called in the teacher because the students stories were identical.
The next day we were issued new assignments, but quickly found them to be much like the first except that they picked on different minorities. Did I mention that our school was almost entirely white? We all thought it would be pressing our luck to ask for still another assignment. So when the day came that we had to perform our poems the girl with the glasses and the strange stockings, or whatever you call them, got up and read hers in a disinterested monotone and received a "D". When it came to our friend, he did the same thing, and for the same grade. But I wasn't satisfied with that. So when I read mine I was as dramatic as I could possibly be, screaming at the tops of my lungs as if I were the irrational bigot carrying on about "savages". I received a standing ovation from the class at the end, who were shouting at the teacher that I deserved better than a "C" even if I didn't memorize the poem. The only hard part was that the girl with the glasses was laughing hysterically all the way through my reading, and it made me want to laugh too.
Our little town was changing, no matter how slowly. I remembered when I was new to the first grade a black kid came to our school. A bunch of other little boys started beating him up, and when I told the teacher on playground duty she just looked away. I was nearly in tears going back to class after the bell rang. I thought about how he must feel, but what really did me in was thinking how his Mom would feel that this happened. Throughout most of my life when I was there, the only black people one ever saw were getting a ticket by the side of the road. For some reason, neither my Navajo or Hispanic friends ever had such problems.
Every once in awhile I would talk to the voices in my head. Now I remember that I talked to an alien when I first entered that school. He pretty much said that the whole world was this way, not just the school, and he didn't seem to know why either. But there was a chance that it would all change someday. Especially if we could think of ways to help it change. It was a possibility, at least. Pretty much I didn't feel qualified to say any such things, and told him if ever I came up with something he could try it out on people who knew more about such things than I did. Things like having a press that took up for the underdogs, like the value of humor, like using the right to say no to stupid stuff even if it meant being sent to the office. Somehow though, I just knew that I was headed into some kind of confrontation with the powers that be. But at that time I just had the strange feeling that I would keep getting suspended for the rest of my life.
End Chapter Eight
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