I have been volunteering at the school office, doing some admin. This is actually therapy.
Whenever I walk in the door, I start to sweat.
When I was in High School, I did my best to buck the Status Quo. This felt like a necessity… If you aren’t fitting in, why not REALLY be awkward, right? I could achieve distinction in one category: oddball. This worked out fine, I had lots of friends, did theatre, formed loose allegiances with other Hippiecore.(Sort of Hippie, sort of hardcore) We stuck together against the MAN. You know, the Principal, the Secretary, and the forces that ran the office.
My people were treated unfairly.
This is actually a massive understatement. They bullied us, they belittled us, condescended to us daily and made disparaging remarks about our appearance. We complained to our parents, but they thought we were whining or embellishing. We were teenagers; these people were in the positions of authority.
The worst didn’t happen to me. Back in 1992, a girl I knew (one year my junior) was uber punk rock. She’d honed the practice of dark eyeliner and combats, and she was a nice girl under all that black. Come Prom time, the students decided they would show the teachers how they felt. They voted her prom queen.
The best part? She was five months pregnant.
It was an under-scored, one finger salute to those who had crapped on us for years, and most students had decided that this was a perfect way to fight back.
Only… her name wasn’t called to the podium. Murmurs of disbelief went through the crowd. Luckily, this girl had a backbone. She went to the superintendent, who went back to the school, and actually found the BURNED VOTES (I shit you not) that the Principal had tried to destroy. Several of the staff had helped him do it. They were fired and reprimanded, and man, I wish I had been there to see it.
All my friends immediately called our parents.
“SEE! SEE??!”
The parents conceded, “We didn’t know! We thought you were just being histrionic!”
I won’t forget my one request to the principal: to be allowed to graduate early.
“Sure, you can leave early. Wouldn’t mind it a bit,” He said snidely, pulling out the paperwork. This to someone who looked different, but was never mean to anybody, never caused any trouble at school. I wasn’t the smartest, but I was very determined to LEAVE AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE.
Ever since, I have had an aversion to school authority and all that goes with it. I actually have to brace myself before going to the school office, but I figure it’s worth it. I need to make my peace with authority, or I could snap and go ape-shit about some small thing my kids suffer, unearthing long-ago pains inflicted by other, callous individuals.
The icing on this story?
It was the inspirational fodder for the move ELECTION, starring Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon. I didn’t actually know this until recently. But I do remember watching it, thinking, that’s funny, almost the same thing happened at my high school….