The Racket
Reflecting on the Pretensions of Irresponsible Adults
I was reflecting, as I walked out of the school where Mrs X worked, in a particularly satisfied way. She was similar to the Mrs. X who did me in high school, but no tears. Before, she was lonely, and the desperation of her dalliance with me dug deep into her self esteem. Today's Mrs. X was not lonely, just stressed and over worked. I was maybe two steps from philosophizing about these things when a commotion reached my ears.
One expects to hear a lot of screaming at a school, but this was a different, more focused yelling. I peeked around the corner and found some twenty kids gathered around a hapless boy. They had him pinned to the wall and were all verbally laying into him. When I rounded the corner, the boy lost his cool and began smashing his tennis racket on the wall and the ground until it was wrecked.
“Hey! What the hell!” I raised my voice enough to get their attention. The crowd had moved back, titillated by the boy's outburst. Now they were all scattering to a safe distance. A responsible adult had also come around the corner, and was moving to intercept the disturbance even as I accosted them.
“Aw, NO!” the boy cried, “This is my Dad's racket.”
“Easy, easy,” I said, “That was a cheap brand anyway. Come on, Breathe a bit and calm down. Someone is coming to help.”
So the lad was carrying around his Dad's tennis racket at school, where they weren't playing tennis. Granted the other kids must be bored silly to take up the matter, but he seems to have volunteered for the abuse. It was a bit of clarity.
Anxiety. No doubt a history of it. Right then and there I bet the boy had become “difficult” enough that the feelings of the teachers and administrators had shown through, transferring from person to person until the kids caught it. To a mob like this one, his history would be understood as permission. This abuse was sanctioned, and every interaction with the adults would further solidify his future in the education system, not unlike cement shoes. I had seen it before.
The responsible adult arrived.
“I'm sorry,” he said, “Who are you?”
“You should be sorry. Where the hell were you when those twenty kids had this one pinned to the wall?”
“What kids? They said Liam had another violent outburst.”
“Well no shit he had a violent outburst! Who wouldn't?”
“Please!” the man said, “Mind your language. You are at a school.”
I snorted. This joker was behaving as he was expected to, of course, but the hint that this bullying was going to be pinned on the victim pulled a switch deep inside me.
“Your precious mob of bullies didn't mind the language,” I said, “You would have heard them if you had been paying attention instead of trying to get into that one's pants.” Another responsible adult had come around the corner, pretending she didn't know what was going on. It deepened my anger.
The man seemed like he couldn't process all of the messages he was receiving, so stared at me briefly. Then he turned and motioned at one of the child spectators.
“Destry. Come over here.” The boy came up to us.
“Is that true? Was Liam being bullied?”
“I didn't see that,” the boy said, “Nobody was watching him, and then he was screaming and smashing his tennis racket. Everybody was freaked out by it. There's something wrong with him.”
“Alright, never mind that,” said the man, “Liam, why did you smash your tennis racket?”
He started crying again, “I don't know,” he wailed, “It's my Dad's. He's going to be mad at me!”
The man sighed impatiently.
“Alright, let's go to the office and we'll get it sorted out.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, “Are you fucking stupid or something? That other kid lied through his teeth, and you're going to just pin it on this one? He's the victim!”
Destry laughed brazenly.
“Destry, it's not funny. We don't use that language here.”
“He's not laughing at me, bozo. He's laughing at how easy it is to victimize Liam by lying to you. Wait a minute. You said , 'Another violent outburst'. Are you saying this goes on regularly? How the fuck do you people keep your jobs?”
“Again with the language!” he said, “You know what? I think we've heard quite enough out of you, whoever you are. I'm going to call the police.”
“That's a great idea,” I said, “I'll call the local news. I'm sure all of the parents of this fine institution would like to hear how poorly you're monitoring this bullying situation. Then I'm going to call my agent, because I see a great screenplay coming out of this. Who would you like to play you?”
He stopped and walked with Liam back to me.
“Look,” he said, “I'll make you a deal. You go away, and I won't compromise your situation with Mrs. X.”
It was low. Mrs. X had nothing to do with this. The fact that she got her rocks off now and then was hardly a crime. It was certainly nothing compared to letting little Liam get bullied regularly, but I didn't want her to lose her job. Still, if this all fell out, I was sure she wouldn't be a priority to the parents. I had sampled enough of them to be certain of that.
“Not good enough,” I said, “You're going to leave her out of it. You're going to take care of Liam here, and come clean with his parents, so he doesn't get in trouble for the tennis racket. In one week I'm going to ask Mrs. X how this all fell out, and if she doesn't have good things to say, I'm going to start making phone calls. You get it?”
“Liam,” I said, “You don't have to take this from him.”
“You're talking over his head,” said the man, “He's autistic.”
“You'll understand if I doubt your competence on that. Liam, do you understand what I told him?”
“He has to tell my dad that I was being bullied, or you're going to put him on the news,” said Liam.
I looked at the man, “Awfully precocious for an autistic child. Mind what I said.”
It never occurred to me to doubt my instincts in that situation because I was familiar with the system, not only from when my kids were in it, but from when I was a teen. It wasn't just screwing my teacher that gave me insights. You could see other things going on all the time. When I was very young, it was not unheard of to get a smack in the head without explanation from the teacher. A ruler across the wrist wasn't seen as harsh. That was only a few years after Canada had banned the use of the strap for punishment. I can't relate how many times I was ridiculed and humiliated by a teacher in class, or how many times others were singled out. We had a music teacher way back who had no problems yelling at, or shoving students.
And were they more observant back then? Not really. I distinctly recall a scene just like Liam's when I was really young. It was around the same year that older boys came to school in KISS style makeup. They would steal a bottle of red paint, put some in their mouth and spit it up to look like Gene Simmons. An older boy, a brother of a kid in my class, had attracted attention from a giant swarm of kids. Looking back, there had to be forty of them if there was one, all dancing around him calling him names like “retard”. It shames me to say, I think I may have joined in.
“Retard”, back then, was a clinical term, but that guy was not retarded. I met him again years later, and I'm not convinced he was even that far below average intelligence. I am convinced however, that when your community wants you to be something, no matter how irrational or stupid, they will move heaven and earth to believe it and make it so, and the hapless victim is likely to accept it- even own it.
Never mind the people I knew, or Liam and his school. Case in point: Look back to the Apostles in the Gospels of Philip, Thomas and Mary, going to Jesus after he kissed Mary Magdalene and asking-
Grown men, with beards and shit- asking, “But why do you love her more than you love all of us?”
I mean are you kidding me? Tell me Jesus didn't go to Mary and say,
“Just kill me now.” Or maybe he just gave a silent Luke Skywalker lament,
“Ben Hur, why didn't you tell me about these fucking schlemiels? I would have wandered back to the desert!”
He didn't die on the cross for our sins, ladies and gentlemen. He just couldn't take any more of the Apostles' bullshit. How many times in one life does one have to explain how to behave to child-like adults?
And knowing people as he must have, it seems more likely that, at the Last Supper, he said,
“ALL you motherfuckers are going to betray me!” It's just that, as he knew they would, they would all deny it, circle the wagons and pin it on Judas, who was probably singled out for reasons so mundane that the church couldn't afford to admit it.
Liam isn't Judas, though, and it stinks that grown men and women would permit the use of him as a scapegoat for their own lack of supervision, or perhaps their lack of skill as teachers or administrators or counselors or psychologists or psychiatrists or school trustees or union reps or politicians. Against them, Liam doesn't stand a chance. Nor do his parents. If the school decides that the boy has Autism, or ADD or ADHD or Aspergers or whatever they are calling it this time, the parents may object, but the school will mount a campaign against them using the above mentioned experts.
If all those experts and science-like folks had an empirical bone in their body, they would have to admit that the focus on the child as the problem is just too convenient. But then, it wasn't about science for Jesus and Judas. It was, apparently, about dying for our sins. Even if Liam self-selected for it, I just don't think he or his parents would have agreed to the terms of his crucifixion, figurative or not.
Today the matter was only peripherally my business at all. It was only the fact that it was happening in my community, and the sad fact that I had an axe to grind from my childhood, that I said anything. I did it, though, and I'll be damned if Liam is going to go to school tomorrow with nobody at his back. I called Mrs. X and told her what went down. I almost think she was impressed, though I won't be welcome under her skirt for some time. She'll take care of the playground supervisor. Her old man is on the School Board.
