by Kenneth Wise
Chapter 5
Steven went to school every day, took the classes he wanted and was getting excellent grades. His group went to the gym for two hours, three times a week and on Saturday all the groups in the building went to the gym together.
There were dance lessons with the girls who were there, undergoing the same testing as the boys. There were co-ed dances and parties, some with live, exceptional entertainment. He knew that even these entertainments were part of the process of trying to understand and help each kid to understand and develop their interpersonal skills, but they were fun nonetheless.
The group was in one of three in the building, called a cluster. Each group lived in what was called a pod. Each pod had a TV room, a Ping-Pong table, a reading room, a crafts room, a kitchen, although everyone ate at the main dining hall except for special occasions. There were three four-bed dorm rooms and three private rooms in each pod. The private rooms were assigned to the boys who displayed leadership skills, worked hard in school, and adhered to the rules. In just a short time, Steven was assigned to a private room and was responsible for the leadership of a four-bed dorm room.
The other two rooms were vacant for a few weeks until two boys who would become Steven’s best friends were moved into private rooms and positions of leadership. Steven and Andrew Chambers grew close and were nearly inseparable, but John Kittic, the third leader, although he would remain a great friend, began to spend time away from them, because, he said, their conversations were too serious and too deep for him. He said he didn’t care about Philosophy, Literature and Science the way Steven and Andrew did. He once said, “I care more about the basketball or football game on TV, not where we came from, why we are here, or where we are going”
John was most likely a bully at home. Steven noticed that he liked to hang around the younger, less mature kids rather than kids like Steven, who he knew better than to even think about bullying.
John was sixteen and already nearly six feet tall but bulky and less muscular than one would expect of someone his height. He was immature in other ways as well. Steven wondered if he was a little slow. He had no dreams, except to become an automobile mechanic, and avoided everything that would open other doors to him.
The three boys took typing at the school and that turned out to be a big joke. None could master the proper fingering and continued to use just two fingers. The teacher gave up on them and told them they could stay in the class and practice with their “hunt and peck,” technique but that they were not part of, and would get no grade for the class. That worked out fine for everyone.
The boys all took Algebra, Literature & English Grammar, Science, and History. John liked the science class and did OK in algebra. The rest of the classes were useless to him. John’s goal in life was to become an auto mechanic and anything that did not help him to achieve that goal he considered a waste of time.
It was in the Literature and English classes that Steven and Andrew excelled. The teacher, Miss Clutter, was in her late twenties and had been teaching in institutions like the Diagnostic Center for nearly her whole career. She was divorced because, as she once confided to her two top students, her husband wanted her to “get a job in a regular school system instead of always teaching hoodlum kids who will never learn anything anyway.” As she told the boys, “teaching here is my calling. I want to spend my life helping kids that others had written off way too soon.”
Miss Clutter enjoyed having a couple of students who actually liked the classes she taught. Most students were like John Kittic and were in her classroom because it was required of them. Although each student may enjoy an assignment or two, for the most part they would rather be somewhere else and doing something else. Kids were the same, even when confined to institutions like this; they knew what excited them and what bored them. Her classes, unfortunately, fell into the boring category. But, she designed her class plans and executed them, with modifications when required, to try to excite some of her students some of the time.
Miss Clutter liked to keep the students busy with reading and writing assignments. In addition to her classes, she directed the publication of The Center’s newspaper and twice a year, included a booklet of works that had been submitted by residents at The Center.
One of the writing projects she assigned to her class was to prepare an essay concerning Friday the Thirteenth and the superstitions about bad luck associated with that day.
Andrew and Steven were in the day room in their group pod, working on their essays when Andrew walked over to where Steven was sitting. “Let me see your paper,” Andrew demanded. Shocked, Steven, who was not used to hearing demands from peers, handed over his paper. Andrew dropped his paper and said “Read it and make notes about anything that is wrong.” They proceeded to read each other’s essays and make notes each thought would be helpful. They performed the exchange three more times before they were satisfied each had a perfect essay. Both boys were used to working alone and this new experience was fun and exhilarated them as they became ever more serious about their critique of each other’s papers. When they had finished and were congratulating each other for the excellent work each had done, their eyes met and they held each other’s gaze for just a few seconds. Steven felt the ground move under him and could tell that Andrew had the same feeling. From that instant, they both knew that their friendship went beyond definition and that the few seconds they looked into each other’s eyes had changed, forever, the path of their lives.
Miss Clutter commended the boys on the quality of their papers. After class, they confessed to her what they had done. Thinking they would be in trouble, they braced for a lecture about cheating. “We did not cheat; we just corrected little things that might not be as good as they could be,” Steven said defensively before Miss Clutter had a chance to speak. To their great surprise, Miss Clutter told them she thought that was fantastic, but in cases where everyone was writing about the same thing, they must be careful not to cheat. They never did cheat, ever. Each tried to make the other’s work the very best. They competed with each other and at the same time encouraged and drove the other to be the very best he could be. Neither boy had ever been in a close friendship like this and, while they were enjoying the experience, it also scared them somehow. The quality of their papers was always so far above the others that Miss Clutter used a different grading scale for them. Between the writing assignments from their History Class and the assignments from Miss Clutter’s class, Steven and Andrew were becoming very proficient writers, and discovered that they liked it.
They breezed through Science Class. Mr. Boggle was a good enough teacher but he was really full of himself. In Steven’s mind, he pictured him thinking of himself as an English Gentleman, or maybe a Lord. He dressed almost like a character out of a Dickens novel. He always wore a three-piece suit with a long coat, and always carried a custom made English walking stick. He liked to brag that he had several and tried never to use the same one two days in a row.
He was fiftyish and had a paunchy tummy, which added to his Dickensian persona. He combed what was left of his gray hair across his balding head, as if that would somehow hide the fact that he was soon going to be as bald as a cue ball. “He probably came to that conclusion using his vast wealth of science”, Steven thought, “and he is trying to teach us that same science.” He was a good-natured man despite his aloofness.
The English class, as a way of helping them to become more curious about, and to be able to find new and never before noticed aspects of everyday things, was assigned to write about some aspect of another student. The rules were simple, don’t write anything that would be embarrassing to the other student and students should try to pair up and write about each other. Before pairing up, students should decide if they can work together well and cannot look at each other’s papers. Miss Clutter grinned as she said, “You may write about a trait or a body feature, within certain obvious limits.”
Andrew and Steven decided to write something about
each other. That way they didn’t have to get involved with any of the other boys. They preferred each other’s company. They would have let John join them and make it a round robin project but he was hooked up with someone from his shop class. “We are turning into elitists turds aren’t we?” Steven said one day. Andrew was quick with a reply, “We are elite, Brainy Boy.”
“Let’s write about each other’s hands,” Steven suggested; the first thing that came to his mind. Andrew immediately became excited and agreed that their hands would make excellent subjects, “Don’t all artists paint at least one masterpiece with hands as the subject? Shouldn’t we be able to write a masterpiece?” asked Andrew, more as a statement than a question. So it was decided, hands it was. And they set about making the rules for developing their masterpiece.
They began in the pod’s craft room, which had a high intensity light. They allotted thirty minutes for each to study the others hands and to manipulate the hands and the light in any way they desired. After that thirty-minute time period, they could not study or touch the other’s hands until the assignment was turned in. They each sat at a different table facing away from each other so as not to look at the other’s hands.
Having only three days to finish the assignment, they worked feverishly; each hoping their paper was not the worst in the class.