The school gym morphed into a fancy theater. All my friends now wore tuxedos and long dresses. Staring at me, holding their breath.
I gritted my teeth.
Nothing came. Not one note.
I heard whispering from the audience. Grumbling. Laughing.
I looked up at my virtual friends, now so real before me. All heads down, all thumbs flying. Everyone texting like crazy.
What were they saying about me?
Like robots, they suddenly lifted their phones and pointed them at me.
My jaw relaxed. I knew what was coming. They’d hit the candle app and wave their phones around for me like in big rock concerts.
But no.
A blinding flash from a thousand cell phones. Taking pictures of me, choked and sweating, looking like an idiot.
All heads down again, posting photos of the world’s greatest guitar zero.
My phone jumped to life under my butt.
Mr. Grimsby’s nose and cheeks puffed red. “Hand it over, Ian. Now!”
“No, wait!”
I yanked out my phone. Where was that video of me playing guitar on top of a speeding train? They’d see. I’d post that and they’d see I could—
Mr. Grimsby snatched my phone away.
It felt like losing an arm.
“Hey, back off!” I yelled. “Student assault! Help! Police!”
Loba blasted out of the crowd and galloped across the stage. She leapt at Grimsby’s chest and knocked him flat.
“Good dog, Loba!”
My phone skittered across the stage and over the edge. I lunged after it. Dad’s guitar flew off my lap and crashed to the floor, shattering into matchsticks.
Forget the guitar. Get the phone.
I slipped in something warm and wet.
The principal’s blood.
People jumped from their seats, screaming, stampeding for the exits.
I turned to see Loba ripping something pink and straggly out of Grimsby’s neck.
Forget Grimsby. Get the phone.
“Loba, phone! Fetch!”
Loba flew past me in a spray of blood and jumped off the stage.
Dad pulled out a mining stake and started clubbing people, shoving them out the door.
Forget the audience. I can text them later. Get the phone.
Loba, nose to the floor, bounded through a jungle of thrashing legs. She clamped down on something yellow, then lifted her head to show me, her tail wagging.
“Yesss! Good girl, Loba!”
I jumped off the stage but, before I got to Loba, Dad had pushed her out the door and slammed it shut behind him.
I kicked at the door. “Dad, what are you doing? I need that!”
I pounded the walls. They’d turned into sunbaked adobe. Like Diadora’s hut. I looked up to see razor wire lining the top.
Forget the wire. I’m going over. Get the phone.
I backed up and took a running leap, raking my hands and chest through the razor wire.
I landed in something soft, like a bed, but my fingers were all torn up.
Forget playing guitar. How will I ever text again?
I heard the sound of heavy traffic. Loba was running toward me across a busy highway with my yellow phone in her mouth …
“¡Dios mío! Would you turn that damn thing off!”
I slowly moved my fingers and felt the soothing imprint of my iPhone in my hands.
Good dog, Loba.
“Turn it off for once, Indio. You’re doing it again.”
“Huh?” I cracked one eye open and made out Mom’s silhouette against the hall nightlight, hands on hips.
“You’re sleep-texting again!”
“What?”
“I heard you shouting for Loba. I come in and you’re lying there with your arms up, thumbing your phone.” Mom threw up her hands. “No wonder you’re so zonked at school.”
I jerked the phone to my face and checked sent messages.
Hry evrbod# che out mo= lat3st gitrar vidwo
What have I done? Sent gibberish with no weblink or attachment to 10,147 followers.
I scrunched my eyes and fists. “Aaagh!”
Mom came at me like a five-foot freight train. “Here, give me that!” She tried to grab my phone, but I rolled over and pinned it under my chest. I flashed back to Grimsby’s torn throat. “Why is everybody trying to steal my phone?”
“Everybody?”
“I mean … I … I need this!”
“Not tomorrow, you don’t. It’s Friday. Remember? Device-free Friday? You won’t die if you go without it for a few hours.”
“Oh, no?”
“What will kill you, Indio, is not sleeping. Not eating. Not moving. That thing has hijacked your brain!”
“You gave it to me.”
“Yes, but I never thought that … oh, just give it to me, would you?”
“But it’s not Friday yet.”
“Technically, it is.”
“What about homework? We have a big math assignment and I might need to call—”
“At 3:30 in the morning? Come on, Indio.”
“Well … what about my friends? I sent this crazy stupid message. Just let me tell them that I didn’t—”
“Your so-called friends won’t care. Now give me that thing and you can use your hands-free Friday to make some real friends.”
I took one last look at the screen. Already, in less than two minutes, 458 replies. I slowly stretched my arm out to Mom. “Take it, then. But don’t you lose it.”
I felt like I was sticking my head in a guillotine.
Mom pried my iPhone from my hand and tucked it in her nightgown. “Don’t worry, Loba can always find it. Now, just for once, you can sleep unplugged.”
I buried my face in my pillow. My arm slipped off the bed and I heard a familiar drumbeat on the floor. My fingers found my best friend’s pointy ears. The thumping stopped.
I suddenly lifted my head, wondering if I’d trained Loba well enough to sneak into Mom and Dad’s room and steal back my phone.
SABOTAGE
It didn’t take me long to find ways to hack through the school’s website-blocking programs. And the principal’s restrictions on cell phone use in class were a joke. Thumbing text messages under my desk while pretending to listen was now as easy as playing an open C scale on guitar with my eyes closed.
But when it came to the next month’s device-free Friday, Mr. Grimsby had new weapons to shoot down our God-given right to stay connected 24-7.
That is, until I posted this blog the night before.
Sabotaging Our E-Rights
YOU'VE HEARD THE NEWS
My esteemed fellow students of Edgemont Heights, you’ve probably heard the news by now. (For those of you from other schools who are reading this, listen up. You won’t believe what’s happening to us. And you definitely don’t want it to happen to you.) The news about this month’s Device-free Friday.
Just in case you were too busy texting and missed the PA announcements, the Principal’s speech at Assembly, the posters wallpapering our hallways, and, ironically, the flashing notices on our school’s whiz-bang website—just in case you missed all this propaganda, here’s the news: you are about to be stripped of your personal rights and freedoms to the cyber world in which we teenagers live and breathe.
How will this devious plot be hatched? Through the installation of two fiendish forms of technology. In the digital world they call it ATT—Anti Terrorist Technology.
First, our principal has installed a METAL DETECTOR at the main door so you can’t bring your phone to school even if it’s off. You know, like they use at airports to stop terrorists from blowing up planes or knifing pilots or flying into office towers.
Any of your friends into that? Didn’t think so.
And if that weren’t bad enough, he plans to install a CELL PHONE JAMMER in our school to block all calls, texts, and Internet access if you manage to slip through his metal detector with your cell phon
e (Did I just encourage that?). Cell phone jamming devices were originally developed for cops and the military to block communications by criminals and terrorists—like you and me. Got any plans to trigger explosives? Organize an assassination? Take a few hostages? Or maybe conduct a little corporate espionage? Not during school hours, I’m afraid. At least not once our principal turns that thing on.
Click this link for more dirt on jamming, and I’m not talking here about your Saturday night garage band.
WHAT'S AT STAKE?
Is it just me or does this seem like overkill? Technically speaking, our school is launching a “denial of service” attack. Deny us any chance of using our cell phones—and what’s supposed to happen? We will magically become more attentive? More respectful? Better behaved? More socially well-adjusted? All that stuff we heard from the principal’s podium?
Can this technology fix our “fixation with technology,” as Grimbsy says?
I kinda doubt it.
After all, do we really have a problem here to fix?
We are the most connected generation in history. We have a planet-full of information at our fingertips. We depend on our cell phones to keep in touch with our friends, to entertain ourselves, to check in with our parents, to keep us safe, to build family and community and global harmony, etc., etc., and to avoid germ-laced payphones. Oh, yeah, and to access the state-of-the-art homework app developed and paid for by our own school fees!
So what gives?
Ultimately, this techno-muzzling plan represents a blatant denial of every Canadian’s right to freedom of expression—“to freely exchange information, thoughts, ideas, beliefs, and opinions through any media of communication, including the Internet.” I’m not spouting off the top of my head here. I’m quoting from the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
No one can deny us that freedom, least of all Mr. Grimsby. His plan basically throws a finger at Canada’s constitution.
Are you going to take this lying down?
JUST ONE MORE LITTLE THING: IT'S ILLEGAL!
I have more news for you. Not only is installing a cell phone jammer in our school unconstitutional, it’s ILLEGAL. I discovered that a high school principal way over in Gander, Newfoundland, tried to pull the same stunt on his students. He ordered the device online from China, where—guess what—jammers are legal. But here’s the thing. The dad of one of his students happened to be a criminal lawyer, who politely told the principal that civilian use of such devices in Canada is illegal, and that he could go to jail if he installed it. The principal’s original idea backfired. Now the right to use cell phones in his school has become a hot student rights issue with no solution in sight.
Click here to find that story. You can file it in the whoops-forgot-about-that-law-thing department.
So, I ask you now, just who is the criminal?
FIGHT FOR YOUR E-RIGHTS!
I found plenty of schools online that have reasonable cell phone controls without resorting to Anti-Terrorist Technology. But first, let Grimsby prove to us there’s a problem, show it to us under a microscope. If it’s true, then it should be up to US to draft the guidelines for their use and, on the flip side, the penalties for violating them (click here for good examples). This could go a lot further in reigning in his power, while gaining him a little respect, rather than sabotaging our e-rights and freedoms by installing an illegal device that could land him in jail for five years.
Hmm. On second thought … five years, eh? We should all be out of high school by then … LOL!
But before all that warm, fuzzy collaborative stuff can happen, we have to fix our real technology problem—by kicking its butt the hell out of our school!
ILYG, Bein’ Ian
JAMMED
With my iPhone stashed somewhere in my mother’s laundry basket or her shoe collection, or God knows where—even Loba couldn’t find it—I had no choice but to stop at a drugstore on the way to school and pick up a cheapie flip phone. As I walked up the steps to the school’s main door, I hid it behind my biology textbook and checked reception. The number of bars dropped with each step until they hit zero. The message I dreaded seeing popped up on the screen:
No service available.
I discovered what it felt like to be jammed. To be forcibly unplugged. To be brutally, maliciously, illegally stripped of one’s identity and meaning in life.
Okay, that might be going too far but, I’ll tell you, it did feel like shit.
I decided to fight this tooth and claw.
I soon discovered I was not alone.
A line of students half a block long was marching two-by-two straight for me. Many carried signs.
Take your jammer and stick it!
We are not terrorists!
Save our right to bear cell phones!
Lock away our principal, not our phones!
As the crowd got closer, they started chanting. “No A-T-T for you and me! No A-T-T for you and me!”
I got this stupid smile on my face that I couldn’t wipe off.
They read my blog!
The shouts got angrier, the chanting louder. I saw raised fists, felt the vibration of many feet pounding up the steps toward me. The hair on the back of my neck went all bristly. I remembered protesters, mud bombs, and blood. I wanted to run, to hide, to escape from the mob before I got caught in the crossfire.
Then I felt cheery slaps on my back. My esteemed fellow students were shaking my hand. Monica, the would-be president, even kissed my cheek. “What’s wrong, Ian?” she asked. “You look a bit green.”
“I’m okay, really.”
“We need you in there, Ian,” Monica said, pausing as the line of chanting marchers parted around us.
“Go ahead,” I said, catching her vanilla scent. “I’ll catch up.”
I waited for the rest of the marchers to pass, then wrapped my cheapie cell phone in a plastic bag. I carefully slipped it inside my ham and cheese sandwich, dropped the whole thing in my lunch bag, and marched up the steps into battle.
REVOLT
Getting my cell phone through Grimsby’s metal detector was a snap. He was standing beside it like some airport security guard, telling us to empty our pockets of coins, keys, and mobile devices and dump them in plastic trays. Mr. Priddle, our gym teacher, carried the trays around the machine and handed everything back, except for devices. He was a big guy whose arms were thicker than my thighs. “You can collect these in the principal’s office at the end of the day,” Priddle said, scooping up handfuls of phones and stashing them in a locked silver briefcase like they were confiscated handguns.
When it came to my turn, Grimsby looked at me as if I’d let off a stink bomb in the staff room, which, in a way, I had. I knew that he and many teachers had been stalking my BEIN’canadIAN blog since I first launched it. I’d publicly accused him of a criminal act and everyone in the school knew it.
Hundreds of students were milling around the main foyer, still chanting, “No A-T-T for you and me!”
“Well, good morning, Mr. McCracken,” Grimsby said, towering over me with his arms folded. “Anything to donate to our cause today?”
I placed my lunch bag on top of the metal detector, where I hoped its sensors couldn’t touch it. “No, sir. I’m clean.”
“Oh, what a surprise. We’ve reformed, have we?”
“Yesss, sir.” I walked through the detector with my pack on.
Beep! Beep! Beep!
I was thinking I’d blown it with the machine’s sensors, when Grimsby seized my pack and unzipped it before I could get it off my back. “Aha! We’ll just see who’s reformed.”
He pulled out my biology text, a dictionary of Canadianisms, and a package of steel guitar strings that must have been there since my Xela days. He sniffed and squeezed the package. “I didn’t know you played guitar.”
“A little.”
Grimsby held the package up to a light, then, finding no hidden devices, crammed everything back into my pack, almost kno
cking me over.
“There he is!” some girl shouted.
I turned to see Monica. She was running over to me, bringing a parade of her groupies with her. She pulled me away from Grimsby and brought her hot lips close to my ear.
That’s when I noticed how many students were looking at me, including Morris Kritch. He and his hockey buddies were leaning against the trophy cabinet.
“It’s getting crazy,” Monica said. “Everyone’s really pissed off, ready to break something! To string someone up! The march went okay, but this …” She stared at the chanting students. “This could go bad, really bad. Then we’ll never get our phones back.”
Her face was so close to mine I could feel the heat from her flushed cheeks.
“What do we do now, Ian?”
Monica’s scent, Morris’s stares, the swirling, shouting students all got my head spinning. But I’d seen this kind of mob chaos before. We needed to put a lid on it before any shit happened. Before we lost our bargaining power.
I plunked down on the floor. “Sit down!” I said, tugging Monica’s hand.
“What? Right here?”
“Yup. With a crowd like this, the best way to stand up for our rights is to stage a sit-down strike.”
She suddenly sat down, almost on top of me. “Of course!” All of her groupies were next.
“This’ll cool ’em down,” I told her. “We can start talking with the enemy. You seem chummy with Grimsby. Why don’t you lead the charge?”
“Sounds good. But … what do I say?”
I wondered what kind of school president Monica would make. Maybe I could be her campaign manager. She definitely had my vote. “Don’t worry, I’ve got some ideas.”
“Whatever you say.” Monica motioned for everyone to sit down. “Come on, people,” she shouted. “We’re on strike! You want to protect your right to bear cell phones?”
A huge “YEAH!”
“Well then, we’re gonna sit it out till they’re guaranteed!”
Cut Off Page 8