Copyright © 2018 by Sharon Myrick
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.
Published 2018
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-1-63152-423-3 paperback
978-1-63152-424-0 ebook
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018932734
For information, address:
She Writes Press
1563 Solano Ave #546
Berkeley, CA 94707
Cover and interior design by Tabitha Lahr
She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.
All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks and are the property of their respective owners.
School Tales is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, with one exception. One character, Joel Salatin, is widely known in the public sphere as a national leader in the practice of sustainable agriculture. The incident in School Tales where Salatin assists a young person to become educated in progressive farming is fictitious but consistent with his actions in real life. For all other characters, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Dedicated to all people of youthful spirit who speak, write, create, and live their story of meaning in our world.
Contents
Chapter 1 | Fog of School
Chapter 2 | An Unwavering Pivot
Chapter 3 | Time to Decide
Chapter 4 | Unleashing Energy
Chapter 5 | Change and School
Chapter 6 | Success?
Chapter 7 | Drive
Chapter 8 | Judgment
Chapter 9 | Looking for Me
Chapter 10 | Reality Check
Chapter 11 | Freedom Fighters
Chapter 12 | A Life Worth Living
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Chapter 1: Fog of School
Once upon a time, I was not like the walking dead. I was young then, but without a fairy godmother to nurture my discovering spirit … Now, so much of me is buried that I don’t know how to find my way.
I rush down the dark hallway to homeroom, music blaring from the speakers and assaulting me with the high school anthem for seniors, “Time of Your Life.” This fairy tale version of high school is way different from the reality of seeing my classmates sprawled lifelessly across the top of their hard desktop beds. Even the loud clang of the too-familiar bell doesn’t disturb disengaged souls. We serve time, to-the-second aware of how long it will be till the end of each class and each day in our teenage home base, school.
Laying my head on the box of graduation announcements I just picked up, I also disappear into daydreaming. Four more months till my diploma and then escape to the freedom of college. Wish these announcements foretold who I am, what I can do, and if I’m prepared for life on my own.
The girl in the next row shakes me and hisses, “Listen!” Still in the fog of my daydreaming, I mutter, annoyed, “I’m tired of listening all day to stuff shoved down our throats, disconnected from what I need to know.”
But I give in and refocus, back to the land of discontent I call “Not-ness school.” Not life, not freedom, not happiness. Instead, disengagement, disappearance, etc. My little protest: don’t “dis” me.
Startled by my homeroom’s sudden transformation—from sleep to excited, nervous chatter—I strain to hear what people around me are saying.
Our drama-inclined classmate says, “My father heard at work a kid brought a gun to school.”
Another student says, “Yeah, this morning it was all over Facebook. I saw a lot of other crazy stuff about how we’re all running wild here.”
“What a joke that is. We’re kept on such a tight leash here, we’re not even allowed to think about wild stuff, much less do anything.”
“Yeah, the gun thing is probably just another Facebook rumor.”
Right on cue, we hear the principal droning the morning announcements: “… Student backpacks will be searched each morning …”
Stunned silence from everyone.
One guy quietly says, “Facebook accounts say the gun incident happened two weeks ago and was kept a secret.”
Then everyone looks at me, by habit, and someone asks me what I think. So what’s inside my backpack is important, but not what’s inside me? I think. No me, no person, just the student role. What disrespect. But what I say is, “I don’t know. Why would someone bring a gun to school? Who would do that?”
They look surprised, even worried, that I have no analysis.
Attention shifts back to the principal, who speaks in a voice reeking of power and position: “… rules to ensure safety of the school community.”
“Really?” I say to the group. “He doesn’t know what to do so he makes up another rule, this time about backpack searches? He should confront the real problem, whatever it is. How is this new rule supposed to make us feel safe?”
“Yeah, next it will be strip searches.”
Announcements complete, homeroom over, first period begins. Our History of Government teacher displays odd movements like a twitchy snake, looking desperately at the door. I imagine him saying, “Don’t tread on me.”
The second the bell rings, all twenty-three of us in the class pounce on him at once, asking about his perspective:
“What’s up?”
“Why did the Principal come up with this new backpack search policy?”
“What is he not telling us?”
Many of us have our arms folded in distrust, trying to create an armor of protection against … what? Our incompetence in dealing with this threat? The only threat we’ve been asked to deal with before now is that of bad grades.
Our teacher mumbles a response that definitely sounds scripted and includes words like “not at liberty to say,” “confidentiality,” and “due process rights.”
That’s not him talking. He’s usually honest with us. Has he not been told the whole story? This is getting really scary; it seems like not even the teachers know what’s going on.
Wildly waving his hand in the air, a guy in front of me blurts out, “I heard a student brought a gun to school a few weeks ago. Is that true?”
The teacher doesn’t answer; he looks like he doesn’t know what to say. I honestly feel sorry for him. He’s changed since he was my teacher in ninth grade. He once told me being forced to shift to a standardized college prep curriculum, with constant testing, took the life out of him. He and other teachers fought the switch but lost. Now they act beaten down.
People in the class continue to throw out comments, revealing mounting uncertainty.
“Why is this whole thing so hush-hush? If somebody really brought a gun to school, deal with it. This is life-or-death stuff.”
“Not telling us the truth just makes us feel more unsafe.”
Whispered in the back row, inaudible to the teacher, “I don’t want the creepy principal going through things in my backpack.”
“My mom told me this morning to stay in sight of an adult at school,” another kid pipes up.
The class goofy guy says, “What if I need to go to the bathroom?”
Jumping on that immature comment, the teacher says, “This discussion has deteriorated. I wish you cared as much about ho
w our government solves problems as you do a minor change in your daily routine.”
His “disappointed-in-you” tone silences us. Then, predictably, he asserts his authority and herds us back into routine, saying, “Everyone take out a pen for the daily quiz on last night’s reading assignment from the textbook.”
Our response, also predictable, is generalized groaning, shuffling, and 100 percent compliance. Back to predictable routine, we take comfort in the certainty of knowing what to do, letting go of any expectation of thinking about real life. That will have to wait until lunch, the only time we are free to talk or check our phones for messages from the outside world.
I notice a girl on the other side of the classroom wearing a T-shirt that reads, “Freedom … is there an app for that?” It’s a violation of the dress code. I’m surprised no one’s made her change yet.
Post-quiz, we continue class with a documentary film, not part of the approved curriculum—maybe this teacher hasn’t completely given up after all—called Fog of War. Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara talks about WWII, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Vietnam War. McNamara rambles and jumps around, but he raises important questions, I think, like whether the firebombing and destruction of sixty-seven Japanese cities, plus Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was a proportional response or simply done out of anger. With the Vietnam War, he says our anticommunist fog prevented us from seeing that the Vietnamese people wanted freedom from all superpowers and would fight to the death to get it.
It’s kind of like all us students in high school: We want freedom from the superpowers controlling our life. But the anger and fight in us has given way to—well, it’s evident now, looking around the room as the movie ends. Almost everyone around me is asleep. We can’t see through the fog we’re in to learn from these old conflicts. Plus, the truth is, with no fluorescent, artificial lights stimulating us like mega-doses of caffeine, zoning out will happen during a film. Especially since there’s no natural light in here either; windows, after all, might encourage unrestricted imagining—a distraction from school.
The main thing we know is that the film won’t be on the test. We only care about learning the least acceptable amount of notness tidbits that will be on the test—and even those will quickly be forgotten. I’m supposed to be a passive receptacle, absorbing factoids spoon-fed to us by teachers and then regurgitated on tests. The message this sends me is that I possess nothing of value already inside.
The student assessment of high school I hear all the time: “It’s boring.” Maybe we contribute to the nothingness by not taking control of things. Maybe I should try to do something about the backpack search thing rather than make my usual escape into dreams of a future.
Bell rings, piercing reality. No time to discuss the film. We file out the classroom door in our “fog of school.” My definition: uncertainty about the purpose of school and my ability to affect anything.
The walk to second period is a rush of splintered conversations, most with the word “gun” in them. The rush of blood is comforting, clearing my foggy state of mind and warming me up. School is always, always, forever cold and indifferent to the temperature outside. Think frozen bodies in cryonic suspension, considered dead, waiting to be awakened at a later time. “Cryo,” freezing, is close to “cry”—as in “for help,” for the needs of my body. Wool socks and my Birkenstock sandals admittedly make me look a bit geeky, but they’re my primary defense against shivering.
Another human need, to move, runs up against classroom rules to sit still for an hour at a time, six times a day, five days a week, one hundred and eighty days a year. I sigh as I slide into my seat in English class.
All twenty-four of us seniors are in the same classes throughout the day. There’s one difference in this classroom, though: the desks are in a circle to promote class discussions. It’s not much, but it’s something.
Our English teacher is more peppy than usual. Quick to size up the reason for our gloom, she responds with super-happy comments like, “Don’t let this spoil your last months before graduation.”
I raise my hand and start talking all at the same time: “But we are being treated like infants, not almost-adults. And if the threat is real, it’s our lives at stake. Who can think about a diploma as being more important?”
Silence. No other students jump in to say things like they did in government class. My “diploma” comment probably reminded them what’s at stake during this season of waiting to hear from colleges. We all know the story of the kid last year who got in trouble at the prom and the school withdrew recommendations for him to an Ivy League college. Also, the English teacher is pretty cautious. She is new so she’s closely watched, pressured to “cover the material” and make sure we all do well on standardized tests. I’ve seen the fire in her withering over the course of this one year.
While I can understand where our teachers are coming from, in the end there’s nothing worse than being ignored, feeling like an outcast. I can answer test questions and make good grades, but who will answer my questions? Like what kind of democracy treats students as if we’re at the bottom of a pyramid of power? And how the way our school is structured doesn’t seem to meet the needs of humans. The only response from teachers, both times: a smile. Then back to the supposed real stuff. My school constructs our world as right or wrong, not questions; us or them, not we; black or white, not colors; back then or later, not now.
Our English teacher fills the silence by reminding us of our next deadline, telling us we need to turn in our project proposal tomorrow. Not used to choices, I’ve been struggling for weeks to come up with a simple idea for an English project. The obvious of the day jumps out: I’ll do something related to the backpack search policy. Like, a survey of what students think. Maybe I can make our voices heard for a change.
I turn this idea over in my head for the rest of class, and when the bell rings, I ask my teacher for approval of my project. Looking sheepish, and I think trying to make up for what happened in class, she says okay. She also says, “Coming up with enough information may be hard since none of us, including teachers, know much about what is actually happening or why.”
Off to my last morning class, Spanish. Again the walking-dead aura of zombie routine permeates the halls. True, there’s also a bit of joking between those who can rapidly switch into life gear. But nobody walks with a sense of purpose. This project idea has given me a new sense of purpose, but now I need to translate my inner spark to action out there in the world.
Finally, lunch, among a sea of about a hundred students in grades nine through twelve. I sit with my usual cafeteria group. Conversation is a repeat of everything I’ve heard all day—mostly, the unknown circumstances of the gun incident, though everyone switches to the topic of a fight that took place at the community basketball game last night.
Barely listening, I scan the cafeteria looking for underclass students who might know what’s behind the backpack search thing. The cafeteria tables are markers of cliques: jocks and cheerleaders from the community teams, the beautiful people, minority students, skaters, computer geeks. Here, the locus of student power, power to decide who fits where in the status hierarchy, not unlike their parents’ views. Anyone not fitting in the tight social structure chooses a life cast aside.
Lunch social time, the only thing we control in school, reinforces the stereotype of “all teenagers care about is social life.” That’s mixed up. We care about what we are allowed to be in charge of. Like, who enjoys homework, busywork assignments? Instead, we gravitate to all kinds of social media, while adults watch TV, check work e-mail messages, or are glued to Facebook.
I spot the kid from California—a new student this year, a sophomore—sitting on the low window ledge. He must be missing California sun to choose sitting by himself just to catch a few rays. I can relate to seeking out light and warmth as a slice of life in the dead of winter. This is February, after all. I decide to see what he knows about all this.
; As I walk toward the window, I notice the fog covering the Virginia Blue Ridge and Allegheny mountain summits has lifted. School is like artificial fog, preventing our view of those mountain anchors.
The new boy always stands out with his outrageous dress—today, a purple bow tie with bright yellow polka dots. Every day, even winter, he wears neon flip-flops, often of mixed colors, with the required coat and tie. Another always is the “QUESTION AUTHORITY” button on his coat lapel. He’s a definite contrast to my totally average appearance; only my sandals and wool socks make me stand out.
I smile as I walk up. “What’s up?”
“Nothing,” he says, returning the smile and taking his ear buds out.
“You’re called Surfer Boy, right?”
He grimaces. “Unfortunately. I call you Listener Girl. You don’t say much, but it seems like lots of people want to talk things over with you.”
Pretty observant guy. He seems way comfortable being alone. I guess I appear comfortable, but I’m not. There’s a lot of anger and insecurity I keep in.
“They call me Country Girl. I’ve known these mostly city kids since ninth grade, but they’ve all been together since pre-school, learning every button to push in each other for high drama. Getting conflict going relieves boredom. So I listen to their gripes and provide some perspective. The focus stays on them. They aren’t too interested in hearing about me.”
Hope that didn’t come out whiny. I’ve never told anyone here how I really feel about being invisible. “You don’t eat?” I say, trying to take the focus off me.
“Nah, I wait till I get home,” he says with a shrug. “So how does this naming thing work, anyway?”
The collective splattering of words off concrete cafeteria walls assaults my ears, competing with his easy-going stream of words. I slide in closer to him, not because I can’t hear but because I’m attracted to his deep voice, the way it floats effortlessly.
“The top of the student food chain uses their power by granting nicknames and everyone else goes along,” I explain. “I don’t eat here either. Hey, you hear the backpack announcement this morning? I’m in the dark about it. I want to do a student survey about the policy, for my English project, but I need more background info. What do people in the sophomore class say?” Man, I am a chatty one today. My school conversations are usually one, maybe two sentences tops.
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