The school for extreme fuckups was small, like the Quaker school, with around fifty to sixty students. But it was far different than the Quaker place. In that it was more like a prison/mental hospital than a school.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent Its student body was mostly male, and it was definitely an assortment of characters.
My first day, I recall witnessing a miscreant, a longhair rocker type, who’d run around the halls, playing air-guitar and loudly shouting Soundgarden songs. He was leaping and headbanging until he was chased down by security guards and bundled into an isolation room to calm down.
In the isolation room he continued his psychic concert, his musical performance, flailing manically, kicking, fist-pumping and strutting, rocking out until he ran out of steam and was then safely released back into the school’s general population.
I remember there was another kid, a slim and wiry fellow, with a body like a snake and a shaved head so shiny you could see light bounce off it. He’d been an aspiring Olympic gymnast before his career as a delinquent. Just for fun, he’d creep outside, during class, and start running laps around the building. Then he’d laugh when the security guards, who were mostly obese, middle-aged men, would have to come out there, and, huffing and puffing, the pathetic guards would fecklessly chase him around the building, in circles, like a Warner Brothers cartoon.
Every so often he’d, somehow, climb up to the top of the building (it was a one story, long, rectangular structure) and he’d sit up there on the roof, while the security guards and teachers would yell at him to come down, threatening to call the police or fire department.
Then he’d backflip down from the roof, landing perfectly on his feet every time, and surrender, walk back in, without any problems, and serve detention or time in the isolation room. There he’d sit quietly, cross-legged with his eyes pressed shut and his head thrown back, meditating or something like a Buddhist monk.
The head security guard, a former vice cop, a muscular, Jon Jones looking guy, shaved head and all, was in charge of collecting drug tests. Everyone in the school, even students who’d never been in trouble with substance abuse or possession, sales, everyone, to a boy or girl, had to piss in a cup at random intervals.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent There was a kid, a total weirdo, with headgear braces, who probably never touched a drug in his life. One morning he was chosen to be drug tested, and he pitched a hysterical fit, a shrieking tantrum…
The weirdo was really fucking weird. We called him Ravioli because he constantly talked of ravioli, like every day, anytime you saw him, he’d be ranting about ravioli, about cooking it, eating it. Also, he’d talk about stealing it. Stealing frozen ravioli. The kid had landed in that school because he regularly skipped school to steal things from stores. It was his thing, stealing from convenience stores, grocery stores, frozen things, especially. He bragged that he’d once stolen a whole chicken. (Not a live one, a frozen one.)
The Jon Jones security boss cornered Ravioli, in the hallway, during a break between classes, and told him, menacingly, like he’d tell everyone else, that it was his time to “give,” his chosen euphemism for pissing in a cup...
Ravioli exploded into histrionics, freaking out, his eyes shining with tears, saying how he couldn’t do it, he couldn’t piss in the cup. And he fell to the hallway floor, rolling around, slapping at the cold white linoleum, weeping and shrieking and convulsing...
I don’t know how they eventually got Ravioli’s piss, but I’m sure they did. The Jon Jones guy’d stalk students relentlessly, following them with a small lidded plastic cup, hounding them to “give.” Guy was like the Javert of piss. He knew that sooner or later the kids would piss, and he’d be there when they did…
We had these group therapy meetings that Jon Jones dude would head. Along with a counselor/teacher, a pretty, young, but terribly skinny blond, who’d tell stories of her bulimia.
In the group therapy, there’d be “positives” given for those who’d behaved well, gotten good grades, and “negatives” given for those who’d ran afoul of school rules. There was often shouting, insults and fistfights breaking out in these meetings. As well as personal stories involving a lot of parental abuse, neglect.
But many of my classmates there didn’t seem off. Most were normal, outwardly, not kids who “killed their teachers” or anything of the sort.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent Most had problems with reading, though, and maybe that’s where many of their issues stemmed. Because they couldn’t keep up academically.
The books in the library were all at a far lower reading level than a typical high school. Most were at elementary school level, had large font, simplistic vocabulary.
In English class, we’d been asked to read one book for the term, and I found a book in the library about Magic Johnson. It was quick, easy, maybe 3rd grade level.
I read it in a couple minutes and wrote a short report on it.
I remember handing the report to my teacher, a flamboyantly gay middle-aged Caribbean man (who had these huge, pointy ears, like an elf), and the teacher was so proud that I’d read the book, understood it, and had written something about it. I guess he didn’t see much of that there. Mostly he broke up fights.
Since I was finished, I was allowed to return to the library and study. When I got there, I asked the librarian, a chunky Iranian lady in a baggy gray robe and matching headscarf, if she had a newspaper, like maybe The New York Times or Miami Herald or Sun Sentinel, the latter of which I read most often, and the librarian shook her head, told me no, they didn’t “because those papers are at too high a reading level for the school’s students.”
She passed me a copy of USA Today…
On the last day of school before summer break, a couple fights broke out, which was odd, considering how happy and relaxed most students would usually be before vacation. A teacher there confided in me that it was because many of the students had rough home situations, some lived in group homes, and they’d preferred coming to school rather than staying at home all day and that a few didn’t have anywhere to be, were basically homeless.
That day, one of the security guards, I’m not sure why, came into a classroom I’d been sitting in and began yelling at me about not signing my contract. I’d forgotten or simply neglected to do it that day. I can’t remember.
(Every day when we arrived at school, we’d sign a behavior “contract” spelling out the rules we were to follow. At the close of the school day we’d have it signed by
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent a teacher to demonstrate we’d abided by the rules. If it wasn’t signed, we’d be in trouble, lose privileges...)
I laughed off the security guard’s ire because it didn’t seem like a thing to be so angry about. There was no need to raise his voice, and I told him so, but didn’t curse or yell at him. However, the guy lost his cool, flipped out, cursed at me and tried to grab my throat and strangle me!
Knowing martial arts, I broke away from him quickly, used a defensive maneuver to shove him back, and threw a few air punches and kicks in his direction, to let him know what was coming his way if he persisted. I’d planned on attacking his crotch, his nuts, and fucking maiming his manhood.
Though he was a lot bigger than me, I knew exactly the moves to take him down; him being as slovenly and obese as he was, it probably would have ended poorly for him; or me, who knows, not like I’m Chuck Norris...
He backed off, though, left the room in a huff. I’m sure he was simply burned out from dealing with little shits headbanging in the hallways, having to break up fights, and chasing backflipping gymnasts around the building and off the roof.
Poor bastard.
I could have gotten him fired, probably, for putting his hands on me, and probably should have. But, in truth, I pitied him. Felt bad he had such a thankless, grueling job.
And instead of staying in that hellhole, I pursued a more fruitful path. I left that school and was extremely fortunate to attend another small private school, where my friend Taylor went, and had a chill year, in a chill school, smoking weed every day at lunch, with Taylor, and still maintaining an “A” average, for my senior year.
Sadly, due to my prior fucking up, ditching school, my credits were short and precluded me from graduation. I was invited to return to that small chill school, to do a fifth year of high school, but I decided against it. I didn’t want to be a nineteen-year-old with a bunch of fourteen-year-old freshmen. I was tired of high school, too. I wanted to do something else, go on to college.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent Since I’d not graduated high school, I couldn’t go anywhere, though, except enroll in limited courses at a community college. A place Chris Rock so eloquently calls
“a disco with books.”
While taking a couple courses at community college, I studied for my GED. And I passed the test, easily, that fall, and was able to still graduate high school in the same year as my peers, albeit in the fall instead of summer.