From the "stories I’ve never told" file:
In 1980, at the age of thirteen, I began attending the York School, a private Episcopalian college prep day school in Monterey. The school had grades 8-12, and I entered in the eighth grade. I lasted six months, and was kicked out ("dismissed") from school in March 1981 (just days before John Hinckley shot Reagan, for those who remember the era).
I was dismissed because I was caught stealing money from the boys’ locker room on campus, but that wasn’t the only strike against me. I was failing algebra and chemistry, and had a reputation as a trouble-maker. On a very conservative campus, I had distributed copies of the Socialist Worker, and had openly defaced a Republican campaign poster (signing my name to my handiwork) days before Reagan defeated Carter in the tragic November 1980 election. I was not a popular boy — sullen and quiet in the classes I didn’t like (math, science); boisterous and obnoxious in the classes which I enjoyed (English, geography, Latin). I have no doubt that the school was grateful that I gave them an excellent and justifiable reason to dismiss me when I was discovered pilfering change from other student’s clothes.
A note about the theft: I wasn’t stealing bills. Indeed, I left the "real money" alone. What I wanted — all that I wanted — was change for the soda machines. Cokes cost only a quarter, and I was as addicted to caffeine then as I am now. It was a sad little incident.
In any event, the Monterey Peninsula is very small, and was smaller in 1981. As in any small-town community, word of my dismissal from York (I was the first student kicked out in three or four years) spread rapidly. My mother admitted to some understandable embarrassment, and I had to endure much teasing when I was forced to re-enroll in the local public junior high school just before the end of my eighth grade year. Everyone knew I had been kicked out of York, and was now back at the same middle school I had left the previous June.
Over the years, the rumors about what had led to my dismissal grew more and more elaborate, to the point that I was said to have been dealing drugs, or — my favorite — caught having sex with another boy in the showers. (Whether this non-existent partner of mine had been dismissed as well was never clear.) Alas, the truth was far more prosaic.
Why tell the story now? Well, it’s a small part of my life, and it was a terrific learning experience for me. I learned that I had a defiant, rebellious streak that could be harnessed for good but which could also get me in a great deal of trouble. I learned that my recklessness had consequences, and could hurt people who loved me. Indeed, this was the first time I realized that my carelessness and defiance did have a very real impact on those around me. It took me another twenty years to truly grasp what that would mean, of course. And when I run into kids in youth group who are struggling with authority, working way below their potential, and getting into trouble, I can tell them my story of being thrown out of prep school and establish some reasonably good bona fides.
I learned, thank goodness, to knock out the stealing habit — though the soda addiction has proved far more difficult to kick.
I’m not so sure that pinching nickels and dimes for sodas at a prep school qualifies as bona fides for many kids in 2006.
The closest I’ve come to anything like this was when I was fired from our daily university newspaper–on the eve of Election Day 2002, no less, and I was political editor too–when it was discovered that I was also working under an assumed name for the local underground weekly as well, and had made use of university property–stuff from the news room, etc.–to produce and distribute our little rabble-rousing production. It was a silly thing to be fired for, but then, I knew the rules and had broken them anyway (the underground paper was officially banned on our campus). For a while I tried to milk the incident for some serious bad boy bona fides, but in time I came to realize that the whole affair was really rather pathetic: a punk kid thinking he was “taking a stand” by breaking a bunch of stupid rules. Mostly what I did was just create a headache for our long-suffering faculty advisor.
Oh, the stealing quarters isn’t what establishes the bona fides — it’s the shame of getting kicked out of prep school in a small town.
Russell, you rascal; though it isn’t possible for you to rise higher in my estimation, the story makes me happy.
It’s obvious that you didn’t belong at a prep school. Neither did my son. I sent him to a small, nonprofit, “gifted” school where “dangerous thinking” was valued.
Glad that you survived the experience and lived to tell the tale. LOL!
I’m delighted to having risen even higher in your eyes, Hugo. Though I must correct a mistake in my previous post: it was the eve of Election Day, 1992, not 2002, when I was thrown out of the campus newsroom. I’m no longer 23, thanks very much.