My Wild Little Girl Gets in Some Trouble
Rise Up Children, Your Parents Will Follow
THE PRISON SYSTEM, THE SCHOOL SYSTEM, THE WHOLE FUCKING SOCIAL SYSTEM IS ROTTEN
This is not the BLOGessay I intended to post. I had a series of four environmental issues and environmental heroes pieces all planned out surrounding Earth Day tomorrow. I nearly posted a similar piece, as this has turned out to be, last week, about unfortunately typical vicious stupidity in Alabama’s schools, as usual promulgated by the State. A Birmingham ‘alternative’ high school saw fit to steal cell phones from over a hundred students, who were minding their own business but breaking a State statute disallowing “ALL ELECTRONIC DEVICES” from school grounds. And, thank GOD! fifty or so parents got angry enough about this perfidious brain-dead behavior to demand an accounting. I’m telling you, people will rise up against the BullShit just as likely when the stakes are small as when the issues are huge.
I’ll write more about this when I’ve had a chance to be in communication with some of my Birmingham compadres---a piece about the murderous madness advanced in the name of national security in Anniston was going to be my Alabama entry for the week; it will wait until the morrow. When I saw, Sunday or Monday in the “Times,” that Columbia’s Grad Students intended to strike, along with Ph.d. candidates at half-a-dozen other elitish colleges---where they perform most of the teaching duties but end up paying for it instead of receiving compensation much of the time---that also nearly impelled me to bring forth the B’ham piece, with a different twist. I have a friend about to embark on the long grind at Columbia, either for a Ph.d. in sociology or an MPH; and I teach a motley combination of the college bound, the already-enrolled but textually challenged, and so on. But again I demurred from this inclination.
Today, however, my very own children presented me with irresistible impetus to consider this issue of power and human rights and schooling and education in the context of America coming to pieces and everyone in a bad state of denial about it except the young and the poor, who are about to blow up at the ‘mainstream’ putrefaction that passes for contemplation and analysis about our current pass. Education is an inevitable topic of interest, in that I teach a hundred or so youngsters, primarily Asian American, mostly ESL. Also, my very own precious little gems are in middle school, at that most insane and insanely vulnerable of ages.
I had just finished a report about the Citizen Panel Project(SEE the “Citizen Science Democracy Network” post from a couple weeks back)for a couple of colleagues when I got a call from an unknown number on my cell. It was my daughter. My immediate thought was, “I’ve forgotten another fucking orthodontist appointment!” But no, those always are Mondays, to facilitate my assistance with the toll of that process, toward which I could otherwise afford very little contribution.
“Daddy?” I was spacing, and this sort of call was highly unusual---only the second time. Freak-out or time-for-pride? “A couple of friends and I?” Freak-out, definitely trouble anyway. “We’re in the principal’s office? Cause we wore our dresses too short?” I can’t help myself, I still find the tendency of ‘Valley-Girl’ speak to make everything a question pretty cool. “Daddy?”
I remained silent, lost in several competing thoughts: one of which was that I was going to have to write about this; one of which was relief; one of which was whether my advice had had any impact, about rape and mayhem sometimes coming to girls with a pretense of “tough” and salacious plastered all over the surface; one of which was a memory almost exactly thirty four years old. I stood in front of the podium in Thomas Jefferson’s auditorium, about to deliver a speech, my nerdy-boy longshot race for Student Council President on the line.
I made a presentation that so electrified the crowd, about color equity, student power, and democracy, all wrapped around our right to rid the halls of the noxious, arbitrary, and stupid dress code, that the ovation lasted for five minutes, our staid and stolidly staunch former-coach- principal a shaken man as he tried to quiet the mob that had come to its feet. I swear to God, it could have been exactly thirty-four years ago, definitely a Spring day in 1970, the very notion of the correspondence appealing to my proclivities to produce promising premises about random conjunctions. “Daddy, are you still there?”
“Yeah hon. What do you need?” Again, I can’t help myself, my first inclination is to see what I can do, rather than be stern or tough or whatever else a ‘good’ parent might offer.
She tittered into the phone. “They say we have to get new clothes.” Little Casey, who IS tough, proceeded to launch into detailed descriptions of all the outfits she needed me to retrieve. ‘What?’ I thought. ‘All these young women are my daughter’s diminutive size?’ But my cortex kicked in as well, and I noted I was working, that I could only make the journey when I found an opportune moment to slip away, that this was inconvenient, all the while trying to picture just how slutty in dress and demeanor were my little girl and her friends on a sunny warm Southern Appalachian Wednesday. The quiet laughter continued as I pontificated.
“Listen, you! This is no laughing matter. Breaking the rules has consequences.” The laughter stopped, and a sober eleven year old spoke, not only for my benefit but for another, silent, watcher at her end of the line. “I know it’s ‘no laughing matter.’ PLEASE, daddy!”
She had told me to use the spare key to get into their beautiful new home. Stories geyser to the surface as I think about my ex and her husband and my children and their new life, which grew out of the crazy coming together of me and their lion-hearted mother, our joining about as unlikely as any possible configuration of Montague and Capulet imagineable. All of this will spill out, given time enough and tide. But not today, obviously.
I told my Executive Director, for one vector of writing projects I manage and assist, about the deal, and he growled fiercely, as is his wont. But his logic was impeccable when he asked, finally, “What ya gonna do?” and let me go.
Their mom had told me of one such trek, when my son had the temerity, definitely more pointedly than appropriate given his age and her lack of brainpower, to insult his English teacher’s choice of George Bush for President. “It’s just like when you were ten!” And my pounding heart definitely thundered away when I came up to the school. The trouble is, I had no experience of this sort of thing, but for the bizarre forgery incident in sixth grade, just after I had moved to Texas(more later), and I hadn’t done anything then, so I was much more akin, in the event, to Billy Budd than to Tom Sawyer or Becky Thatcher.
I have, of late, through no special virtue or course of work on my part, somehow come to a very peaceful and powerful place in my life. Thundering cardiology notwithstanding, I knew I would remain equable, that I would be firm but open with my child, that I would ask for documentation from the authorities. I parked in the Principal’s parking space and went in with light heart and a desire to know more about life’s little mysteries.
The entire scene was anticlimactic. The Assistant Principal and the secretaries were a little officious, perhaps, a bit defensive when I asked for a copy of the dress code policy. “Oh, it’s definitely on page four and five of their student handbook, four AND five,” the secretary noted. The AP chimed in, “Oh, yes! And we’ve had them in for workshops on this just recently.” Workshops? Jesus. I braced for the worst, exposed crotches, some grotesque burlesque of adult sexuality in the guise of my little girl.
What came through the door, instead, was my normally fashionable daughter, with a preternaturally fashionable friend, skirts roughly mid thigh or a little lower, blouses balancing lower body skin with upper body modesty. And Jimbo the clown fumbled with half-a-dozen girlfits(just in case), dropping shit all over the floor, agreeing(in spite of my promise to make Casey take all the extras)to return home with the three additional pairs of sweat pants and skirts I’d brought along.
So why write about this, given the lack of fireworks? The rationale is not just that I still find a dress code to be a fancy way of finagling fascist finery into a mundane package. And my reasons certainly don’t encompass belittling anyone as a person---not my estimable daughter, nor her friends, nor any of the educational heroes doing their best to make sense of things like ?skirts that reach the ends of your fingers” handed down from somewhere on high. And clearly I have no high moral ground to occupy in relation to this incident as such, although the maddening inefficient foolishness of the occasion is some ineffable combination of crazed and bizarre and hilarious and horrible.
The reason I write is more about how things are interconnecting these days. My friend Rick has a ‘dress code’ that reflects his DUI conviction when he does community service. I saw no less than four people pulled over by police today in what I can’t help but notice as ‘color-code’ violations, “driving while Black” in other words. The students in Birmingham have elicited echoes from every Georgian teenager with whom I’ve spoken over the past week. I am working with half a dozen former high school students now serving HARD prison time, subject to the most severe dress code, not a single one of whom should have served a day in jail.
Thus, as the other dress code fanatics, in Iraq and Korea and the Phillippines are getting fed up with dying for the wealth and convenience of others, and Congress and the Department of Defense prepare new “Universal Service” requirements, no insultingly stupid and indefensible “CODE”, no matter how innocuous, seems safe to ignore or treat with indifference. I say to the students of this country that the time has come to STAND-UP!! If a revolt against a moronic standard of attire helps focus attention, so be it.
One way or another, anyone paying attention sees the tidal swell gathering to sweep over the complacency and foolish arrogant ignorance of this land. Young people have always ended up a leading force in such social concatenations. They will be again. I’ll advise my children accordingly: to pay attention, to get organized, to stand for social and economic democracy and human rights, and to watch their asses. Who knows how this will all pan out? The coming times will likely make any social storm in recent memory pale in comparison.
I CALLED MY EX WHEN I LEFT THE SCHOOL, JUST TO SEE IF CASEY HAD REPORTED IN. SHE HADN’T. I HOPE SHE DID SO THIS AFTERNOON. I FOUND OUT MY SON HAS ALSO HAD ANOTHER LITTLE BRUSH WITH THE AUTHORITIES, THIS ONE MORE SINISTER AND TROUBLING THAN THE LAST. WHAT A CULTURE---OF VIOLENCE, ONE-UP-MANSHIP, POINTLESS BRAG, AND POSING, THAT WE HAVE CREATED.
MORE LATER, AS SURELY AS DAWN FOLLOWS DARK, “LORD WILLING AND THE CREEK DON’T RISE.”