Richard M. Nixon High School - 1985
Mr. Wilkins slid down the aisle as though personally demonstrating the movement of the glaciers; slow, unyielding, and leaving massive destruction in his wake. His arm moved rhythmically from the stack of test papers in his hand to the desktop. Back and forth, back and forth. He looked like a man showing the basic steps of some macabre dance. Left foot forward, right hand to pile of papers, right foot forward, right hand to desktop, left foot forward.... As he slapped each paper down on the ancient wooden surfaces he called out the name of the student and the grade emblazoned on the paper in bright red ink.

“McKenzie... C+.” Left foot forward, right hand to pile of papers, right foot forward, right hand to desktop.

“Aronson... B-” Left foot forward, right hand to pile of papers, right foot forward, right hand to desktop.

“Reboulet... C-” I saw Jack Reboulet roll his head back to stare at the ceiling as a quiet “shit” escaped his lips. Jack was on the basketball team and needed to keep a C average in order to play. He lived under the delusion that he was going to make a fortune in the NBA and therefore didn’t need to worry about trivial things such as education. I’ve tried to convince him that being the star of a Division III high school basketball team in the middle of Long Island isn’t exactly the ticket to stardom, but he would just begin rattling off his statistics and that would be that. The kindest thing anyone could do for Jack would be to drive him into New York City and put him out on a court in, say, Washington Heights. It would only take about five minutes before he realized just where he stood in the hierarchy of high school basketball players. Of course, Mr. Wilkins might just accomplish the same thing with his archaic system of grading.

Mr. Wilkins is the type of teacher that would be called “Old Man Wilkins” in clichéd network sitcoms. He was the living embodiment of that cliché, although he certainly had to have been young once. In fact, he was probably even a sixteen year old high school junior like me at one time, although that’s a little hard to believe. He reminded me of that mean old guy from “It’s A Wonderful Life”, Mr. Potter. A warped, twisted old man. He appeared to be about 170 years old with eyeglasses that must have been cut from the bottoms of beer bottles. He was shrunken and stooped and wore a perpetual scowl. I had never known him to say a kind word about any student in his class, nor had I ever seen him give a grade above B+. His now famous and tirelessly repeated quotation is “If I were to give you an A, then I would be implying that you know everything there is to know. In that case, there would be no use for me.” We all prayed for the day that someone would get an A.

I was next in line. Foot, hand, foot, slap! I waited a moment before looking down, waiting to hear him cry out my usual B+, the maximum grade. Math was one of my better subjects. It has always come naturally to me, the concepts and the figures. It’s usually like that with abstracts. The contours of my thoughts flow in non-linear patterns, so the more abstract the concept, the more easily I grasp the essence of it. I am lost in subjects that require a simple recitation of facts. Don’t even mention history to me.

“Garnette, F!”

The words, so alien and unexpected, did not immediately impress their meaning upon me. For a moment I didn’t move. Then understanding pushed aside confusion and I was too stunned to speak. From the corner of my eye I could see the glacier continue its tireless journey, carving deep gorges into student’s GPAs. I slowly looked down at the sheet of paper lying on the desk in front of me. Glaring up at me like a neon sign on a cheap motel was the boldly stroked letter “F”. No explanation, no other marks on the page. One simple letter.

“What?” I breathed the word, disbelief washing over me. “Wait a minute.” I said, a little louder. Wilkins didn’t hear very well, or he simply ignored me. “Wait a minute!” I cried out, my voice resounding with far more force than I’d intended. This time he heard and turned to look at me. In fact, everyone had taken notice and the room fell into such a profound silence that you could hear someone thinking about dropping a pin.

“Yes?”

I was momentarily paralyzed at being the center of this sphere empty of sound and movement. “I…” I began weakly, fireflies buzzing in my head and circling the interiors of my eyes. My brief disorientation cleared as I caught sight of the “F” emblazoned on my test paper. Courage wrought by indignation welled up inside of me and my thoughts became focused once again.

“This is a mistake,” I said boldly, holding the paper up for him to see. “I… I answered every problem correctly. I know I did. I don’t understand how you could have given me an ‘F’.”

Wilkins simply stared at me for a long moment, then turned away and continued down the aisle. The rest of the class was still watching me, wondering what I would do. Would I simply let Wilkins ignore me like this? Was I going to let him trample on my pride, like a freight train crushing a penny laid on the rail?

The answer, of course, was yes.

All at once I realized that I was still holding the test paper up in the air and I quickly brought my hand down to my desk. Utterly defeated, I took the only action of defiance left to one in my position. I started muttering.

“Stupid ass,” I said in a voice so low that my own ears didn’t even register the sound.

“Excuse me?” The voice was sharp and came from the back of the room. “Do you have something to add?” It was Wilkins, suddenly with the ears of a hunting dog. I looked back in sudden alarm to find that he’d turned around and stood facing me with arms akimbo.

My first reaction was to retreat, deny everything, and crawl into a very dark hole, but there they were again. The whole class looking at me, challenging me, daring me to say something. With a sudden rush of moral righteousness, I stammered, “I… got a-all of the answer right. I’m sure of it. I know this stuff like the back of my hand.” I winced at having used such a ridiculous cliché, but hell, that’s what clichés are for, times of stress.

“Oh, I see,” Wilkins replied sarcastically. “You feel you deserve a ‘B’ for your efforts.”

“Well….” Here goes, I thought. “…actually, I think I should have gotten an ‘A’”.

I’d like to say that my classmates let out a gasp and gripped their desktops more tightly in suspense, but mostly they just chuckled knowingly.

Wilkins blinked deliberately. “You think you deserve a what?”

“An ‘A’?” I said it tentatively, like someone holding their hand out to a be sniffed by a rotweiller and hoping it remains attached their wrist.

“A what?” Wilkins repeated this in a voice laced with an infuriating naiveté, as though he had never heard this term before and needed it defined.

I am fairly certain that Wilkins’ goal was to intimidate and humiliate, but his refusal to offer me even a shred of respect, to at least try to discuss the matter with me, sent me over an edge he’d been steadily pushing me toward the entire semester. To coin a phrase, I snapped. “I should have gotten an A, God dammit!”

“Watch your mouth, young man,” Wilkins said sharply, pointing a bony finger at me and dropping the wide-eyed innocent act. “I give the grades in this class and I say F.”

“Why? Are you saying that my answers are wrong? If you are, then maybe I should be teaching this class.” I was letting my anger take over my tongue; not really a good idea with Wilkins.

He straightened. “I never said the answers were wrong. In fact, they were perfect. You failed because you don’t know how to follow instructions. Consider it an object lesson.”

“What instr…”

Before I could get it out, he interrupted me. “Right there on the top of the page.” He was gesturing so violently with his gnarled finger that I feared it was going to snap off. “It says ‘Show all work’. All I see on your paper are a lot of answers. You have failed to show me how you came to those answers, therefore you have failed.”

I couldn’t believe it. This was absurd! “This is nuts! I answered the god damned questions correctly. What difference does it make whether I write out the formulas and fill in all the blanks? I did it in my head!”

“That’s not the point,” Wilkins said smugly. “You have no discipline, Garnette. You have a gift for mathematics, I’ll grant you, but mathematics is a science and science demands procedure and method and, above all, discipline. Until you learn that lesson, you will never amount to more than a clever sideshow act.” He mimicked a carnival hawker, “Come see the boy who can do calculus in his head!” The class gave a nervous laugh at this.

Now I was really mad. His jokes were better than mine. I was about to argue further when he beat me to the punch.

“Think of it this way. If an alien being were to land here in this classroom and pick up a sheet of paper at random to determine how advanced the human race was in mathematics and he picked up yours, how would he know the depth of our knowledge? Hmm?” He paused for a moment to let this ridiculous statement take root, then went on. “Think of me as an alien and it is your job to show me what you know and how you know it.” He looked at me in a fatherly manner. “Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”

I believe this was the first time in my life that I really remember losing control of my temper. I’d been angry before, but not like this. I didn’t want to hear anything that he was saying. In retrospect, I suppose he was right and I was just being an arrogant bastard, but right there in that class with that big red letter “F” throbbing at me from the page…

“I’ll tell you what an alien would think if he landed in this class right now. He’d wonder how in hell the human race has survived this long with an asshole like you in charge of our education!”

***

The principal looked at me and slowly shook his head. His eyes were tired. His brow was tired. When he spoke, his voice was tired. “Randy, what were you thinking?”

I thought for a moment how to reply, but nothing particularly useful came to mind. It was a trick question. There was no way to answer without appearing to be even more the fool. Instead I allowed myself to sink a little lower in the tattered armchair. It creaked in protest and I felt a split in the vinyl upholstery widen as the corner of my blue jeans pocket hooked it. I raised my head and tried on one of my better innocent expressions. It didn’t appear to have any effect as the tired head continued to shake in that slow, resolute manner that spoke louder than a tirade of shouting.

Robert Adams, the principal of Richard Nixon High School in Island Meadow, New York was an ageless man. Small and trim, he kept his hair close cropped and had one of those compromise hairlines; it slips back a few inches at a young age, but then stops and holds position while everyone else goes bald. He wore wire frame glasses with those springy loops that hook around the ears. As I understand, the reason for wearing those little loops is to keep your glasses from flying off your head while participating in active sports like tennis or baseball. Why a high school principal should need them is a mystery. Maybe he was afraid of a rowdy line in the cafeteria?

Bob Adams was a good guy, a real normal person who didn’t get all hung up on power trips like some educational administrators. Most everyone in the school liked him, at least everyone I knew. Oh, I’m sure there were those boneheads who will find some reason to dislike just about anybody, but who cares what they think anyway? Bob’s gift was that he never seemed to forget that he had been a kid. He had the ability to see an issue from the side of the student as well as the school. When an old regulation no longer made sense, he changed it. When the kids asked for something and there seemed no reason to deny it… he didn’t. It all sounds so simple and obvious, but we live in a world where the simple and obvious all too often gets crushed under the heal of the traditional and the downright nasty.

Adams may have been a great principal, but he was more than that to me. I’d known him since I was a kid… well, a little kid. He lived down the block from my family and I grew up mowing his lawn (for profit, of course) and playing stickball and street hockey in front of his house. Growing up, he was the only adult that I could talk to about delicate subjects. He was the only one I could trust. I knew I could ask his counsel on anything, no matter how bad and he wouldn’t turn me in. I was pretty lucky to have him. I think a lot of kids grow up without a Bob Adams.

What’s that? What about my parents? Please. I couldn’t talk to my parents about anything. My mother was a space cadet and my father simply didn’t care. I remember asking him for help when some big kid two years older starting picking on me at school. He told me that he couldn’t fight my battles for me and that I should stand up for myself. The next day I stood up for myself. That afternoon at the emergency room while my face was being stitched up, he told me that I was pretty stupid to take on someone so big and that I should learn to just walk away. Not exactly the wisdom of Solomon. My mother wouldn’t stop crying and wondering what had become of her sweet little boy who now got into fights at school.

So much for my parents. Back to Bob Adams.

He wasn’t always my guide, mentor, and confidante. In fact, he didn’t always live down the street, but when he arrived, he did so with style. He dared battle the forces of evil on behalf of us kids when he served as negotiator between us and the grouchy woman across the street who operated the “black hole”. Now, I understand that black holes are not generally found in suburbia, but allow me to explain in this brief flashback sequence.

***

Long Island is a big sand bar that stretches off to the east of Manhattan for about 110 miles. The western end of the island is weighed down by Queens and Brooklyn, both boroughs of New York City, and both densely populated by apartment buildings, subways, and roads, roads, roads. These boroughs, these subsets of New York City, have more people living in them than most American cities. More even than some states. There is so much weight bearing down on that poor patch of sand that it’s a miracle it stays above sea level.

The eastern end of the island is home to Suffolk county. Once populated mostly by farmers, fisherman, and ducks, the electrification of the eastern reaches of the Long Island Railroad has made commuting into Manhattan feasible. Feasible, that is, if you don’t mind spending one hour and forty-five minutes on the train just to get to Penn Station… each way. Apparently, many see no problem with this. They simply get their eight hours of sleep on the installment plan; five hours at night, ninety minutes in the morning, ninety minutes in the evening. As a result of this commuter tenacity, the farms have been bought up, little Stepford communities put on paper, and then built on the land. Strip malls, shopping malls, and widened highways have turned the rural end of the island into the ugly sister of Nassau County.

Ah, Nassau County. My home. The land on which I was raised. Once a big potato farm, sandwiched between Queens and Suffolk County, Nassau is the biggest housing development in the world. From border to border it is an endless stretch of two bedroom Cape Cod and Ranch houses separated by fences and hedges. It’s like trying to find privacy in the men’s room at the Super Bowl during halftime. When I think of Nassau County, I see images of endless traffic jams, noisy neighbors, and masses of people living out their lives jammed into little boxes, trapped on a pile of sand with nowhere to go and no way to get there. I’m being a little harsh, I know. Nassau does have its good points; the beaches, the… hmm, well…, the beaches.

I see these shortcomings now that I am older and significantly more cynical. The eyes of the boy I once was saw a very different picture. If nothing else, Nassau County was a great place to grow up. Lots of kids, cool parks, and loads of flat side streets to ride bicycles on. Before the age of Nintendo, when kids actually played in the sun from time to time, these streets were teaming with life. Ballgames, tag, touch football, Frisbee, and countless other games made up on the spot were the stuff that filled our days. I can not imagine a childhood spent indoors wiggling my fingers over a game pad and growing fat on Oreo cookies and chocolate milk. Sure, we ate Oreos and drank Yoo-Hoo, but for us it was essential rocket fuel, burned off as fast as we could stuff it down our throats. A rainy day was a disaster, not an excuse.

The street I lived on was built on a slight hill that ran perpendicular to the road. The street itself was level, but the small houses to one side were on the down slope and built slightly below the plane of the blacktop. This meant that their driveways pitched down from the street at about a ten degree angle. Because of the locations of curves and intersections on the street, we were left with only one stretch of straight, level road on which to lay out our playing fields; right in front of Mrs. Danville’s house.

I want to say that Mrs. Danville was a grouchy old lady, but she wasn’t particularly old. I didn’t know of any reason, actually, why she was so ill natured. Maybe she just needed more vitamins. Anyway, whenever we assembled for a game… any game, she came out of her house, settled into a ratty lawn chair, poised the garage door opener on the arm… and waited. She was tireless. She’d watch the progress of the game, expressionless, just waiting for the opportunity that she knew was destined to come. You’d think that maybe she would have something better to do, but no, she just bided her time. Who can say what thoughts were in her evil mind?

We were all aware of her presence and it was like a sniff of burning rubber in the air. You knew something bad was lurking out there, but you just tried to hold your nose and not think about it. The game would go on and everyone would try their best to prevent the disaster, but it was as inevitable as the Academy Awards ignoring all the really cool movies each year. Someone misplayed the ball and it careened toward Mrs. Danville’s driveway. A mad scramble ensued, but it was too late. The ball had passed the event horizon. Nothing could save it from the laws of physics. As it encountered the slope of the driveway, it began its decent into purgatory. Without changing her expression and with hardly a movement of her wrist, Mrs. Danville pressed the button on the garage door opener and the peaceful innocence of our youthful existence was once again shattered by the unearthly grinding and moaning of the garage door motor. Like a specter sent to torment us in our dreams, the door rose and our ball vanished into the black hole, never to be seen again.

Then, with an equally practiced movement, she tapped the button again and the door slammed shut, leaving an unearthly silence. Mrs. Danville would then slowly rise, straighten her housecoat, collect the garage door opener and go back inside.

There was nothing to do, no court of appeals. I don’t remember ever completing a single game played on that street. Not one, that is, until Robert Adams moved into the neighborhood and became our champion.

Mr. Adams, Bob to all of us, enjoyed watching the games from the day he moved in. He even came out into the street every now and then to take a few cuts. We all liked him and didn’t even know he was going to be the new high school principal. Hell, we were about eight years old at the time, so we hardly even knew that high school existed. The first time he witnessed Einstein’s theories being put into practical use by Mrs. Danville, he was astonished.

He immediately crossed the street and entered into an animated conversation. We were astonished. This was unprecedented. We didn’t know what to expect. I feared that her hand would go for the remote and kindly Mr. Adams would be inexorably drawn into that hell from which no ball had ever returned. Images of his fingertips clutching the edge of the garage door as it ground downward made me shiver as I stood there in the street, unable to look away.

After several minutes, we began to get restless. I mean, the novelty of watching two adults talking on a front lawn tends to wear off pretty quickly. We began gathering up our equipment when the Earth shook yet a second time. Mrs. Danville collected the remote and strode back into her house, followed by Mr. Adams. He had gone voluntarily, or so it seemed. Now we were really confused. Should we stay around in case he needed our help? Should we get the hell out of there?

Before we could make a decision, however, the screen door swung open and he re-emerged carrying a large cardboard box. He called out a word of thanks to Danville and headed straight for us. We gathered around him like he was the chosen one sent from God. This man had gone forth into the darkness and returned. Not just returned, mind you, but with a every ball we had ever lost to the black hole! Wiffle balls, pinkies, plastic hockey balls, tennis balls, even my old football! For all those religious folks crying in churches and begging the lord for a sign and getting nothing but a stiff neck and sore knees, here was an honest to goodness miracle.

After a moment of stunned silence, everyone began talking at once. A dozen eight and nine year old boys jabbering away. It sounded like feeding time in the monkey house. Robert Adams held up his hands for quiet.

“I’ve made a little bargain with Cora,” he said when we had finally shut up. Cora? Who the hell was Cora? Seeing our blank expressions, he quickly added, “uh, Mrs. Danville.” Ah. “You will be allowed to retrieve your balls from her yard and driveway from now on.” A cheer rose and the chorus of primates resumed its incomprehensible chatter. Again Adams waited for the din to die down.

“But,” he said slowly, silencing us. There is nothing quite so ominous to an eight year old boy than an adult announcing the word “but”. “In exchange you boys will come over to her house every Saturday and do the yard work for her.”

The cries of protest came from all sides, but Adams would hear none of it. “Now listen,” he explained. He sat down on the curb and gestured for us to gather round, which we did. It had become sort of an informal boy scout meeting. Adams spoke quietly. “Cora lives alone and she has a bad back. It’s hard for her to keep up with everything around the yard and she can’t afford to pay someone to do the work. The reason she’s been doing what she’s been doing is to try and keep you kids from running onto the lawn and, well, it’s worked. You guys will do anything to avoid that yard.” He stopped and smiled slightly. “I’ll admit it’s a little over the top, but she figured you were just a bunch of wild boys and wouldn’t listen any other way.”

“She never said anything. She never asked us to stay off the lawn,” Jack protested. “She just started stealing our stuff. Why should we do work for her?” We all nodded. Jack always took the lead in these situations. He was the only one of us who didn’t feel like, well, a kid when speaking to an adult.

Adams nodded. “There are a couple of reasons. First, she won’t take the balls anymore.” This was a good start. “And second, it would just be a nice thing to do. She’s your neighbor and she could use your help. You guys are young and strong and if you all work together it won’t even take an hour a week. So what do you say?”

I have held the highest respect for Robert Adams since that day. Not because he negotiated a settlement with Cora Danville, but for the way he sat down with us and spoke to us as equals. He didn’t issue any commandments. He didn’t scold or berate us. He never talked down to us in any way. He gave us the facts and left us to make our own decision. He has the ability, rare in adults, to see children as people; adults in small packages.

We took the deal. Every Saturday morning we’d convene over at Mrs. Danville’s house and spend an hour mowing and raking and weeding. It turns out that Cora Danville was a pretty nice lady. She would prepare lemonade and great snacks for us and we’d all settle down on her front step after the work. She wouldn’t say much. She had nothing in common with us really, but we all became friends anyway. I have very fond memories of sitting on the step with Jack and Todd and Cora Danville eating brownies and drinking lemonade. As the gang changed over the years, the new guys were told the score and most bought in. Those that didn’t were basically told to take a hike. We even painted her house when we were fourteen, but that’s an adventure that needs its own book to tell.

As the years passed, we began to realize that Mrs. Danville was aging far more quickly than our parents or our aunts or any other adult we could hold up for comparison. Slowly we began to realize that something wasn’t right and when we finally learned the truth, we all wished we hadn’t, but the knowledge forced us all to grow up a little sooner than we’d anticipated.

Mrs. Danville didn’t have a bad back. How could Robert Adams have explained to a bunch of eight year old monsters about the ravages of the cancer inside her? We watched her deteriorate during our early teenage years and as a group we took on more and more responsibility for her well-being; food shopping, laundry, cleaning the house, you name it. Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t martyrs who gave up all of our free time, but there were a dozen of us, so there was always someone available and it never really seemed like work. It was just something that needed to be done.

On the day before she went to the hospital for the last time, she asked for all of us to come over, even the guys we didn’t hang out with anymore, but who had helped out in the past. We sat on the front step. She had made lemonade and brownies, but I couldn’t think of eating. She told us that we were the finest boys she had ever known and that she loved each of us dearly.

What a sight. A whole pack of fifteen year old boys; tough, cool high school boys, crying like babies and hugging a frail old woman who used to steal our baseballs.

***

At last I looked up and my eyes met Mr. Adams’. The distance across his desk seemed vast, far more than the three feet it actually was. In between lay a wasteland of paperwork, discarded Bic pens, old coffee cups, and just maybe Jimmy Hoffa.

“I thought you were going to organize your desk,” I finally said. His brow furrowed more deeply, but I could see him trying not to smile. The corner of his mouth twitched slightly, breaking his stern countenance and the tension in the room.

“Don’t try to change the subject,” he protested, but it was too late. He was Bob again. Mr. Adams, the principal, had been put back in his box for another day. He looked mournfully at the wreckage that was his workspace and sighed. “I mean to and sometimes I actually make a little headway, but then…” His eyes darted back to mine and narrowed. “…but then some jerk goes and curses out his math teacher.”

“But Bob…”

“Mr. Adams,” he corrected severely.

“Okay, Bob, whatever you want,” I replied. He rolled his eyes. I tried to explain what had happened, but he wasn’t interested.

“Randy, you have got to learn to show more respect for your teachers.”

“Why? Shouldn’t respect be earned? And shouldn’t it go both ways. Wilkins doesn’t give a damn about anyone in that class. All he cares about is padding his ego and crowning himself king every day. He’s a dinosaur. I knew more about math in elementary school than that man will ever know. Shouldn’t he be retired by now? He must be over sixty-five.”

“Actually, he is,” Bob admitted. “He’s seventy-two. He was going to retire some years back, but then his wife died and he asked to stay on. I can’t blame him, she was all he had.” Suddenly, Bob stiffened. “I shouldn’t be telling you things like that. You’re not to repeat any of that. Do you understand me?”

“Sure,” I said lightly.

“I’m serious, Randy. Not one word. It could cause trouble for him and for me. He’s a good man. Old fashioned, maybe, but he does care, regardless of what you might think.”

I didn’t believe him. After all, I was sixteen years old and I knew everything. What could an adult tell me that I didn’t already know? “Well, I don’t know about that, but I won’t say anything to anyone. You know you can trust me.”

Bob smiled, relieved. “I know. You’re a good kid.” He took a moment before speaking again. This time his expression grew serious. “A good kid, but a pain in the ass.”

Now that the adrenaline had burned its way out of my system, my brain began working again. “I overreacted. I still think it is ridiculous to give me a failing grade when I got all the answers right, but I shouldn’t have said what I said. The sinner repents.” I spread my arms and bowed my head.

Bob leaned back in his chair and smiled. “I’m glad to hear it. And for penance, I’ll only give you one week’s detention.”

I didn’t even bother to argue the point. “Thank God,” I said instead. In response to Bob’s quizzical gaze, I added, “I thought you were going to make me clean your desk.”