When I was a young student, stuck in the limbo of still wearing my pigtails but already bearing my period, my two most powerful educational experiences:
One of my teachers told me he had something that he wanted to show me. So he brought me into the most out-of-the-way bathroom in the school, on the fourth and top floor, where few people ever went. He brought me inside, and since I was just a child, I was not worried until I saw him shut and lock the door behind us. He walked toward me, and I started to feel panic pounce, but then he continued past me. My worry turned to confusion as I saw him unlatch the window, slide up the pane, and hoist himself through to the roof. As he turned and extended his hand to me, I understood: he was inviting me to escape. We walked to the edge of the roof and peeked at the pavement below, the neat rectangles of the sidewalk. My teacher gestured vaguely at the view, and told me that sometimes in order to get a better perspective you need to get above and beyond the structures that have been made to contain you. He risked everything – job, career, reputation – in order to tell me that. As if I didn’t know it instinctively already.
One of my classmates was taped to the post in the center of the school cafeteria. I remember I was sick that day, or on the other side of the school or something. As I remember it, I was terrified upon hearing this story with its grisly details. The detail that really destroyed me was not that practically the entire school, which habitually mobs the cafeteria during passing periods, had looked on as the bullies manhandled their scrawny catch, looped duct tape around him and left him bound to go to class… but rather what killed me was when I was told that not a single student out of six hundred set him free once the bullies left, leaving him there for five minutes until a teacher happened along. I remember being horrified by this event, grateful that I wasn’t there to witness it, yet fascinated by its implications.
Anyways, I have a terrible memory. So I hold on to what I remember as if it were a teddy bear and I a baby.
