Foolish Wisdom
20 Unity
HANNAH, SARAH, AND I had a great time at the game Friday night. Rick passed for three touchdowns and our front line never let a defender touch him. Unfortunately, our defense leaked like a sieve and we still lost the season opener by six points. It was great to have Sarah as the driver. We were completely free. I had to admit Hannah was pretty brilliant in planning our date. We looked around a lot, but the stadium was crowded and we all decided we could hold hands during the game… at least part of the time. There was a lot of jumping up and down and yelling.
The dance was another matter entirely. The first half hour was pretty good. The music was loud and we got hot and sweaty pretty fast. Then the DJ put a slow number on. Hannah bowed out and pushed Sarah into my arms. She leaned against me as we danced.
It was like the dance floor was suddenly filled with gestapo. We were tapped on the shoulder.
“Six inches apart on the dance floor at all times,” Ms. Hammer said. I looked around and teachers and the principal and chaperones were all on the floor moving dancers apart.
“Seriously? During a slow dance?” I said.
“The PDA rules indicate that all dancers at school functions must maintain a distance of at least six inches between their torsos. It is very specific. Please, Brian, you don’t want a second violation.” I stepped back and dropped Sarah’s hand.
“Ms. Hammer, are you aware that we can go out to the parking lot, get in the car and drive fifty feet and make out for the next two hours while our parents think we are in the care of the school?”
“I know what I’d do.”
“I think we’re leaving.”
“No readmission.” She was smug. The teachers and staff were fueling the fire and they knew it. This was going to go over big. The problem would be keeping it under control. I whispered to Hannah and Sarah and we split up to circulate among the dancers and the people who were just standing around.
“Hey, Rick. Nice game tonight.”
“Thanks, Bri. You going to do the flaming hoop for homecoming again?”
“I hope so. Shelly’s head cheerleader this year, so I have to ask her. Say, I just wanted to let you know that a bunch of us are leaving the dance because it’s become no fun.”
“No kidding. Got a plan?”
“Dog ’n Suds is still open till eleven. If there’s enough of us buying floats, I bet they’ll stay open. If somebody has a boombox, they probably wouldn’t even mind if we were dancing in the parking lot. It’s not that cold out.” Rick grinned at me.
“I’ve got a sudden hankering for a root beer float.” He turned and started organizing the football players. Once we started for the door, it was a mass exodus. Ms. Hammer was standing at the door the whole time repeating, “No readmisssion.” I was the last one out except for eight freshmen who were dancing and maintaining good distance between each other.
“I guess this dance wasn’t as successful as I hoped,” I sighed to Ms. Hammer. “I’m sorry you have to stay here to chaperone. But there are still students who are entitled to the whole dance.” I looked over and waved at George. He tossed me a thumbs-up sign and kept dancing.
“They’re staying,” Ms. Hammer sighed. “Ah well. No readmisssion.” She waved at me as I left.
The Dog ’n Suds was rocking. Cars were parked six deep all the way around the root beer stand and there were six people in most of the cars. Many of the kids got out of the car and were dancing and stopping the carhops to get drinks. Some of them just stayed in the car and made out. The drive-in had turned up their music and piped it out into the parking area. No one was disorderly. We just had a great time and hung out until they started shutting down the lights at eleven-thirty. Sarah drove me home and I got a very sound kissing from both my girlfriends. Now that was quite a reward.
Saturday morning at six-thirty, Whitney and I were on the cement apron in front of the garage doing our forms when Hannah rode up on her bike. She came to us, waited for us to finish the form and hugged and kissed each of us.
“I’ll make breakfast,” she said. “See you in half an hour.”
Whitney had a motorbike that I greatly admired. The law classified it as a bicycle as it did not have enough power to be a motorcycle. As a result, it didn’t require a license to operate, but had a better range than just pedaling. I was thinking seriously about that, but with luck in six weeks I’d have my license.
“Be a rock,” she commanded and I froze. She bumped into me. I managed to stay standing. “Let’s go eat,” she said.
By eleven o’clock all our dating group and twelve others had gathered. In addition to the six people Principal Darnell had selected, there were three more seniors, another freshman, and two more juniors. With close to thirty of us sitting on the floor, I had the windows open and the fan going. We were in the middle of Indian Summer and it was almost as warm as August.
I’d had a good long talk with Mom and Dad. They understood what our issues were but also put up some good arguments for keeping the new rules. It was a real eye-opener. Mom thought most of the rules sounded reasonable and not much different than what they used to be. She thought we should specify a single rule that we felt was offensive or too restrictive and focus on that instead of being concerned with the whole list. I’d finally explained it in terms that they could understand.
“Mom. Dad. Should I have negotiated with the Kowalskis and let them fondle Jessica as long as they didn’t rape her? Should I have gotten Kirby to agree to only beat me up a little instead of putting me in the hospital? The school board has set itself up as a bully and Dr. Dewey is the biggest and baddest of the lot. If the rules we had were good enough, why did they need to change them? The only reason is to show us who is boss. That’s what bullies are. I hope you’ll understand that I’m not going to back down.”
“Yet you have agreed to argue the school board’s case in your debate against Cassie,” Dad pointed out.
“Presenting the absolute facts in a case can destroy the case more effectively than attacking it,” I said. “It’s in Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene ii. ‘For Brutus is an honorable man; So are they all, all honorable men.’ I will only make my arguments with their own words.”
“Are you nuts?” Rick practically shouted. “You just rallied the entire school around you in the lunchroom and now you’ve volunteered to argue the school board’s part in open debate? Against her? No offense, Cassandra, but you are the most invisible person in the entire high school.” Cassie bristled, but I asked for a pause.
“The debate is not about who is right or wrong. It has no impact on what the rules will be. But we need a forum that draws everyone together so we show an absolutely united front. Signs, banners, whatever it takes to drive home the fact that we are simply not going to take it. If everybody starts just flouting the rules, they’ll pick people off one at a time and after a Saturday spent in detention or a day of suspension, kids will panic and fall in line. We have to do two things. We have to so overwhelm the authorities in a single demonstration that they can’t respond against everyone.”
“Why can’t we just all go in and break the rules Monday?” George asked.
“Which one or ones? How would we get everyone coordinated? What about the kids who are already afraid? Or, like Cassie, already obey all those rules because of their parents? We need something that focuses everyone on an exact time and place for action, and we need it to rally voters around kicking the bastards out of office.”
“She did kiss you in the lunchroom,” Sandra laughed.
“Sandra, that was just to demonstrate the difference between a tribal greeting and a PDA. You can’t imagine that Cassie would kiss me like Samantha did, can you?”
“I feel like we’re in prison,” Sora said. She’d been volunteered by her junior classmates in addition to being one of our group.
“Yeah,” laughed Henry Dickens—also from her class. “We need those striped shirts they put on prisoners.”
“You can’t buy those. The stripes go the wrong way.”
“We could make them.” Everyone went silent and we turned to Brenda. “Well, look, there are fifteen hundred students at St. Joe Valley in junior and senior high. Half of them are girls and as of freshman year, every one of them learns to sew.”
“That could work,” Ty said. “You’d sew me a prison shirt, wouldn’t you Shelly?” The senior cheerleader scowled at him.
“Only if I could guarantee I would see you behind bars.”
“How about behind chain link fence?” I asked. That got me some stares, too. “I like the ideas, but we’ve got to get practical about it. Chain link is a problem. It’s expensive and hard to install. But having a prison shirt and some kind of barrier that shows we are serious would be good.”
“When’s the great debate?” Mary, a freshman, asked.
“Monday, October 5. One month before the November elections.”
“Then we’ve got work to do.”
I’d honestly never heard of so much work taking place in so little time. And being kept generally a secret. We couldn’t do anything at school, but the Dog ’n Suds became the official after school and after games hangout. Mr. Creighton, who owned the drive-in, was a retired elementary teacher. He agreed to extend his open season so we’d continue to have a place to meet that was completely neutral ground. He was worried about too many cars, but that was only a problem after games.
Rhiannon and Rose located fabric that would work and ordered six bolts of it. We all chipped in to cover the up-front costs. Hannah’s dad came through with a place for the girls to spend their Saturdays sewing in the basement of the church. It wasn’t big enough, so both the Unitarian Church and the Catholic Church opened their doors. Both churches were known for their social activism and embraced the concepts.
The only thing we did at school was done in the lunchroom. The teachers were still avoiding the cafeteria, so we could circulate pretty freely. We called it our School Board Free Zone and there was a fair amount of holding hands among the couples in the school. We used the cafeteria to get everyone’s sizes and collect their five dollars for a shirt. Each person was given a pick-up location on the Saturday before the debate. The girls got regular production lines going with some cutting, some sewing, and some putting buttons on. One rule was that the shirts couldn’t appear sloppy. They had to conform completely to the school dress code.
I didn’t keep track of everything. I didn’t need to. I needed to prepare for the debate. I did it by going straight to the source for information. I made an appointment to see Dr. Dewey.
Ms. Hammer had a real reputation among both the students and the teachers as a stickler for strict discipline in the classroom and in her extra-curricular advising. She was a chaperone at every school dance. She coached the varsity cheerleaders and made certain they were kept away from the team during road trips. She’d even sat between the cheerleaders and me on the occasion I was invited to join them. So, when the request to have a debater meet with the Superintendent of Schools was made, it was granted. Ms. Hammer explained to him that I was the best debater in the class and would be arguing the part of the school board while the part of the students would be argued by a girl she suspected of being a bit of a cry-baby. She convinced him that it would be the perfect opportunity for the School Board to show how much they care about the students by judging the debate. Dr. Dewey was all too happy to indoctrinate me. He lectured and waved sheets of paper around, though he never showed one to me directly. My head was full of so many mini-quotes that it was about to explode. Fortunately, Mom brought me a mini cassette player from her office and I was able to record the interview. Dr. Dewey went so far as to introduce me to the school board chairman who further explained the board’s position in terms of campaign slogans. That’s when I discovered I hadn’t been paying close enough attention. I started scribbling notes. Wow!
My luck held when I got the letter from Dr. Patterson, the Kokomo School Corporation Superintendent. Jen and Court had taken my message to him and he wrote a terrific rebuttal to Dr. Dewey’s position. Of course, I couldn’t use it, but I pushed it across my desk on Saturday afternoon and Cassie looked at it. Hannah and Rhiannon had gone to the kitchen to make us some dinner. It was a rule of the house that Cassie’s dad would let her come to study with our group as long as there was a group. The fact that the rest of our cohort was usually involved in something else never got mentioned to him.
“Are you supposed to be aiding and abetting the enemy?” Cassie asked as she finished reading the letter. She tucked it in her notebook without asking if I was giving it to her.
“Make no mistake, Cassie; I intend to win this debate. I might not convince everyone that the school board is right, but I’ll make my arguments in such a way that they have to vote for me.”
“That is so unfair. Of course, the board is going to vote for you. But I’m still going to win the debate.”
“And how are you going to do that?”
“I’m going to fluster them with my feminine wiles.” She stood up and stalked around my desk. I turned to face her and she sat in my lap. “Do I have the girlfriend’s privilege of kissing my boyfriend without asking permission?”
“A… uh… friendly kiss and hug when appropriate.”
“Is that like this?” She put her arms around me and softly pressed her lips against mine. I think this was the first time that Cassie had actually initiated a kiss. She’d asked for one on a couple occasions, but this was all her. It was sweet.
“Um… that’s just right,” I said. She wiggled on my lap a little and I know she could feel me swelling under her butt.
“Just so I’m sure I know the difference, is this the other kind? I mean the kind with intent?” Her lips touched mine again and there was such passion behind her kiss that I wrapped her in my arms and held her tightly against me while we fully explored each other’s mouths. I had to stop or pass out.
“That was definitely a kiss with intent,” I whispered.
“Okay. I think I understand,” she grinned. “I just want to be sure I know the difference before we have our date in January. You might have to remind me a few times.” She jumped up off my lap and went back to her chair to start making more notes on something. So that was her plan: To use feminine wiles to distract me. Well, maybe she would win.
It had been raining for two days straight and on Friday before the great debate, our team managed to pull a muddy victory out of the hat. When no one showed up for the second school dance, the school cancelled this one. We crowded around the Dog ’n Suds, but most people left without even ordering anything. It was pretty dismal.
Saturday, though, there was a constant stream of students for six hours at each of the three church locations to pick up their shirts. There were a couple alterations made on people who had gained or lost weight since they ordered, or simply didn’t know what size shirt they wore in the first place, but there were adequate sewing machines available. There were even Moms there helping with the fittings. Hannah and Sarah worked especially hard on my shirt, making sure it had a button-down collar and even a fairy loop.
On Monday morning, we went to school. No one said anything. We weren’t unveiling our shirts until evening, though a couple kids got confused and wore them. In biology first period, Coach Mitchell walked through our class and looked at the one shirt. He just shrugged and went back to his lecture. After a quiet lunch, I sat in Coach Hancock’s US Government class.
“And the process by which we choose an elected government is…?” He looked around the class. No one volunteered an answer. “Whitney?”
“Electoral process,” she answered. No one volunteered any more.
“Things are quiet,” Coach muttered. “Too quiet.”
Probably the only time the gym had so many chairs set up in it was for graduation. The debate had been well-publicized and I was surprised to peek out from behind the curtains and see a television news camera set up in the center aisle. There were ten seats at a table facing the stage. Ms. Hammer would be seated on the stage with Cassie and me. She would maintain the timer for our speeches. Unlike presidential debates, we each had a table we would sit at while the other person was speaking. The tables were draped to the floor for modesty. We would both speak at the same podium, taking turns.
The main floor was full at a quarter till eight with fifteen minutes until the debate was slated to begin. Ms. Hammer came up to Cassie and me backstage. She looked at our matching shirts.
“It is unusual to see the pinstripes running horizontally,” she said.
“The student body voted on a new school uniform,” Cassie responded.
“Mr. Frost? Is it appropriate for you as the representative of the school board to wear such a blatant symbol of rebellion?”
“I will argue against the proposition to the fullest of my ability, Ms. Hammer. But it would be disrespectful of me if I shed the new school uniform and did not to honor the unanimous vote of the student body.” We heard a stir out front and murmur. Ms. Hammer looked out through the curtains and saw the students entering the gymnasium. Row after row of bleachers filled with striped shirts. Parents, teachers, and the board members who had already moved to their places at the judge’s table all turned to stare as the students filed in silently. All fifteen hundred of them remained standing until the last student entered. Then, as one, they sat. It was…
“Very impressive,” Ms. Hammer smiled. “Are you ready?” We nodded
The curtain opened and Cassie and I stepped to our tables. We glanced at each other and sat at the same time. Ms. Hammer approached the podium.
“Welcome to the first public student debate to be held at St. Joe Valley High School. I am Ms. Hammer and I teach debate here at St. Joe Valley as well as Senior English Literature. I would like to thank our judges for their presence this evening. Our School Board and Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Nathan Dewey, have consented to be judges. We have also asked Mr. William Stafford, debate teacher at Whitcomb High School, and Mrs. Arloine Leaf, debate teacher at Bishop O’Dell Catholic School to fill two slots at our judging table as professionals in the field of debate. And with that, I would like to remind the audience of the rules.
“Judging in a scholastic debate is not the same as debating legislation or a presidential debate. We have very specific rules and whether you agree with the points made by the debaters or not, the judging is to be impartially based on which debater presents the most consistent and persuasive argument. This evening, we are debating a topic suggested by students at St. Joe Valley, but wish to remind you that the outcome of the debate in no way implies or influences any decision by the school administration.
“Two students have volunteered to present the pro and con to the following resolution, proposed by the students. And I will mention that neither of these students suggested the topic. The resolution reads as follows: ‘Resolved that the new dress, personal conduct, and zero tolerance regulations instituted by the St. Joe Valley School Corporation should be repealed.’ Arguing in favor of the resolution will be Miss Cassandra Clinton. Arguing in opposition to the resolution will be Mr. Brian Frost. The debate format is as follows. The pro speaker will have ten minutes to present her case in favor of repealing the new regulations. I will time this and she must stop speaking when I ring the bell, even if she is in the middle of a sentence. The con speaker will immediately approach the podium and will have ten minutes to deliver his opposition to the resolution. The two debaters will then have five minutes to make notes for their rebuttal. The rebuttals are specifically to refute evidence presented by their opponents. While the opening statements have been prepared and practiced, the rebuttals are far more extemporaneous and will be limited to six minutes. Following the second rebuttal, there will be a three minute break for the debaters to organize their notes. Then each debater will have three minutes to present a conclusion to their argument. The one rule in effect during the conclusion is that it must be a convincing summary and may not present any new arguments or evidence. Allowing time to move to and from the podium, the debate will be finished in forty-five minutes. At that time, you will all have five minutes to reach your conclusion. We will ask for a standing vote in favor of the proponent and then in favor of the opponent. While this will be an opportunity for you all to express your opinion as to who won the debate, we ask that cheers, screams, and applause be held. Only the votes of the ten judges will actually be counted. Anyone heckling during the debate will be asked to leave.”
She looked at Cassie and then at me. I was as ready as I’d ever be, but that wasn’t saying much. I think I’d rather face Kirby and his gang all over again.
“It is unusual to find two students so passionate that they will risk their entire grade on one debate.” What? She never said anything about that! “As you know, each semester has two grading periods. For Brian and Cassandra, their grade for the first of those periods will be based on the results of this debate. The winner will receive an ‘A’ for the period. The loser will receive a ‘C.’ Miss Clinton, if you would approach the podium, please, we are ready to begin the debate.”
That goddamned bitch! She never told us that we’d receive our final grade for the period based on the outcome of the debate. A ‘C’? Does she think I’ll throw the debate to keep Cassie from getting a bad grade?
Fucking hell!
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