Blog The Casbah

The Devil and Mr. T, or My Punk Rock Origins

My original intent for this blog was a sort of retrospective journal – an opportunity for those of you who are interested to see what events have shaped me as a person. So Joe’s story has been told, the election is over, and now it’s time to get things back on track again.

A lot of people over the years have asked me why I am ... well, myself.

To be honest, I’m often not proud of who I am, but there are certain aspects of my personality that I do love, and share boldly with everyone.

For example, I am proud that I am punk. And make no mistake: I am punk to the very core of my soul.

And I often wondered why.

I mean, my parents are both conservative, middle class teachers. Nothing punk about that.

Sometimes we don’t get along, but punk was never a rebellion against my family. As far as I was concerned, there were much larger issues at hand than a few petty squabbles between my parents and myself. Punk was something deeper, a mindset I embraced long before I ever heard my first punk rock song, or even knew the definition of “punk.”

But one day, I had a vivid memory of a moment in my childhood that is clearly the root of one of my favorite personality traits.




First, you should know that lunch in my elementary school was akin to a concentration camp. We had to line up single file, and enter the gymnasium without speaking. We were expected to sort ourselves by those eating a school lunch and those eating a bag lunch, and sit at tables sectioned off by grade level.

Once seated, we could speak at a low mumble.

To ensure a quiet lunchroom, a sound monitor -- cleverly wired to a siren – was placed in the back of the gym. If the noise level rose to an inappropriate level, the siren would blast across the lunch room with a deafening shriek. The entire lunchroom would have to be silent for 5 straight minutes.

Considering the happy carelessness of children, that damn siren would sound 3-4 times every lunch period. Considering that our lunch period was 30 minutes long, we had a lot of very quite meals.

After 30 minutes, we would all line up, single file and completely silent, and leave the lunch room.

Those who dared to speak during the SILENT PERIODS were sent to the stage.

And the stage was a humiliating experience.

We had to sit on narrow wooden benches, with our backs to the rest of the lunchroom. There, we finished our lunches in silence, with the knowledge that the NEXT lunch period would be spent in detention with our lunatic music teacher, copying the dictionary.

Yes, you read that right. The dictionary. We’d start with the A’s, and she kept all our definitions on file, so that with every new detention, we could pick up where we left off.

To make things worse, the sixth graders were the closest group to the stage, and they would not hesitate to mock (or even throw food at) the poor fools who were sent there.

And as if that weren’t fun enough, we got to hear the obnoxious comments of our masochistic gym teacher, a muscular, sexist dickweed who took great pleasure in punishing children 1/5 his age (he actually PADDLED a kid in our gym class once for a very petty reason – disgusting man).

Inevitably, the daily stage population included every mentally handicapped kid in the lunchroom, seeing as how they did not understand the ridiculous rules for eating with ones’ friends. Then, a few talkative boys and girls would be sent there as well, because, basically, we couldn’t follow the rules any better than the retarded kids.

If you have for some reason never spoken to me, I generally have a lot of bullshit to say about just about anything (including, as this essay reveals, myself). That was true even as a child, so I got sent to the stage A LOT. I think I copied the whole damn dictionary several times over.

That’s the scenario. Quiet lunches, teachers who thrive on children’s misery, and a stage full of innocent victims, most of them bubbling snot from their noses or mouths in oblivious bliss.

So.

There I am, fifth grade, and lunch is almost over. I’ve avoided detention once again, which is a triumph, because I have served two that week.

And dammit, I enjoyed lunch. I spent nearly the whole lunch talking (when we were allowed, anyway) to my best friend, Ryan, who is still to this day one of the top-five funniest people I know, even if he is a Baptist preacher.* (see Random Thought Sidebar – coming soon).

It was so wonderful sitting with him. Ryan used to make me laugh until my sides hurt on a daily basis. It was FAR better than copying down preposterous definitions (although I must admit I have now a splendiferous vocabulary – and spelling skills for that matter).

Lunch ended, and we all lined up. Silently. Except for one voice.

A goofy voice, that clearly belonged to one poor, clueless bastard: Chaz.

Chaz wasn’t one of my favorite people, but he was even nerdier than I was, so I often felt sorry for him.

But not that day. That day, I was damn glad HE was the one in trouble, instead of me.

I could barely even SEE Chaz – he was a half dozen people ahead of me. But it was clearly his voice, so loud in an otherwise silent gymnasium full of children.

I stood stock still, wanting to turn around and exchange knowing, worried looks with my friend Ryan. Wanting SO BAD to tell Chaz to shut up, that he was about to get busted, that he was seconds away from spending an entire fucking lunch period with a cramped hand and a page full of definitions: abacus, abaft, abalone …

My thoughts were interrupted by the appearance of a shadow on the wall next to me. A hulking, gorilla-shaped shadow that could only be one person:

Our gym teacher.

Poor, poor Chaz.

A voice boomed:

“TREVOR!”

Wha?

“GET TO THE STAGE! NOW!”

I spun around so fast I nearly had my face in our gym teacher’s armpit. I gawked, incredulous.

“YOU HEARD ME. STAGE! NOW!”

“Wha? What? Why??!”

“I HEARD YOU TALKING. STAGE! NOW!”

“I wasn’t talking! I was being quiet!”

“STAGE! NOW!”

I could see there was no arguing with him. For whatever reason, the gym teacher was just SURE I had been making all the noise.

Chaz, the cowardly bastard, had shut up without a single word in my defense.

I headed toward the stage, sulking. All of my classmates looked sympathetically in my direction.

But then something amazing happened.

Ryan looked up at the gym teacher, who was now turning away from the line, and said in a loud, clear, calm voice:

“He wasn’t talking.”

The gym teacher whirled around, and there are few moments in my life when I’ve ever seen a person look so demented.

“EXCUSE ME?!” the teacher roared.

“I said, he wasn’t talking!” Ryan repeated. His voice was louder this time, a little frightened, but a whole lot defiant.

The gym teacher sneered, wicked and evil.

“Well, if he wasn’t talking, maybe you were. I want you BOTH on the stage.”




And that was the moment I became a punk.

Ryan and I both got detention, and Chaz never said a word.

But I didn’t hold it against Chaz – our gym teacher could be terrifying, especially when you were as easily bullied as Chaz.

But I learned a few extremely important lessons that day. These may seem silly now, but to a fifth-grader, they were very profound.

For starters, I learned to stand up for what is right. No matter what the cost, no matter who is trying to intimidate you. Stand up for what is right. When I said I’m not always proud of who I am, my most shameful moments are those where I knew what was right, and failed to act. But those moments are few, because Ryan taught me that there are more noble causes than self-preservation.

Second, and just as punk, is that authorities never know what the fuck they’re talking about. Assumptions are the basis for rash decisions. Power is exercised and abused. If an elementary-school gym teacher takes this much pleasure from the petty punishments of his pupils, then what might a President do, all that power going to his head?

I’ve seen so many examples of this, from other nasty teacher-student relationships through Rodney King. It makes me sick. Authority is never to be trusted.

Third, and relating to the second, is that bureaucracy is bullshit.

It occurred to me that day that there was no other person in authority we could turn to for help. No other teacher would have believed us. And who to go to after that? The counselor? The principal? They would simply have deferred to the gym teacher all over again. Even as an 11-year-old, I understood the hopelessness of this. It was the word of a dishonest (or, at least, confused) 50-year-old man against two children. That pairing will always and forever lose. All we could do was accept our punishment. Ryan and I, side-by-side, both innocent of an insipid crime. We sat together on that stage, listening to the gym teacher reprimand us for having the NERVE to question his authority. We sat together the following Monday in detention, martyrs for the lunch-room cause.

And Ryan never complained. Never showed any sign of regretting his decision to speak out. And I knew that Ryan didn’t open his mouth simply because it was the RIGHT THING. Ryan defended me because I was his friend. And whether or not I was right or wrong, he was going to stand by me (as I so often did for him in the following years) when everyone else was silent, and THE AUTHORITY was against him.

And that, above all, is the most important lesson I learned that day; a definition far more valuable than any found in a dictionary. I learned what it is to be a true friend.