In the Shadow of Fundamentalism

Chapter 2, Part 1

I’m Right

Fourth grade progressed quickly for me, with a minimum of mishaps. I had been in trouble a few times, spanked twice, but the year stands in my memory as mostly unremarkable.

The following year the system of HCA began to crystallize, and my life took a strange and surreal turn. To begin with, there had been some fear among the teachers that our older students (those in eighth through tenth grade) were full of “worldly values.” The decision was made to prune the HCA tree, and send these willful minds back to the public schools. This meant that in 1989 my brother became the oldest child in HCA, and the top of our social pyramid.

In addition, rather than having the teachers I had begun to understand in the fourth grade, I was shifted with the younger class under a teacher named Joan LaFevre. At first I was quite excited with how things had changed, although I was sad that I had been shifted socially further still from my main friend, Spike. Secretly, I was happy because I learned that Shannon had been held back a grade, and this shift of teacher allowed me to still see her every day.
The main reason for my distaste and disinterest in Ms. LaFevre, was that she had been the cause of some considerable pain for me on the last day of the fourth grade.
Our final day of classes had been spent at Clute Park on the shores of Seneca Lake. The sun was shining from behind fluffy white clouds, and we were all giddy with the concept of the freedom from classes for the summer. Mr. Falkenburg, the school’s principal, had announced that (although the weather had been slightly chilly,) students in the fourth through tenth grades could wade in the lake rather than swimming.

Because I loved the water, because I was fascinated with the lake, and because it would give me a chance to walk with Spike and talk about aquatic mysteries and comic books, I was fairly happy with this announcement.
Even though Joan was the teacher for the two grades below mine, and I was no real concern of hers, she stopped me as I was stripping off my shoes to walk into the lake.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“Going wading.” My smile was huge.
“No, you aren’t.”
“But Mr. Falkenburg said…”
“I am also a teacher, and I have decided that it is too cold for you. You’ll get sick.”
“I’m not going to swim,” I pleaded, “I just want to walk and look around!”
“You know what disobeying me means. Some day you will thank me for this.”
Then she turned her gaze from me and ended the conversation with “Find something else to do.”

So I wandered off puzzling about the chain of command, and wondering if I could avoid a spanking by circumventing her to ask Mister Falkenburg if his original edict still stood. I was taught by my parents that such a thing was disobedient, and decided to try and find some other type of entertainment.

Wandering through the playground I found younger children occupying themselves with swings and monkey bars. There I found an older boy from Spike’s grade pushing squealing kids on the merry-go-‘round. Here, I decided, I could still hang out with an older student and feel grown up.

Jumping between the welded steel bars of the merry-go-‘round while he paused, I stood my ground and asked him how fast he could get it to spin.

“You’ll want to hold on tight,” he warned me.
Suddenly he began to sprint with his shoulder against the bars, and the inertia began to pull me off the giant metal disk. Further and further I drifted as the wheel spun, until my feet were waiving in the air, and my fingers alone kept my grip on the vertical metal bar of the merry-go-‘round.

At last my chubby fingers gave up, and I flew through the air several feet until I skidded face first through gravel. My knees were shredded and small bits of stone were ground into the wounds. Blood poured down the fronts of my legs and began to pepper my socks. Worst of all, in front of all these people new to my life, I began to cry.

As I was dragged off somewhere and teachers began to roughly scrub the dirt out of my knees, I looked at Ms. LaFevre with distrust.

“The worst that would’ve happened if I was wading is that I would’ve gotten wet,” I thought.
“Now I’m bleeding. I won’t thank you someday. I won’t thank you ever.”

posted by NY Monk @ 6:33 PM