On the Road Again

Part 1- Chaperoning the choir

Sunday, 3:36 PM. Dynasty Typewriter.

Just came out of an afternoon standup show. Part of a special event, and I got to meet somebody I’ve wanted to for a while, and see some old pals, so those things feel pretty good. As I’m leaving the space, I remember that this place is really proud of its popcorn, and I get some from up front, to munch on my journey up the 101. Nothing better than front seat popcorn. John at the snack bar is a friend of mine, he gives me a bag for free. As I’m heading out, I see somebody who was involved who I don’t know that well. I thank him for being involved, he thanks me back, and once we get that out of the way and I start to head out to my car, he quickly reaches into the bag and snatches a handful of my popcorn.

What?

This feels like a total violation. I didn’t ask if he wanted any. And he just grabbed my finger food with his bare fingers.  It’s tough when you’re forced to share. Especially with people you don’t know.

With that, it’s April, 1995. My boss (I call her my boss, in writing this and in conversation back then, but she’s really my supervisor- the junior high school equivalent of a department head/vice-principal?) tells me the choir teacher wants to speak to me. It doesn’t thrill me when teachers want to see me- this goes all the way back to childhood, it’s never because things are going great.  But sure, okay. 

 I go down to the choir room. The choir teacher (let’s call her Ms. Gregor) is  a short, rotund, highly energized, charismatic woman- exactly the kind of person you would expect the choir teacher to be.  Or maybe, exactly the kind of person you would expect to be a choir teacher. You could look at her, and picture her with her back to the audience, waving her arms in time to the music and mouthing along with the kids, having an absolute fucking blast. She always wore beautiful kente cloth clothing with matching caps, and those plastic and wire frame glasses that remind me of FBI agents in the 60’s, like Willem Defoe in Missippi Burning ( he was 33 in that movie, the same age as Jesus was when he was crucified, which Defoe enacted in The Last Temptation of Christ, which came out the same year, when Defoe was 33. Doesn’t Defoe seem like he was 60 from the first time you saw him? In Platoon he was 31, in To Live and Die in LA he was 30- I’m at the age now where I am fascinated by how old people were when they did certain things, and when I became aware of them. By the way, of course you’ve seen Platoon, but you most likely haven’t seen TO Live and Die in LA, and you really should- I swear it has the greatest car chase ever caught on film , along with a score by Wang Chung! ).  

Ms. Gregor has an advantage with the kids, in that everybody in the choir is there because they want to be there, and if she even starts to think about not letting them be in the choir anymore, they immediately behave perfectly for months at a time (I imagine, at least. I’m jealous, because if I threaten a kid with not being allowed to come to science class anymore, that’s... not a threat).

She wants to know if I will chaperone a choir trip.  The choir is going to participate in a competition at the Kings Dominion Amusement Park in Virginia.  110 students are going to get on three buses (not school buses, the nice ones with velour seats that are supposed to tilt back buyt mostly don’t anymore and bathrooms that you aren’t supposed to actually use because if you do you’ll activate the chemicals that will make the entire bus stink like a busy robot bordello so wait til we get to the rest stop) for eight or nine hours, sleep at a hotel, get up and perform, spend the day in the amusement park,  go back to the hotel for another night (by which time if any of them stayed up all night the first night those darn kids will probably be so exhausted they won’t even be able to keep their eyes open hahaha ), then board the buses again the next day for the eight or nine hour ride back UP the interstate to their homes in New York City.

There are a couple of reasons she wants me to come on this trip:

The school is divided into what they called mini-schools (pretty catchy), like smaller groupings within the school that divided the kids and the teachers.  There are seven of them: The Art School (for kids who were into Art stuff- they could take dance classes, and drawing classes, and drama classes, along with all the regular 3 R’s stuff), the Science School (for kids who were more into the practical aspects of the world, not pie in the sky dreamers), the Discovery Program (for kids with special needs- some of them had physical and/or mental disabilities, and others were classified as special needs because of behavioral problems, which without getting into a whole thing about it always seemed dicey to me- like, one person’s behavioral problem could be somebody else’s difficult but charming wiseass-  where do you draw the line? It was definitely stigmatizing, and one way of dealing with kids that people just didn’t care for), the Columbus Academy (which was for kids who thought they were smarter than everybody else), the Computer School (which was for kids who actually were smarter than everybody else- the ones who could do more with computers in 1995 than program 10 PRINT HELLO 20 GO TO 10), the Bilingual Program (for native Spanish speakers- and by the way, as for me, I’m tri- lingual- I’ll try any...), and MY program, which was called the Environmental Studies Program.  

The Environmental Studies Program was for kids with a high degree of climate change awareness, a distaste for corporate pollutants, a willingness to work closely with whistleblowers no matter what the personal cost, and the financial backing to purchase their own pH balance testing kits, with which they would monitor... just kidding. They named it The Environmental Studies Program after they got funding for it but before they knew what it was. Thta was right before I was hired. No attempt was ever made to get the programmiing for the students to match the name of the mini-school. It was just four classes, about 120 students at any given time: a lot of kids who were asked to leave other programs for disciplinary reasons but hadn’t been classified as special needs (yet), or kids who didn’t get into other programs, or kids who transferred into the school mid-year, or kids who didn’t have particularly engaged parents to advocate for them, or kids who just accidentally ended up there (nobody WANTED to get into that program, nobody applied for it).  A lot of the kids were difficult, weren’t always on their best behavior. And everybody knew they were the kids who didn’t get to go anywhere else. Everybody else in the school referred to the kids in the E.S.P. program as the Especially Stupid People, even some of the teachers. They were the Island of Misfit Toys. And they knew it. BU tthey were mostly just sweet 11 and 12 and 13 year olds trying to figure out how to get by. I loved them.  Well, most of them. 

Ms. Gregor tells me she’s gonna take some of my kids on the trip, but she’s  nervous about it. She knows they can be difficult, and she can’t kick anybody out of the choir when they’re eight hours away from the school, and she wants somebody who knew them along. Most of this is unsaid, but I get the subtext.

She’s also bringing a hundred and ten kids total, like I said, and has three Moms and herself to be in charge, but no male chaperones. I would cover that.

There are also a couple of other kids coming, kids I don’t know but who are particularly difficult to deal with in the programs they are in. And by difficult, to be clear, they have major behavioral problems. That’s how you say it as a teacher. Or you say they are fucking huge pain in the ass who never shuts the fuck up or sits the fuck down or does what the fuck they’re supposed to. Either or. 

I would be assigned to pay close attention to those kids too, just in case, and one of them would have to share a room with me- that was the only way they would let him come on the trip. That was one of the things I always really liked about Ms. Gregor, in particular, but also lots of teachers. Sure, some of them are dedicated clock-punchers, civil servants who come in every day talking about how much longer they have til their pensions kick in, but their were also teachers who believed that every kid deserved a second chance, and a third, and a fourth, ad infinitum, and if you just kept giving them chances they might eventually get it. Compassion, mercy, forgiveness, optimism, hope... nobody has more of these qualities than good junior high school teachers. 

I’m in.  Let the chips fall where they may. And they will fall. Abso fucking lutely.

TO BE CONTINUED

Next: I’ve been to a rodeo before. This... ain’t my first?