Chapter 18: Saturday Brings Surprises

The morning came all too soon; it wasn’t a restful night at all. I must have a lot of stuff on my mind because not sleeping well is unusual for me.

A little before 11 am, people from the group began arriving. I had set up Aunt Helene’s den for us with a few card tables and we could get on the Web using the wireless in the house.

Soon the group was all there and we had logged into the website’s admin section. We immediately saw that the publicity team had done their work; there were a bunch of first person submissions awaiting moderation. We began scanning through them.

Linda Grovner, a senior and participant in the Program last spring, had become the defacto team leader for website content. We saw her reading her screen and giggling.

One of the other girls called, “What, Linda?”

“You gotta hear this, guys. It makes what Kevin did look like an amateur. I’ll read it—it’s from a bystander—it’s about these kids fighting off participating in the Program last year and this post tells what happened. This was a big school so it looks like they ran three couples from each class each week so they could get to everybody.” She began.

The Program came to our school in the middle of last year. They only began it at the start of the spring term and in the very first group there was this guy in it and his twin sister and they were seniors. I got called too and we had no idea that we were being called for the Program that morning. Parents had to agree to having their kids participate in the Program and my parents signed their approval for it last summer over my objections. Was I way pissed.

Anyway, a bunch of us got called to go to the school’s conference room and when we got there, the principal was there with another guy and the school’s two security guards and two coaches, I think the wrestling and football coaches. When we all got there, there were twenty-four kids in the room. Then the principal broke the news and everyone just about had a heart attack.

One girl about keeled over and a guy grabbed her. Turns out they were a twin brother and sister. I’ll try to quote what was said as best as I can remember. What happened is kind of burned into my memory.

The boy said, “Well, you made a mistake, then. Our parents didn’t approve our participation and they even sent a letter saying that we were not to be picked.”

The principal told him, “Son, during the fall the Program became mandatory and everyone in the school must participate. That’s why we’re so crowded now.”

His sister was crying. “Mandatory or not, we’re outta here.”

He tried to leave with his sister but a security guard blocked the door.

The principal said, “Now students, I want to introduce you to Mr Cirota. He’s the Program counselor at the school and will be in charge of how the Program runs. You have to listen to everything he says because it will be up to him if you successfully complete the week. If you don’t you’ll need to repeat it. Now I’ll go over the rules with you, take your questions, and then you’ll all get undressed, put your clothes in these boxes, and go to class. You can get your clothes at the main doors after school tomorrow and...”

I won’t bore you with the rest of his speech. I think it’s the same thing just about everywhere. The guy (learned his name was Roger and was a senior) whispered in his sister’s ear ( her name was Cynthia) and the two went to lean on a nearby wall. I should mention that the room had chairs lined up along the walls but no tables; they needed the open space for all of us and we were told to sit during the talk. Those two didn’t sit.

Then the time came and the principal told everyone to strip. There was a lot of hesitancy and the guards and teachers began to move toward the kids, the principal told us if we didn’t, they would forcibly disrobe us.

When the guard moved away from the door, Roger and Cynthia went toward it and a teacher came to intercept them, reached out, and grabbed Cynthia’s shoulder. She did a half twist, grabbed his arm, then holding his arm, turned away and kind of bent over. The teacher just rolled over her back and landed face-up on the floor. I couldn’t believe what I saw, it was like a Ninja.

The guards and teachers began heading toward the two kids and Roger said, “No closer! Cindy was gentle that time. We don’t want to hurt anyone.”

One guard charged him then, reaching out his arms to grab Roger, who seemed to lean to the side, grab an arm, did something with his hip, and the guard stumbled and fell headlong on his face.

Roger yelled, “Get out of the way, everyone!” and mayhem broke out. We all squeezed into the corners of the room and watched with amazement as five adults (the principal was on his cell phone) tried to reach the two kids. They kept the adults always in front of them and were able to avoid being grabbed by twisting themselves in a funny way and then the person trying to get to them hit the floor. It seemed that this was taking a long time but it was actually less than a minute.

Two of the adults—a teacher and a guard—were limping and the others must have had injured arms. Roger and Cynthia seemed like they were barely breathing hard.

Roger said, “Cindy and I’ve had judo training. If you touch us, you’ll just wind up on the floor again. I said that we’re not going to do this and I mean it. Guys, now that everything’s all confused, just get out of here and decide if you’re gonna do it or not. You need to think about it and not just get forced.”

The principal tried to stop anyone from leaving but about half of the kids left the room. I stayed. I didn’t want to get into trouble.

Then the school’s police resource officer arrived. The principal told him what happened and wanted the cop to arrest the two. The cop asked to speak to the two privately. They did, and about five minutes later the cop came in.

“So it appears that they were going to be forcibly undressed?” The principal confirmed that. “Well, seems to me that they were just protecting themselves.”

“They’re in a federal program that requires that they be naked in school, officer.”

“Then it’s a federal problem, right? Let them deal with this,” he said and he walked out.

You probably want to know what happened next. I didn’t see any of this; I’ll just say what I heard. Roger and Cindy went home and I guess spoke to their folks. Their dad was a Marine NCO on the local Navy base—that must be where they learned judo. They did come back to school the next day but they always had a burly, uniformed Marine hanging around. One time I heard that some federal officials tried to do something with the siblings like arrest them or something, but the Marine guy here at the time delayed them and then in a few minutes a whole bunch of Marines showed up. Must be great having a private security force working for you.

Anyway, it appears that they turned 18 in March and legally didn’t have to do the Program anymore. We were told that if you didn’t do the Program you couldn’t graduate. Well, my uncle is a lawyer and said that the diploma and possibly transcripts could be withheld, but a lot of colleges didn’t care about the diploma. They looked at grades and SAT scores, and there were ways to force a school to provide a transcript.

Me? I did my Program week and it was bearable. Did it do anything for me? Nothing. I did the minimum stuff, no relief in class, I kept the Reasonable Requests reasonable, dropped my extracurricular activities for the week (beginning of the term, so I could), and didn’t do anything to attract attention. And a few of the initial 24 did do the Program for that week. Two others left school; not sure what they did.

Oh yeah. One thing that the Program did for me. I go to nude beaches now. Optional nudity is ok. Compulsory and humiliating nudity? No way ok.

We were all looking at each other while that report was being read. After hearing it, I said, “See guys? I’m not the only guy who can do that stuff. But I really like their style. Cool kids.”

The others agreed.

Janet, another of our content writers began reading one submission intently and then she sat back in her chair with a gasp.