Chapter 20

The school for extreme fuckups was small, like the Quaker school, with around fifty to sixty students. But it was far different than the Quaker place. In that it was more like a prison/mental hospital than a school.

Its student body was mostly male, and it was definitely an assortment of characters.

My first day, I recall witnessing a miscreant, a longhair rocker type, who’d run around the halls, playing air-guitar and loudly shouting Soundgarden songs. He was leaping and headbanging until he was chased down by security guards and bundled into an isolation room to calm down.

In the isolation room he continued his psychic concert, his musical performance, flailing manically, kicking, fist-pumping and strutting, rocking out until he ran out of steam and was then safely released back into the school’s general population.

I remember there was another kid, a slim and wiry fellow, with a body like a snake and a shaved head so shiny you could see light bounce off it. He’d been an aspiring Olympic gymnast before his career as a delinquent. Just for fun, he’d creep outside, during class, and start running laps around the building. Then he’d laugh when the security guards, who were mostly obese, middle-aged men, would have to come out there, and, huffing and puffing, the pathetic guards would fecklessly chase him around the building, in circles, like a Warner Brothers cartoon.

Every so often he’d, somehow, climb up to the top of the building (it was a one story, long, rectangular structure) and he’d sit up there on the roof, while the security guards and teachers would yell at him to come down, threatening to call the police or fire department.

Then he’d backflip down from the roof, landing perfectly on his feet every time, and surrender, walk back in, without any problems, and serve detention or time in the isolation room. There he’d sit quietly, cross-legged with his eyes pressed shut and his head thrown back, meditating or something like a Buddhist monk.

The head security guard, a former vice cop, a muscular, Jon Jones looking guy, shaved head and all, was in charge of collecting drug tests. Everyone in the school, even students who’d never been in trouble with substance abuse or possession, sales, everyone, to a boy or girl, had to piss in a cup at random intervals.

There was a kid, a total weirdo, with headgear braces, who probably never touched a drug in his life. One morning he was chosen to be drug tested, and he pitched a hysterical fit, a shrieking tantrum...

The weirdo was really fucking weird. We called him Ravioli because he constantly talked of ravioli, like every day, anytime you saw him, he’d be ranting about ravioli, about cooking it, eating it. Also, he’d talk about stealing it. Stealing frozen ravioli. The kid had landed in that school because he regularly skipped school to steal things from stores. It was his thing, stealing from convenience stores, grocery stores, frozen things, especially. He bragged that he’d once stolen a whole chicken. (Not a live one, a frozen one.)

The Jon Jones security boss cornered Ravioli, in the hallway, during a break between classes, and told him, menacingly, like he’d tell everyone else, that it was his time to “give,” his chosen euphemism for pissing in a cup...

Ravioli exploded into histrionics, freaking out, his eyes shining with tears, saying how he couldn’t do it, he couldn’t piss in the cup. And he fell to the hallway floor, rolling around, slapping at the cold white linoleum, weeping and shrieking and convulsing...

I don’t know how they eventually got Ravioli’s piss, but I’m sure they did. The Jon Jones guy’d stalk students relentlessly, following them with a small lidded plastic cup, hounding them to “give.” Guy was like the Javert of piss. He knew that sooner or later the kids would piss, and he’d be there when they did...

We had these group therapy meetings that Jon Jones dude would head. Along with a counselor/teacher, a pretty, young, but terribly skinny blond, who’d tell stories of her bulimia.

In the group therapy, there’d be “positives” given for those who’d behaved well, gotten good grades, and “negatives” given for those who’d ran afoul of school rules. There was often shouting, insults and fistfights breaking out in these meetings. As well as personal stories involving a lot of parental abuse, neglect.

But many of my classmates there didn’t seem off. Most were normal, outwardly, not kids who “killed their teachers” or anything of the sort.

Most had problems with reading, though, and maybe that’s where many of their issues stemmed. Because they couldn’t keep up academically.