“Why is the bed shaking?”

I only attended Howe Summer Camp one year. I’d done so poorly in 9th and 10th grades at public school I needed to do some catching up before returning to Howe for 11th and 12th grades. The summer camp provides not only the usual summer camp fare but also – if needed and/or desired – summer school classes. I took English (I don’t know what the reason was besides Divine Providence) and Algebra.

In public school, I went from Algebra to Beginning Algebra to Remedial Math. Not long after beginning Algebra (which was – oddly enough – taught by the football coach … Howe technically still had a football team at that point though it was all but dead), I was asked to tutor other students. Later, in my junior year, I also did quite well in Geometry and Chemistry and was encouraged to take Physics. Physics is now one of my favorite subjects but back then it simply required too much (any at all) work to get an A.

I also received a medal for my work in English class but that’s a no-brainer … I’m really curious why I was in that class, now … it’s really bothering me. English was taught by Kevin Beuret.

Above is the nurse’s station run by the guy who got me the H.P. Lovecraft and Hal Lindsey books. I paid for them – he was just cool enough to score them for me at the local used book store.

A totally crass memory that always makes me smile is one night, after lights out … keep in mind we all slept in bunk beds … some kid said, nice and loud, “Why is the bed shaking?!” which I thought was a rather diplomatic way of saying to his bunkmate, “Hey, could you please quit …”

A Terrifying, Stupid Mistake

I have been avoiding this subject (drugs & alcohol) for some time. I am scared of two things:

1. That I will never be offered a teaching job at Howe after divulging this information and
2. That some parent(s) might read these stories and be hesitant to send their child(ren) to Howe.

I don’t remember how pre-meditated this episode was. The first thing I remember is sitting in in Geometry class, pulling my toothpaste and toothbrush from my bookbag and loudly brushing my teeth. This may not have been the first thing I did even that day in Geometry class – for whatever reason, I delighted in tormenting this poor woman by acting up. I don’t know why – she was a perfectly nice teacher. I think she was just so … nice … and easily rattled. Exactly the type who seemed easy prey to a predatory practical jokester like myself. So here I am brushing my teeth and she tells me to spit it out. So I did. In my geometry book, slamming it shut so my saliva and toothpaste splattered nicely with wonderful results all over the people around me.

I got sent to the office. I don’t remember whose office. I don’t think I would have continued with this nonsense if Mr. Piper or Mr. Malerich were sitting across from me. We still had corporal punishment then and neither were afraid to use the paddles that hung behind their desks (one of many reasons Dead Poets Society reminds me of Howe). Sadly, I can’t remember exactly what I did beyond giving really goofy answers to every question. Pseudo-philosophical/psychological crap to amuse myself. I think a second administrator was brought in – the school chaplain, Fr. Morgan. It was decided I would be driven to the local doctor’s office for a urine/drug test.

While there, I continued my shenanigans, taunting the poor staff with questions like “Hey, you want some more?!” and “How about some blood, too?!” Maturity wasn’t my strong point that day. What were they going to do? Send me home? For acting goofy? No. I didn’t do drugs so I wasn’t worried. I’d smoked weed a couple times but that was a year or two earlier, and it was long gone out of my system.

I had a very bad habit of going just a bit too far, sometimes. Quitting while I was ahead wasn’t something I had a good grasp on. If all this tomfoolery wasn’t stupid, what I did next certainly was.

That night after “lights out,” I walked into the room of a friend, we’ll call him John. John was the son of a very rich publisher. You’ve seen the magazine his family owned on many newstands and celebrities – nay, legends – were family friends. The musical tastes in Delta Company in 85/86 ran toward the hippy and psychadelic. We were about 10-20 years behind the times. I think that has something to do with not being in the “real world” with kids who were living the lives portrayed in John Hughes’ movies. Some Cream record was playing, I’m going to guess it was Disraeli Gears. John and my best friend Doug Knowlton were smoking some weed John grew in the basement of the dorm that eventually got him kicked out.

A towel was rolled up to block the bottom of the door and they were exhaling into another towel. I didn’t see any reason not to participate because my first couple tries with weed were great (later experiences soon after were horrific and stopped that bad habit very quickly – I was scared off long before anyone could ever call me a pothead) and it’s not like the school would make me take another drug test, right? Wrong.

The following day, I was called out of class and into Colonel Trout’s office. He held his phone out to me and said my mother wanted to speak with me. This wasn’t good. You know what a “howler” in Harry Potter is? That was my mother’s primary form of communication. She told me the school told her I refused to take a blood test and while I was protesting this and she was calling me a liar and the whole thing was going quite badly I realized … they want blood. Now. Yesterday that would have been fine – that’s why I volunteered to give it. Today it would be fatal. I don’t think I’ve ever been that scared in my life.

Needless to say, I didn’t even think about touching that crap until after I graduated. And, as I mentioned earlier, the experience was a total paranoid, bad-trip, I’m surprised I didn’t jump out a window waking nightmare that … I’ve never touched it since. As for that experience in John’s room, let’s just say that marijuana grown in the damp concrete of Delta company’s basement doesn’t do much to you either way.