by J. Thorn
“Cause yer in the jungle, baby, and yer gonna die!”
Probably, Axl. Probably.
As we accelerated toward the T intersection at the bottom of the hill, the red stop sign glared at me like an evil eye. I could almost see our blood splattering over its white border. For a fraction of a second I imagined my parents standing over the corpse as the police pulled the sheet back. I pictured my body lying on the floor of the living room where the Buick had landed after vaulting across the intersection and through the window.
“Yeah, that’s my son,” I heard my dad say.
Before my mother could wipe her tears, the vision imploded as Evan swung The Beast through the turn. The front end kept to the right, but the rear end of the aircraft carrier on wheels slid into the oncoming lane. Evan whipped the steering wheel into the spin to correct the slide and brought us back onto College Park Drive. He yanked The Beast around another bend and up the hill onto Noel Drive. Evan pulled into a pristine concrete driveway, cut the engine, and slid low in the driver’s seat. Before he could yell “down,” we had followed his lead.
A second later the Camaro blew by on College Park in pursuit of the assholes who had dumped a Slushy on the hood of their car.
“Anyone up for another, tonight?” Evan asked while lighting another Marlboro.
Duff’s jangly bass line launched “It’s So Easy,” and I held on to that tune as the only anchor of reality for the night. When Guns N’ Roses calms your nerves, you know you are living on the edge.
***
Suburban Pittsburgh in the 1980s represented every middle- class, white, strip-mall hell in the United States. Situated too far west to be considered East Coast and too far east to be considered Midwest, western Pennsylvania sits at its own vortex of the cosmos, a nowhere place that provided no salvation to teenagers.
We all worked at a local steakhouse that has since gone out of business. (Every place I worked as a teenager went out of business shortly after I left. I wish I could say I had something to do with that, but I didn’t.) We all attended the same high school, went to the same parties, drank the same beer, and lusted after the same chicks. Some folks recall their teenage years with fondness, while others eternally pretend they still exist. I do neither. I look back with a sense of awe, shocked that I did not end up dead or in jail.
One of our friends within the circle, Matt Hanlon, became financially involved with what I believe was a local drug dealer. Perry was a hot-tempered red-headed dude in his mid-twenties. He lived in a split-entry home, completely furnished with a dog. In other words, he was a god. The guy hosted parties every weekend for the local teenagers complete with kegs in the basement, pot in the living room, and cocaine in the bedrooms. You had to work your way up the dependency ladder. Perry’s only house party rule was “don’t kick the dog.” You could vomit in the middle of the kitchen and set the carpet on fire, but if you kicked the dog you might get your own ass-kicking.
My friends and I spent countless summer nights at Perry’s, wasted and doing shit I am not proud to recall. Within our circle we took care of each other, but outside our group of hooligans we respected nobody.
After a heavy bout of drinking, we would meet at our place of employment, the local steakhouse, and knock on the back door that led into the kitchen. The produce delivery guy left hundreds of pounds of potatoes inside the door. We would fill our baseball caps with the brown projectiles and throw them over the hillside of the parking lot, where they dropped onto the cars below. A tire screech or horn would send us running back inside the restaurant.
Instead of going to senior prom, five of us decided to get a case of malt liquor and a bag of weed and get fucked up in the woods behind my house. Following our normal Friday evening schedule, we arrived in the parking lot of the beer distributor (in Pennsylvania you can buy two six-packs of beer at a bar. Anything more, such as a case or keg, has to be purchased at a beer distributor, sort of like an alcoholic’s wet dream. But real) waiting for an older young guy we could approach for the transaction. We sent Pat out to ask the guy to buy us beer, as Pat was our whipping boy. He was the one in our crew who we would hurt for our own recreation. I have never met someone so accident prone as Pat. He broke his leg walking down the street. The guy stepped off the curb and we heard his femur snap. As you can imagine, Pat provided hours of grisly entertainment.
So we sent Pat to ask a guy to buy us beer. A case of Coors Light cost about twelve dollars, and we would hand the guy a twenty with the understanding that he could make eight dollars for the thirty-second transaction. In 1989 we rarely had someone turn us down. Scary.
Pat stood next to the door and accepted the case of beer our unknown new friend had just purchased. He raised the case over his head and shouted, “I’ve got the beer,” like some kind of retarded bull fighter. Little did we know that the LCB (the Liquor Control Board exists only to bust underage drinkers) was sitting in a car while monitoring the entire transaction. We waved at Pat through the back window of The Beast as they put him in cuffs.
Evan owned The Beast. I think it was a Buick, but it was hard to tell. The rust mingled with the fading brown paint to give the car a nice shit tone. The windows on the passenger side did not work, and the door on the driver side did not open. Evan tied the exhaust pipe to the frame with a coat hanger and had to start the engine with a screwdriver. Whenever the weather dropped below thirty-seven degrees, The Beast would only shift into D2 with a top speed of twenty-three miles per hour. On rare occasions, Evan had to drive it in reverse. The tape deck/radio sat in the gaping maw of the huge dashboard, and the copilot had to be ready at all times. Right turns made with considerable speed would throw the entire tape deck from the dash. We cranked Iron Maiden’s Powerslave to help mask the horrendous sounds spewing from the undercarriage.
Shortly after Evan got the car from his old man, a truck driver and one tough dude, he started playing Chase. The rules of the game were simple. The passengers in the belly of The Beast screamed insults or threw things (only from a seat where the windows rolled down) at other motorists in order to get them to chase The Beast. Evan would then sandbag our escape. He would let the pursuers get close enough for us to see their poor attempts at a moustache before slamming the accelerator to the floor and hoping the thermometer read thirty-eight degrees. The Chase would last until Evan lost the other car. And he always did.
Using the Western definition of Karma, one might say that I have reaped what I have sown. As a teacher, I was shown the same disrespect that I showed to the world as a thin, tall, scraggly-haired “burn out” (my wife would argue that I don’t look much different today) in 1989.
***
There has been a decline in the acceptance of educated opinions delivered by professionals. If you do not believe me, I can draw a line graph to prove it. When I was a kid, my parents accepted whatever opinion was proffered to them by a professional, whether it was from an auto mechanic, dentist, or priest. This is the same kind of blind gullibility that has led us into Vietnam, Iraq, and American Idol. However, the pendulum has now swung in the other direction.
Thanks to the internet, everyone knows fucking everything. Every monkey with Wi-Fi thinks he can Google the answer to life’s greatest mysteries. I hate to pop the dot-com bubble yet again, but most of the stuff posted online is either (1) clinically frightening or (2) bullshit (mostly number 2 (#2, exactly)). The value on a “professional opinion” has plummeted, and nowhere is that more apparent than in education.
Cynthia Kopkowski wrote an article for the National Education Association titled “Why They Leave.” She cites several major factors that help explain why half of all new teachers leave the profession within their first five years. National standards (mostly the No Child Left Behind mandates), too little support, student discipline, low salary, and lack of respect are a few of the factors that make teaching difficult.
Student discipline has become a larger issue.
Unmanageable discipline problems mean mor
e than a headache in the classroom. For teachers like McCartney, they erode desire to invest time and energy in lesson plans that make the content come alive for students. Preservice training is often of little help, too. ‘We spent very little, if any, time on discipline,’ McCartney says of the training she received the summer before entering the classroom. ‘I entered the profession completely unprepared for discipline problems.’
Deciding to leave devastated McCartney, a once optimistic and enthusiastic young teacher. ‘Gosh, it was a really big defeat,’ she says, letting out a deep breath. ‘Teaching is important, but I got to the point where I wasn’t willing to sacrifice so much anymore.’
However, lack of compensation and respect are really the nails in the coffin when it comes to the premature death of a career in education.
When Sherry Mann started teaching fifth grade this year in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the 39-year-old career changer was floored by how often she found herself reaching into her own pocket to pay for classroom supplies. ‘My husband is a software developer. He would never have to purchase his own paper.’ Thus far, she estimates she’s spent roughly $1,000 on classroom essentials. (She’s not alone. About 8 percent of teachers spend that annually and the average teacher spends at least $433, according to a 2003 NEA Research study. And education support professionals spend about $168, according to a 2007 NEA Research report.)
Feeling that she doesn’t have all the tools or the time she needs to do her job the way the self-confessed ‘perfectionist’ would like weighs on Mann. ‘It’s really depressing sometimes. You get to the point where you just can’t handle it.’
The issue of inadequate pay arises when educators like Mann, battered by a slew of such obstacles, grow increasingly dissatisfied. They begin to look around, says Susan Moore Johnson, a researcher with the Harvard Graduate School of Education. ‘Other lines of work offer higher pay, and when there’s not such a stigma attached to leaving one job and going to another, the pay elsewhere becomes more attractive.’
Elizabeth, the young New Jersey teacher, puts it this way: ‘You see your friends coming out of college getting jobs making the same or more than you do for less work, and it’s tempting to go find a job that pays more and is more relaxing.’
The bottom line for many educators, especially new ones, is that their income doesn’t pay the rent and bills. ‘Teachers have to be able to afford to teach,’ says Johnson. ‘Even for the most committed, the pay has to be sufficient to live a reasonable, middle class life.’
Society has dumped on teachers from the beginning because the first educators were women, who until 1920 got as much respect as Native Americans or blacks. Americans are not good at valuing diversity. It usually takes a “movement” to grant certain segments of the population the same rights as others.
In 1776 the Declaration of Independence stated, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” In Rebels and Redcoats: How Britain Lost America renowned British military historian Richard Holmes makes radical statements about the effectiveness of the revolution. He claims that the colonists did not hold themselves to the same standards put forth in the Declaration. Within ten years of creating that document, the Continental Congress met to draft a new government without elected officials, slaves, free blacks, Native Americans, or women. In fact, George Mason, author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, left the convention without signing the Constitution because it did not explicitly state the rights of the citizen. Americans have a deep and profound history of falling short of our own ideals.
Women (half of the population and by far the better-looking half, I might add) have had the right to vote in the United States for less than one hundred years. African Americans have had it for less than fifty years. The “movement” of our generation will be the Gay Rights one. I see no reason why homosexuals cannot marry and be just as miserable as everyone else. The point is that whether it’s based on skin color, salary, sex, or preference of sexual organ, we love to hold back rights that belong to “true Americans.”
I did not realize how deep this phenomenon ran until I had children of my own. If our first child farted off-key, my wife would call the nurse’s line and hope to get him into the ER, or at least the nearest urgent care. You worry about everything because it all seems odd and deadly. If you do not have children, it might be hard to understand these feelings. A former coworker of mine put it like this:
“I love my husband, without a doubt. I love my kids, too. But if a bus was heading right for my kids, I would dive to knock them out of the way and gladly give my life to save them. If the same bus was coming for my husband, I would yell, ‘Hey, there’s a bus coming at you.’”
When one, or two, or even three provide your only frame of reference, nothing seems right. I estimate that I have taught over one thousand students in my previous career as a teacher. That experience brings an ability to detect trends or patterns. It also allows me to label behaviors as “normal” or “abnormal” based on the frequency of recurrence from year to year. Behaviors that alarm parents do not worry me, and sometimes behaviors that worry me do not alarm parents.
Imagine going to a specialist for a specific disorder. The doctor has spent years researching the disorder, continues to read journals on it, and spends every single day treating people with the disorder. Imagine that this specialist gives you advice on alleviating symptoms of the disorder. Would you accept it? I am guessing you would. At the very least you might get a second opinion (or you might Google it, you fucking monkey). This does not happen often in education. In fact, the “patients” would spend most of their time and energy arguing the diagnoses and claiming that the “doctor” does not “know” them.
Imagine going to the doctor with headaches, and she suggests you take up smoking. On NBC’s Mystery in the Air in the late 1940s, announcer Michael Roy stated that almost twelve thousands doctors from every branch of medicine claimed that Camel cigarettes were the most recommended by those in the medical community. Smoking was “medically proven” to assist in the digestive process and to help the smoker relax. The advice lasted well into the 1950s until the detriments of tobacco became apparent and doctors distanced themselves from the product. Would you accept this advice from your primary care physician today? I doubt you would, because the health care industry (except for insurance companies, who have devolved into greedy bastards) has evolved in the past fifty years. Advances in technology and education have provided us with better health care and doctors.
And yet parents continue to insist that the education they received as children is the same kind their kids should receive. It seems as though every other profession has evolved, and people accept this, except in education. Just because you were forced to handwrite an essay in cursive while in silent rows of chairs in 1960, that does not mean it’s the best way to educate a child today. There is no trust in the profession and, in turn, a severe lack of respect for those in it.
***
I came from a solid, middle-class, Catholic upbringing. I had respect and guilt drilled into my skull from the time I was old enough to receive a belt on my ass for knocking my brother into the closet door. And yet on Friday nights in the 1980s, The Beast commanded my soul and allowed me to partake in all of Evan’s debaucheries. Whether it was a bunch of college kids out drinking or a middle-aged family man in a minivan, we provoked them all into a game of Chase.
Recently I heard that Evan is unmarried and drives trucks for a living. This does not surprise me, even though Evan nailed some pretty hot chicks in his day. Even in public he showed them very little respect. Evan’s father was a truck driver and died on the highway. I can only imagine what nights at the rest stop must be like for him.
Suppose a Buick full of rowdy teenagers pulled up alongside Evan’s tractor trailer and began taunting him into a game of Chase? Maybe a roads
ide beating by an angry truck driver would teach them some respect.
Conclusion
Kids always ask why people in previous generations were so stupid. They cannot understand how the obvious, identified in hindsight, remained hidden from those who lived through it. Children marvel at the retelling of Gilgamesh or the folly of Zeus and his cronies. They find it appalling to think that people of Medieval Europe believed only royalty could lead through the direct blood line of God or that the pharaohs of ancient Egypt enslaved generations to build glorified coffins. Even more recent mindsets baffle the young with a dose of cultural embarrassment. The kids wrinkle their nose at the shit-stink of segregation, which seemed perfectly natural to their grandparents.
In much the same way, historians will look back at this time and marvel at the ignorance of the American Empire. Children of the future will ask why so many protested same-sex marriage. They will not understand how terrorists could blow up two skyscrapers in the name of Allah or how murderers could bomb abortion clinics in the name of God.
“If they knew the burning of fossil fuels was causing a global environmental crisis, why didn’t they stop?”
“How could the thirty-eight million Americans without health insurance allow the top 2 percent of the population to own 98 percent of the country’s wealth?”
“Why did people waste an hour of their lives every week watching American Idol?”
These are all questions that will be asked of future historians even though we know the answers today. It is extremely difficult to stand up and point your finger at Mother Culture and call her a stupid bitch. So many have been drinking the Kool-Aid that nothing short of a catastrophe or an alien invasion will wake us up.
