Terrible But True – Of History Class and Hooker Debts

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When I first started working in the New York City Public Education system, my father gave me a bit of advice. He said, “Whatever you do, don’t end up on the cover of the New York Post.” Sound advice for anyone, really. Particularly if you are going to be working with minors. And the vast majority of our students were under 18, though we did have a few kids that couldn’t find their way to a graduation ceremony with a map, AND a map of the map.

Working with kids means that you will, at times, find yourself in difficult ethical positions. Or simply positions that could be wildly misinterpreted by the headline writers of America’s leading tabloid.

I remember flashing through  alternate futures when I came out of the teacher’s lounge one day and saw a crazy-eyed kid sprinting full-steam down the hallway with two police officers in pursuit.

The ethical quandary: “To clothesline or not to clothesline.” If I did, I might be hailed a hero! “Terrific Teach Tackles Teen Terror!!!”

Or it could end up more ambiguously. Maybe he was a gangbanger, but my considered clothesline would have snapped his neck, “Teach’s Reach Cripples Crip!”

Or, possibly, he was leading the police to the scene of a crime and I would have just prevented them from stopping a math teacher from being tossed out a fourth-story window. “Tallon’s Call Means Math Man Falls!”

The probability of a New York Post Headline loomed large. I let the wild-child pass and probably for the best. It turned out that the student, not a minor, was an 18-year-old who had just been released from jail on Riker’s Island. Still, he had the right to a free public education and had ended up at F.D.R. High School after bouncing through four other schools in a week. He was only at F.D.R. for a few hours, during which time he caused about $1000 of physical damage to the school and scared the hell out of our incredibly sweet and charmingly incompetent 64-year-old school nurse by running into her office, grabbing a fist-full of the condoms she was required (scandalously, she believed) to keep on her desk, then paused from his marauding for half a beat, looked down at the rubbers in his hand, blew her a kiss and growled, “I’ll be back for YOU later,” before proceeding to make more mayhem in the hallways.

But there were other times when the cost / benefit analyses of potential intervention weren’t as clear-cut. And while in the case at hand I’m pretty sure I didn’t commit a crime, I most certainly could have ended up on the front page of The Post.

It all started one afternoon, while I was grading papers in my office. I’d keep my door open, in case any of the kids who wandered by wanted to talk. I hated grading papers. My students knew that, and everyday kids came by to talk about college essays, get help with homework, to shoot the shit, or — as often as not — to ask for advice or help with some issue fully unrelated to school.

I had a great relationship with most of my students. I was one of the teachers they felt comfortable with. One of the ones they really liked. One of the ones who was definitely at the bottom of the list for getting dangled out of a fourth-story window. And in Brooklyn, that security was a welcomed relief.

I was proud to maintain that status. I really loved my kids, and took it as a calling to help them out whenever I could. Because of the trust, I was on the receiving end of  more lunacy than most of the other teachers. I was one of the few teachers who heard about the suicide attempts, the domestic violence, the weed smoking, the losses of virginity and the need for subsequent trips to the doctor to get the appropriate testing or medications.

I was the teacher who heard about the bizarre parents, like the one father who saved his pee in peanut butter jars for a month and then took a bath in his own urine on the full moon. I consciously had to force myself to push down a massive case of the willies in order to shake his hand at graduation that year. I was the teacher who got the very odd questions after class. To this day I’ve not figured out what it was in our lesson about the War of 1812 that inspired one of my students to ask me when, in her menstrual cycle, she was most fertile. On the counsel of my mom, I bought her a copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves, which she kept hidden in my office so she could sneak in and read it without catching hell from her conservative, Muslim parents.

I heard so much weird shit that I became really good at presenting a calm and protective visage. The students would open up about deep pains, troubling questions or just the whacky stuff that comprised their lives, and I’d look back like a loving, streetwise Sphinx. Then we’d find a way to solve the problem.

I also became really good knowing when a kid needed to talk, but couldn’t quite get it out. Their body language screamed it. They way they’d hang out, playing with papers on my desk, without saying a word, but also not leaving, let me know when I had to push a little to get them to open up.

That’s how it started with Andy.

He came to my office door and said, “Yo, what up, T?”

“Chillin’. Why ain’t you at practice?”

“Awww . . .  I got some shit goin’ on . . .  But it’s cool. I got it.”

Then he just kept standing there. Kinda wavering in the door.

“The fuck you got goin’ on? Close the door and sit your ass down. Spill it, bitch.”

“Nawww, T. I got it.”

“Cool, you got it, but tell me what you got. Else I’m gonna call Coach and have him sit your ass next game for missin’ practice for some bullshit.”

“You buggin’, T?”

“I ain’t buggin. You spill or I shout.”

“Fuck it. But you don’t wanna know . . .  Remember I told you that . . . ”

He paused, then said, “I got jacked last night. Cop took my shit.”

“You got locked up?”

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