Last week we were treated, either live or on videotape,
to the annual back-to-school pilgrimage. Legions of youth--from
tots to teens--happily hunkered down for another 10 months
of academic joy (or at least a break from their moms and
dads).
But let's be honest. Odds are that at some point this
year many of those kids will wake up wanting to puke from
the sheer dread and panic of what awaits them. The beginning
of the school year is something to celebrate (just ask a
parent), but it's also something to fear. This year, we
decided to collect stories of our staff members' and others'
most harrowing experiences for this back-to-school issue.
We found stories of sadistic defensive linemen, a principal
hell-bent on saving souls and a truly bizarre episode involving
a syringe filled with bovine excrement.
Some of the stories are funny, some are sad; one, involving
a surprise enrollment into a Florida Christian boarding
school, is pretty frightening.
All, however, serve as reminders that the greatest lessons
learned in school often have little to do with what goes
on in the classroom.
SCHOOL HAZE
Degrading initiation rites are most commonly associated
with college frat boys, but as several of our staffers can
attest, some kids get their start early.
When my best friend asked me to join the West Springfield
(Virginia) High School football team with him, it presented
a dilemma. On one side of the ledger stood new friends,
possible fame and the prospect of feminine companions. On
the other stood the woods.
I had long heard the horrible stories of hazing Spartans
recruits. It was said that new players were invited to a
secluded location in the woods--a secret place reserved
for football-player bonfires, date-rape parties and beer-gulping
festivities. After being given a secret nickname and "welcome
to the regiment" speech by the seniors, the newbies were
told to strip down and get in a large circle, front-to-back.
Each boy was to place his right thumb in his mouth, and
his left thumb into the anus of the boy directly in front
of them, then walk in a circle. Using a switch taken from
a nearby tree, the senior in charge would rally the boys
to pick up the pace a bit, informing the young, naked joggers
that if their left thumb was to squeeze its way out of the
boy in front of him, he would have to switch thumbs.
Which explains why I'm much better at skateboarding than
football.
--Aaron Edge
Growing up in Battle Ground, an aptly named Iron Age village
in southwest Washington, I witnessed reverse Darwinism in
action.
The Neanderthalish elements of the community were especially
powerful at the local high school. There, with the quiet
promotion of the faculty, older students were allowed to
visit violence upon all the entering freshmen.
These attacks ran the gamut from simple degradation (Fs
scrawled on faces with lipstick and various acts involving
toilets) to straight-on physical violence with twisted sexual
undercurrents (the football team, like its counterpart in
Virginia, excelled at these). After a week of this "good-natured"
initiation, the faculty would hold an assembly to welcome
their beaten-down charges into the school's herd mentality.
What the experience did to me was to warp one component
of my liberal beliefs. If I ever have children, they will
be home schooled or, with the help of vouchers, given a
private education. No child of mine will be socialized with
apes.
--Steffen Silvis
The first day of high school came as a relief when I was
a freshman at New Harmony (Indiana) High. The ringing school
bell meant I was no longer subject to being depantsed and
having my butt painted green.
I was large for my age and had an ill-tempered older brother,
so in the summer following eighth grade, I avoided the regular,
underwear-ripping atomic melvins (the girls called them
wedgies), pushups over dirty-water ditches and other initiations
my classmates endured. But it wasn't until my fully clothed
backside hit the chair in my first freshman class that I
truly felt safe from the fearsome group of seniors led by
a boy so dangerous and lacking in common sense that he soon
ended his coveted position as a grocery sacker by robbing
his employer at gunpoint.
--Nigel Jaquiss
I'm not sure if this qualifies as hazing, but it was an
initiation of sorts. And, like many of my memories from
childhood, this one involves cow shit. In fifth grade, Christy
Lagerlund and I brought a livestock syringe full of runny
cow shit from the milking barn to West View Grade School
in Burlington, Wash., on the last day before summer vacation.
We hid our weapon in a bookcase during the day, our anxiety
over what we were about to do making the longest day of
school an eternity. When the bell finally rang, we snuck
out to the line of school buses, dodged the gathering students,
then squirted Teresa Sadler with it as she was getting on
the bus. It was the most disgusting thing we could think
of to do. We hated her. I don't even really remember why.
I suspect it was because she had breasts and we didn't.
Come to think of it, I still don't like her for that.
--Patty Wentz
TRAPPED IN CHRISTIAN BOARDING SCHOOL!!!
You think your school days were rotten? Allison Tobey
has it worse.
by Nigel Jaquiss
On the evening of Aug. 8, Dan Skerritt's home phone rang.
Skerritt, a founding partner of a downtown law firm, couldn't
understand the hysterical teenage girl on the line and handed
the phone to his wife, Irina. She recognized the caller
as Allison Tobey, her daughter Katrina's best friend. "She
was crying," Irina recalls. "It was hard to get her to talk
or to find out what was wrong." 
Allison,
16, finally settled down and told them she was in Boston
with her parents and had just been told that she was being
shipped off to a Florida boarding school for troubled girls.
"I asked her if she could talk freely," recalls Skerritt,
whose daughter was not home at the time. "She said 'no.'
I asked her if she knew the name or the location of the
school. She said 'no.'"
Allison was all set to begin her junior year at St. Mary's
Academy, the downtown Portland girls prep school. An honor-roll
student whose chief vices are reportedly streaking her short
brown hair with splashes of red dye and smoking an occasional
cigarette, Allison appeared to be thriving, classmates say.
"She was on the right track and doing better than ever,"
says Katrina Skerritt, who described Allison as a girl of
infectious good humor who always carried a sketch pad, enjoyed
theater and Tae Kwan Do and was never in trouble.
Today, however, Allison is a student at Victory Christian
Academy in Jay, Fla., a so-called "tough-love" boarding
school. In 1998, the Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal
called Victory a "private reform school."
Located in cotton and peanut farming country near the Alabama
border, Jay is a village of less than 1,000 people. The
school's 75 girls leave campus only with escorts and are
rarely seen outside. "When you look at the back of the school
it's beautiful," says a local government official who requested
anonymity. "But it's got a fence around it, real high in
back."
Although Victory Christian caters to troubled girls, the
school has encountered some troubles of its own.
In 1992, Dr. Michael Palmer, Victory Christian's founder,
moved his operation to Florida from San Diego after a licensing
dispute with California officials. In most states, boarding
schools are licensed; Florida, however, exempts faith-based
boarding schools from most state oversight.
In an interview with WW, Palmer, 61, attributed
his departure from California to "harassment," noting that
in Florida his school is certified by a state-recognized
religious organization.
Nonetheless, Palmer is no stranger to local Florida authorities.
In 1994, according to Santa Rosa County sheriff's records,
officers investigated sexual-battery allegations a student
leveled against Palmer. In 1997, records show, four students
complained to law enforcement officials of child abuse.
Palmer blames the allegations, none of which resulted in
charges being brought, on vindictive students. "They were
girls who were angry with me," he says. "Kids today have
no fear and no respect for authority." Palmer declined to
let WW speak to Allison.
Meanwhile, Allison's friends and their families are waging
a campaign on her behalf. On Aug. 23, Irina Skerritt and
Linda Wiener, a former Clark County prosecutor and court-appointed
child advocate, drove to the Tobeys' Tigard home. Their
daughters, both classmates of Allison's at St. Mary's, accompanied
them. Allison's parents weren't home, Wiener says, but Allison's
sister Amanda answered the door and invited the group inside.
During the course of conversation, Amanda produced letters
that Allison had written from Florida.
The letters brought the visitors no comfort. "They said
she's surrounded by the worst people she's ever met and
she's followed every minute of every day," Wiener recalls.
Amanda herself had been sent to Victory Christian the previous
year and, according to Wiener and Skerritt, described instructional
tactics that included isolation, constant monitoring, "bellying
down" (in which girls who seem to be resisting Jesus are
wrestled to the ground and held there), and such punishments
as being made to write thousands of times phrases such as
"I will open my heart to Jesus."
Wiener and Skerritt left the Tobey house determined to
meet Allison's parents face-to-face.
In a short telephone conversation on Sept. 2, however,
Kathleen Tobey reportedly told Skerritt to mind her own
business. (The Tobeys also have not returned WW's
calls.)
"I see their point," Skerritt says, "but my concern is
that this school is designed to break a child's spirit through
intimidation and mind control."
When school started at St. Mary's last week, the big question
in junior class was "Where's Allie." Two girls started "Project
Allie Save" and are organizing a letter-writing campaign.
Others are calling the Tobeys, seeking information. Wiener
will visit Victory Christian this month during a Florida
vacation. "We just want to know that she's alright," Wiener
says.
WHEN ANARCHY RULES
By Steffen Silvis
Ron Norman was the type of idealistic new teacher that
students usually have for lunch. An earnest sociology major
from the Bay Area, Norman came to Portland in 1972 and requested
an inner-city school. The 22-year-old was dutifully shipped
off to Woodlawn Elementary, a foreboding institutional block
in Northeast Portland.
But Norman soon learned that it took more than just sincerity
and good intentions to run a classroom.
While most everyone has student tales of terror, it's often
forgotten that unsuspecting instructors can be haunted by
unruly pupils and a steady drip of disrespect.
"I was totally unprepared for what hit me," says Norman,
who now teaches at Laurelhurst Elementary. "I stood by my
classroom door to greet the students as they arrived, and
the first walked past me into the room on his hands."
A high-pitched anarchy misruled Norman's first week of
class, and it wasn't until late into the second week that
he finally gained some control.
Author Larry Colton remembers a different form of school
anarchy.
In 1969, a Harvard-programmed experimental high school
called John Adams High was set up in Northeast Portland
(it's now Whitaker Middle School). The curriculum was open-formatted,
and the students were to have a say in how their education
should be governed.
Like many theories, this one proved unworkable in practice,
at least initially. "The first day of the new school was
a nightmare," said Colton, who became a teacher at the school
the following year. "A riot broke out, and the police had
to be called."
The riot was a foreshadowing of things to come at Adams
during the halcyon days of political radicalism when even
high-school students were active.
The school became a political battleground between the
conservative civic leaders and the progressive students
and faculty members. Students had run-ins with everyone
from military recruiters (too imperialistic) and Daughters
of the American Revolution (too racist) to Rose Festival
organizers (too sexist).
Though students also helped out on neighborhood renovation
projects (turning a useless school lawn into a community
vegetable garden), the school's unorthodox methods made
powerful enemies and the school was closed in 1981.
ALL THE PRETTY HORSES
By Michaela Lowthian
At Ainsworth Elementary School, in the late-'70s, I went
to school with a girl named Malaika
(the girl on the right in the photo). Teachers were always
getting our names mixed up. Michaela-Malaika, Malaika-Michaela.
I was troubled that we were linked in this way, overlapping
in the Unusual Name Category. I wondered how I was expected
to disentangle my identity from my name twin's. Malaika
was indeed perfection. She could draw horses.
I, on the other hand, had a bit of a reputation. I got
kicked out of Brownies for telling Mrs. Conklin that I didn't
work for the Girl Scouts of America. I wouldn't be selling
their cookies, I told her, and after encouraging friends
to follow suit, I felt Mrs. Conklin's hand on my arm. I
was asked to leave forever.
So it wasn't easy, being called Malaika by mistake. She
had smooth chestnut hair and dark blue eyes. My hair and
eyes were darker. Shiftier.
Malaika's parents had worked in the Peace Corps, and she
was born in Kenya. Translated from Swahili, her name meant
Angel. Baby Malaika, I imagined, lived in a tent in the
African tundra, wrapped in swaddling clothes, riding around
on the backs of gazelles in a beautiful beaded basket.
Malaika could also play Nadia's Theme on the piano.
The somber piano music, a wordless tale of one Olympic gymnast's
life under the repression of Soviet-era Russia, was heart-breaking
to my young Democratic ears. Malaika played that song over
and over for me on the day that I was invited to her perfect
yellow house after school. We didn't exactly hit it off,
but I remember standing by her piano, captivated by the
performance.
One day we brought science projects to Ms. Frané's
class. Malaika brought a perfectly molded piece of bread,
covered in a gray and green downy fur. A skillfully executed
project, it had taken patience and planning. I was pretty
sure she was going to get an A.
It was laid out on the table. I pressed my hand against
the hard, stale piece of bread to feel it and it broke underneath
my weight. I knew I'd done a terrible thing. Accidentally
on purpose.
I asked for a hall pass and didn't come back that day.
Malaika, wherever you are, I'm sorry about your bread.
SOME KINDA HEADLINE
By Philip Dawdy
I'll call her Maria--13 years old with the body some women
wish plastic surgeons could duplicate. She'd walk into my
office with a backpack full of books, smiling as if her
only concern were pre-algebra. I'd stand on the other side
of a counter and wish I was 15 years younger.
In 1992, I worked as the school accountant at a large junior
high in a tough part of San Diego called Linda Vista where
maybe 50 percent of the kids would make it to college--community
college.
Maria wasn't one of the kids I was especially close to,
but I knew that her parents were divorced and her father
spent six months of each year on a Navy ship. But that was
an average family in that part of town. Like the other students--I
never called them kids--she'd stop by my office to buy pencils,
yearbooks or gym clothes--duties that came with the job
because I kept the cash. She was very polite but never had
much to say.
It was the others who opened up. For some reason--maybe
because I wouldn't let them call me Mister, maybe because
I didn't care if they swore, maybe because I still felt
the wound of being a teen--I became a big brother to a lot
of students. Gangbangers and geeks came by my office before
and after school to hang out and bitch about teachers, parents
and the ineffable future.
My office was a safe zone. The students could talk as they
liked. I wasn't going to hand them over to the counselors
or vice principals.
At some point, the adolescent boys stopped talking to me
about how much they hated school and started talking about
how much they liked sex. I listened to their braggadocio
with a believing face and my internal bullshit meter pinging
and made sure they knew where to get free condoms and STD/HIV
tests without parental permission.
Weeks later, when the girls figured out that they, too,
could talk carnal knowledge with me, I was leery. This was
beyond appropriate behavior; officially, students were supposed
to be in my office to buy what they needed and shove off.
To most of the teachers, administrators and clerks, they
were annoyances to be brushed off as soon as the 2:35 bell
rang.
But there I was: an adult actually interested in listening
to them explore their broadened identities. I wasn't going
to betray them for having sex. And I certainly saw no need
to steer kids to a school counselor--that would accomplish
nothing except feed the system's need to enforce social
norms that even the students' parents ignored.
Then, one day a boy let it slip that Maria had been busy
lately. He laughed and made it clear that it was a big joke
among the boys that several gangsters had pulled a gang
bang on her and that she'd willingly participated.
The next day I looked up her schedule on my computer and
sent a runner to pull her out of social science class. She
walked into my office with her usual smile.
Before she could let the door close, I told her to leave
it open. Was it all true? She stared at me for about 30
seconds and I could see the features of her face squeezing
into a tear.
I asked her to follow me. Together we walked down the main
hall to the counseling office.
Later, I heard that her mother packed her off to Catholic
school.
DOUBLE LIVE GONZO AT THE GATES OF HELL
By Zach Dundas
A man stands alone in the center of the high-school gymnasium,
salt-and-pepper hair flowing from skull to ass. As he clutches
a microphone, the crowd of Missoula's dewiest youths leans
forward.
"Someone told me what this school was called," the speaker
says. "And I said, 'fucking A, it's called Hellgate High
School? That's the coolest fucking shit I've ever heard.
I can see the diploma now: 'I kicked ass at the gates of
Hell!'"
An exultant roar rips out of 2,000 young throats. On the
side of the gym opposite my seat, the school's teachers
and administrators fill four rows of bleachers. Graying
heads lurch involuntarily, shoulders shiver, faces slacken,
as if each has been slugged in the stomach. 
The noise dies a little. The man with the microphone continues.
"So I guess it goes without saying that I'm fuckin' glad
to be with you today," he says. "Especially since I see
all the girls decided to wear their short skirts."
Another cheer erupts. The faces of Hellgate High School's
teachers, counselors, disciplinarians, janitors and secretaries
fade
from slightly green to stark white. One question dominates
each of their minds:
Who decided that Ted Nugent could address the 1990
student body?
The State of Montana is much blessed by man and nature,
and we had some of that bounty to thank for the Nuge's appearance
at Hellgate. First, the state's vast elk herds attracted
Nugent, known for his will to kill as a bow-hunter. Then,
there were the odd dynamics of Hellgate, which kept the
authorities fearful for the moral hygiene of its students.
Dominated by the preppie/hippie spawn of the University
of Montana's pinko profs, Hellgate also teemed with cowkids
bused in from the countryside, car-jacking Belarussians
and perpetually fearful Hmong kids.
Jon F., a shadowy tyrant with rumored CIA connections,
ruled the principal's office with right-wing élan,
much to the dismay of the teaching faculty, most of whom
believed that, with a few lucky breaks, McGovern could have
turned things around back in '72.
Given this mix, it's small wonder the principal worried
a lot about the uplifting of his charges, and frequently
hired speakers to address us on improving themes. There
was the patriotic rock band that belted out songs denouncing
flag-burning; the multitude of Christian pastors who delivered
carefully God-free homilies; the born-again body-builders
who performed divinely inspired feats of strength.
Since Nugent was also on the speaking roster for Rockers
Against Drugs, Jon F. figured, hey, here was a way to reach
out to these young people on their own terms!
And reach out Nugent did.
"I don't care if you're a fuckin' chink from China, a fuckin'
Mexican from Mexico, an Indian brave or whatever," the Nuge
said sagely. "If you do drugs, you're a fuckin' loser."
Space limitations prohibit me from sharing the full range
of Ted's 45 minutes of brilliance. Suffice it to say that
he was extremely enthusiastic, not only on the subject of
substance abuse but also on the topic of young women's sexual
awakening.
Naturally, there were serious recriminations from various
community guardians in the wake of his speech--letters to
the editor, apologies read aloud in every classroom, no
shortage of crow offered and eaten.
Still, his message hit home. As those decadent high-school
salad days played out, whenever I was offered a chance to
partake of fleshly pleasures, I paused. What Would Nugent
Do? Finally, though, the evils of peer pressure won out,
as a tidal wave of cheap beer and ditchweed turned Hellgate
into a true den of sin. And I figured, hell--if you can't
lick 'em, lick 'em.
BIG BOYS DON'T CRY
By Byron Beck
During my formative years I was what you'd call the "sensitive"
type. Bad at social interaction, even worse at dodge ball,
I was able to excel at school in one thing: crying.
From kindergarten to fifth grade, my fingernails-to-the-chalkboard-type
squalls worked wonders, getting me out of such unpleasantries
as the principal's office and kissing girls.
But my tear-duct defense broke down after my family moved
to the little 'burb of Burbank, Wash., in 1973.
That was the year I met Satan.
I should've known things were going south the very first
morning of the very first day of school. My mother had agreed
to pick up her best friend's twins and take us all to our
new classrooms in her '68 Impala. When we arrived at the
twisted sisters' house, they said they had something they
wanted to show me first.
It was a batch of dead baby rabbits.
My momma grabbed my arm and whisked me away from that limp,
lima-bean peep-show encounter and off to school. There,
I let go of her hand and inched my way into the kid-sized
classroom.
Immediately, and as if on cue, I burst into tears.
From the looks on my new classmates' faces, I might as
well have taken a dump in front of the whole room! This
whole crying jag, it seemed, didn't work in sixth grade.
My new teacher, Mr. Dorn (a.k.a. Satan), quickly picked
up on my fear and used it to his full advantage for the
entire year. It was a year that would see me beckoned to
the front of his class to see how long it would take me
to cry, and humiliated by his cop buddy (who made me straddle
his nightstick). The year culminated in Mr. Dorn's holiday
classic, "Byron, The Red-Nosed Light Bulb."
My new school did have one bright spot: a freaky friend.
From that very first day, Chuck encouraged me to think
past the hellhole in which I was an unwilling participant.
He let me sit by him at lunch, invited me to my first co-ed
dance (I remember hearing "Stairway to Heaven") and shared
what secrets he knew about movie stars (did you know Clark
Gable was impotent?).
Despite Chuck's efforts, I never lived down that first
day. It haunted me right up until my 10-year reunion.
But, in this story, good eventually triumphs over evil.
The kindly student who befriended me, Chuck Palahniuk, grew
up to write Fight Club, a tale whose message of survival
of the fittest belies the kindness he showed me 27 years
ago. And our satanic teacher? He eventually got his own
blushing face on the evening news for hanging out in a local
whorehouse.
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