Posted February 22, 2003

I don't have many regrets from my early life but the one time I was sent to the Principal haunts me even today.

I was a quiet child. I played by the rules and I kept out of trouble. I avoided sports and excelled in chess. I never wanted to be noticed except to be praised, but one time I was caught drawing in music class.

I can put myself back in that small body, feeling miserable and ashamed. I look around, and everything in the room is oversized. There was a nameplate on his desk, and papers. Maybe a stapler or a pencil sharpener threw back the light of the florescent fixture overhead.

The principle was a beefy, clean-shaven man in a dark suit. I looked at my hands in my lap, not at him, while he lectured me, ending with, "School is like church. You don't draw in church, do you?"

For a burning instant I felt myself in church, sitting on the hard maple pew in a building a few blocks away from the Training School, my father's arm around my shoulder, flinching invisibly every time he pushed back the cuticle of his thumb with a finger of the same hand, a nervous tic of his. Maybe Daddy should have been drawing in church, like I was.

I raised my head to answer truthfully.

It would only have been asking for trouble.

I dropped my eyes to my lap.

"Do you?" he prodded.

I gave him the answer he wanted. "No, sir," I said in a small voice, betraying myself, cowed by Authority, ashamed to have given in.

I never put it together before, but that's why I admired Peter so, that day in Madison in Byzantine History class.

We'd each been given a - you know, I don't remember the assignment, or what I wrote on. Another student wrote on the epic of Diogones Akritas (I spell from memory) and that led to a discussion of the epic. Dr. Barker asked for examples of epics and I piped up with "The Aeneid," and Peter, with a slow, sly smile, objected. "The Aeneid isn't an epic. It doesn't have an epic hero!"

He was looking at Barker, not at me, and Barker rose to the bait, delivering an impassioned defense of Aeneas' heroic stature in what I now realize was the equivalent of that long-ago statement about the status quo, "School is like church." He looked smugly at Peter.

Peter raised his head beligerantly. "It isn't even good poetry!" he added.

"Have you read it in the orriginal?" sneered Barker.

I hurt for my friend. There he was, a long-haired gentle boy in blue jeans, facing a professor twice his size and over twice his age, a beefy man in a light grey suit who had just delivered an argument against which there was no rebuttal.

No rebuttal for me, anyway, with my three years of high school German.

Peter squared his shoulders and raised his chin pugnaciously.. His eyes flashed - I know it's a cliche, but I swear they did. "Yes I have!" he said firmly, throwing each word down like a gauntlet.

Barker's face flushed crimson. He sputtered and changed the subject.

I thought "Good for Peter!" and gave him points for erudition.

I didn't notice the sense of vindication I felt when Barker let it drop. Unconvinced, of course, and outraged at this attack on a cherished work of art, but nonetheless respecting another's truth when he could back it up.

I'd hidden when the time came to defend my truth, too cowed to affirm, "My momma lets me draw in church." Remembering how I felt then as a pre-teen, how my mouth was dry with fright at the notion of admitting to my own life, remembering how defeated I've felt all these years because I sold myself out, I wonder if I've learned anything? When my next time comes to cling to the truth, will I have the guts to do it?

By Ruby Jung, even the background. All rights reserved to the story. If you care for the background, you're welcome copy and use it.