Dennett , your wonderful story brought up a flood of memories. I also went to high school back in that dark time in history when the American zeitgeist had a large stick stuck up its collective rectum. Nowadays it’s hard to even imagine such things, although it seems that a portion of our country is trying desperately to go back to that repressive mentality.
I was also a proud rebel. The heinous crime for which I was prosecuted was…. KISSING A GIRL IN THE HALLWAY! I was so damn proud of myself. Curiously, kissing on school grounds out of doors was okay but it was strictly forbidden inside the school buildings.
What made the crime so titillating was the fact that I was a dorky nerd. If it wasn’t for this incident I would surely have been voted student most likely to never kiss a girl. What made it even more exciting was that the girl I was kissing was one of the very, very hottest girls in the entire school of almost 4,000 students.
She had just transferred to our school that year and she was immediately hit on by a seemingly endless line of boys. Well over a hundred of the school’s most athletic, popular, macho, and confident boys all asked her out and she said no to every one of them.
I took a different approach. I befriended her…. and for two months I never asked her out. We simply became friends. Then I finally got up the nerve to ask her out and to my complete shock she said yes.
So she was my girlfriend for a total of three weeks. My ego was so hyper-inflated that one day (it happened to be homecoming day) I kissed her right there in the busy hallway…..
Right in front of the vice-principal!
I got expelled from school for five days. I was also kicked out of the marching band. Before the big homecoming game that night the band director made a speech to the band letting them know that there would a hole in the band’s marching formation during half-time because one student — he didn’t mention me by name although everyone knew it was me — put his uncontrollable sexual desires above school spirit and band spirit. He let the whole school down.
My status in school society changed overnight. I was suddenly cool. I consider it my greatest accomplishment in high school. But it came with some drawbacks. For one thing, the girl immediately dumped me. It turned out her father was our city’s district attorney and he ordered her to not have anything to do with me…. and sadly, she complied with his orders. Apparently, she was not so much a rebel.
And there was something very, very unfair about the whole incident. Correct me if I’m wrong but I think French kissing involves two mouths and two tongues. So it is a crime that involves TWO students. But only I was expelled from school. The girl received no punishment whatsoever despite her full eager complicity in the crime. The fact that her father was the local district attorney may have something to do with that but maybe not. Either way, it was not fair.
Sadly, my rebellious act made no difference whatsoever in school policy. The unwritten policy remained, ‘If you’re gonna French, do it outside.’ In hindsight, it probably wasn’t all that unreasonable of a rule.
The important thing is that I committed one of my first truly rebellious acts. And I liked it. I quickly developed a taste for rebelliousness which stuck with me for many years. As an adult I finally put that rebelliousness to better use. I learned how truly important rebelling against unquestioned norms is. Fear is what keeps most people from rebelling but if we can get over that fear we can truly become empowered and we can help move human evolution forward.
