As Luck Would Have It by Mark Goldstein Read Free Book Online Page A

actually like.  Each morning my mother would send me off with a hug and the lunch she had prepared, pushing me out the door into a hell she did not know existed.
    I'd normally stop by Joseph's house first and we'd walk the twelve blocks to school together.  I was fairly confident that I would be able to take care of myself without getting my teeth knocked out and it was those teachers that I had minimal respect but plenty of disdain for that might be my greater challenge.  I watched Joseph and wondered if I would be able to protect him; as he skipped a bit as he sometimes did instead of walking and he giggled when I mentioned Suzy Butlerman's tits, who by total luck had landed in both our homeroom and science class.  He was happy and carefree, as he should have been; with a nice house and an older brother and parents who sent him to camp in the summers.  He was good and kind, but with a softness and vulnerability that someone might just try to stick something into.  Once people realized just who Joseph was, what would they do to him?  Would they really hate him just for liking boys instead of girls?
    Being in middle school was in many ways like being in prison, except that parole came every day with the 3:00 dismissal bell instead of at the end of some indeterminate term of confinement.  The rules were exacting, non-compliance was rarely forgiven and nearly always harshly dealt with.  The assistant principal, Mr. Strickmann, handled all disciplinary matters, while the principal, Mr. G ild man , saw to the actual administration of our education.  They were an odd couple to rule the prison, or the school if you prefer; Mr. Gildman being a warm and reassuring man, Herr Strickmann, as stern and cold as a Nazi guard.  I doubt that Mr. G ildman had anything to do with the selection of his assistant, the school board undoubtedly placing him in the position of assistant principal primarily for the purposes of intimidation and punishment.
    I'm not sure what values were supposedly being instilled in young adolescents by subjecting them to such unreasonable and unwavering conventions.  The list of infractions and prohibitions were endless; chewing gum, wearing blue jeans, listening to a radio, eating candy, being in the hall without a pass, speaking without being called on, being in the cafeteria after you finished eating, going outside at any time, going to your locker except at designated times, going to the bathroom without the monitor; it went on and on until the average kid would just follow along blindly, in single file no less, from class to class, from hour to hour, from the gym to the library to the auditorium and back again.  Nearly every conceivable freedom, choice, decision or option had been completely stripped away from us each day from 8:30 to 3:00.  It was in this environment, among the greasers and insufferable teachers that young minds were expected to learn.
    These same young minds were resilient and adaptive, so that despite these conditions, which I believe were deliberately set upon us to make things as intolerable as possible, we did manage to learn some new things.  We learned a new level of disrespect for adults that previously would have been unthinkable.  We learned to be rebellious and not to accept what we were being told at face value.  We tend to assume that such defiance exhibited by teenagers was a function of their biology, that puberty and hormonal changes associated with their age was the primary, if not the sole cause of this behavioral transf ormation.  But I suggest for you to consider more carefully the other factors, some of which we have discussed, that may account for these rather drastic changes in conduct.  T he environment must play more than an insignificant role here, that is to say that this new and sudden shift in the situation that was thrust upon us must have forced us, at least to some degree, to adapt to our surroundings in different ways.  Consider then what I