I hang out more or less constantly with a pair of school friends of mine, who I’ll identify here as R (girl) and T (guy). They’re both pals of mine, each with some issues (R takes a lot of valium and is kind of a constant downer, T smokes a lot of pot and thinks everything he does is of major political importance, and therefore every act of smallfry rebellion is some major revolution)
Anyway, we are three buddies and the two of them go out, and they have some pretty strong feelings for each other. This weekend their parents both got messages from the principal of our school, saying that the Drama teacher had seen R giving T head. I don’t know how this was handled on the phone, but it was.
T has southern baptist parents, and so they “blame” R for leading their son astray or whatever. They pulled him out of school and put him in another one. Whoo. R’s parents are pissed at her and T.
The kicker is that they weren’t doing anything! They have absolutely no motivation for lying to me, and believe me we’re very open with each other. What the Drama teacher saw was T sitting in the choir room with R’s head in his lap. Ooh, serious fucking crime, right?
So now T is forbidden to ever see R again, and his parents will enforce it. He’s already making arrangements to go to Mexico. Never mind that he has no idea what he’ll do there, he’s just crazy enough to do it. R is just plain sad, she knows that if T leaves she’ll likely NEVER see him again, and as I said, these two really like each other. In other words, today sucks.
Big, big difference between a hummer and a head in lap scenario (still inappropriate for school). If I had a child in a similar circumstance I would most certainly nail down the teachers description of what he/she saw. Unless the teacher is blind or it’s the laziest hummer ever given, one should be able to tell the difference and this is important enough that the teacher should be questioned directly. Has this been done?
Well, I don’t think that T’s parents are going to pursue much in that vein. These are whacked out Southern Baptist types, and I think their view is “A teacher can never be wrong! Contradicting your elders = lies! The little slut led him to evil!” Or something like that.
Not an uncommon attitude out there (our school is in Austin, a cool, liberal Oasis in the tremendous boiling shitpot of Texas, but he lives well outside of Austin, in the ever pleasant Dripping Springs)
R’s parents may well investigate in to the matter further, but even if our teacher admits that he’s not sure what he saw, it probably won’t change T’s situation.
And I don’t think it’s necessarily that easy to tell the difference between a hummer and a head-in-lap situation at certain angles.
Imagine he’s sitting with his back to you. Her head is in his lap and as they talk he strokes her head, you could very well mistake that for a hummer in progress, especially if it’s just happening to glance through a little window in the door from some distance.
Forgive me, Lucki Chaarms, but I have a few questions.
How do you feel hanging out with R and T? Do you ever feel like the odd person out?
Will anybody care about this after high school?
Hi Opal? (Just keeping consistent with the question marks.)
Does T have a concrete plan for going to Mexico, and if so, are T’s parents aware of this?
Do you see Southern Baptists in general as whacked out types?
Even if it was just her head in his lap, why does she have her head in his lap during class time? Wouldn’t that get you detention or something anyways?
No. We’re all good pals, and as far as they’re concerned I’m the gay pal with no interest “that way” in either of them (as in hetero guy and girl). We hang out plenty, and we had made kind of a weekend ritual out of getting high together.
I have no idea.
Opal says Hi
I don’t know how concrete, but the plan is certainly in motion. I imagine if he goes he’ll do most of it by bus, and as I said, he’s crazy enough to do it. His parents obviously don’t know, that’s the point of leaving, he doesn’t plan to come back.
Not necessarily all, but a good number of them. The southern baptists in this community especially, and out of them T’s parents especially.
This was an after-school occurence, not during class time.
I’m talking to R over Instant Messnger right now, and it turns out T’s been institutionalized. He’s going totally nuts right now, and because he’s in a mental hospital R is taking a bunch of pills to try and numb herself to all of this. Apparently R’s parents believe her, so it’s not much of a problem that way.
Tell T to be as calm as possible. I don’t know the best response to this, but I knew a couple of teenagers in a somewhat similar position. They blew up, went into rages, rebelled, were uncooperative. it was not the right response to get out as quickly as possible.
I hope there’s someone with more experience out there to advise you. This is the time to be very calm, collected and mature. I know it’s extremely difficult when put into such a position and perhaps having drugs proscribed so you can’t think straight. But being calm and measured has got to be better than freaking out. Please go see him if it’s allowed or get someone to see him to give him encouragement and the message to chill and work it out.
With all due respect to T - and R - frankly, going beserk is not the way to demonstrate that the parental decisions were off base.
As to the teacher’s observation – I’m reminded of the retired colonel character in American Beauty. who was sure he had witnessed his son giving a BJ to Kevin Spacey’s character, when in fact all they were doing was getting high together. It’s not an unbelieveable mistake to make.
I used to work as a psych tech in an adolescent psych hospital(a couple of them, actually). I you have any questions about what goes on, etc, feel free to ask/email.