King Of Marion

I got an e-mail today from my high school. Specifically, from the woman who used to be the yearbook adviser - and one of my favorite teachers, too. She runs the school now, and she sent me a link to the alumni newsletter.

It was fine, full of the stuff you'd expect from a small private high school's alumni newsletter. One thing did catch my attention, though. It was a note from the Dean of Students:

One of my favorite scenes from Dead Poet’s Society is when Robin William’s (sic) character goes to the trophy case to point his students to their heritage - the students who went before them. I get those same goose bumps when I walk down the south hallway...

Well...yeah. I guess. Now, I think the only time I saw that movie was over two decades ago when it was released, because I am very old. And I thought it was fine at the time but I wouldn't rewatch it now because it's full of Robin Williams chewing the scenery and I no longer have the patience for that sort of thing. But! But what I always remember from that scene (and it must have been a pretty good scene for me to remember it over twenty years later) is what John Keating (the character played by Robin Williams, whose name I had to look up on IMDB) tells his students: all these pictures and names and trophies? They were just like you, and they're all dead now. So live now. Don't wait, because the clock is running for all of you.

Now, it's probably not true at my high school - not the everyone being dead part, anyway. The school hasn't been around that long, and I'd bet most of the people in the pictures and the names on the trophies are still alive. That's not the point. The point is that this knucklehead dean took the wrong lesson from this scene. He's wallowing in the comfortable names of the past. He went to school there and graduated a few years before me. I didn't know him, really, but I remember he was really into talking and singing in chapel.

It was a strange school, really, and I'm not sure why my mom sent me there. I went to a Catholics school from third grade to eighth grade, complete with an old Polish priest, strict nuns, and lots of going to Mass - even if you were one of the Protestants. It was a good school, though, and I thought my mom got her money's worth sending me there.

My high school, though? There was a lot of talk about selective admissions and high standards and academic excellence, but the truth was it was where people sent their kids if a) they already went to the church associated with the school, b) they were terrified of sending their kids to school with the (whispers) blacks (end whispers), or c) the kid had shit the bed so badly at their old school (bad behavior, drugs, social ineptitude) that they had no choice but to go to a different school.

I suppose there were some people who didn't fit into those categories. People who both wanted to get a better education for their kids than what the public schools offered (and if someone is charging for the same product the place across town is giving away for free their product must be better, right?) and maybe wanted their kid to get a Christian education, too. I think that was my mom, along with a little bit of (b), above. Around my junior year of high school I realized how much my mom was spending on this school and asked her to let me go to the public high school in town. Also I thought it would be a lot more fun. I knew a lot of kids there, She said no. She spent a lot, too. More than I spent on college, probably.

And what did she get for her money? Well, if you were having trouble in school, I do remember they would really work with you. But I never had trouble. Not a bit. So I think I got an achingly average education. My friends who went to the local public school were far better equipped after graduation than I was.

On the other hand, if I'm playing trivia and a Bible question comes up? I can knock that shit out of the park. I'm not sure four years of college tuition-level money is worth owning a trivia category, though.

I've got no idea what the school is like today, of course. But I'm not sending John to school there. They owe my mom a hell of a refund, I think, and also they wear uniforms. I hate school uniforms.