MARIA BALLANTYNE
Written by Rick Archer

CHAPTER FIVE: Mistakes

Cheating I am not proud to admit that I cheated twice in my Senior year.  I was fully capable of doing the work, but my bitterness told me I was entitled to take some short cuts.  I rationalized that everyone else had all the advantages, so why shouldn't I do something to even the score?  My first cheating episode took place in Chemistry class.  One morning my cram session in the restroom just didn't get it done.  I had tried to memorize the entire Periodic Table of elements at the last minute, but it was too much.  I had half the table memorized.  Now what?  In despair, I wrote the other half on a crib sheet. Worked like a charm.  Since I sat at the back of the room, the only person who would have noticed was the boy next to me.  He never once looked up. I got a 92 on the test.

Emboldened by the short cut, I decided to try that trick again.  A few weeks later came another opportunity.  I was allowed to take a German makeup exam in our regular classroom all by myself.  I had missed the test because I was sick.  As I anticipated, my teacher trusted me so much that she left me alone behind a closed door.  As the room was located in a remote section on campus, I doubted seriously anyone would disturb me.  How easy was this?  My German books were sitting on the table next to me.

As usual, I handled the vocabulary segment and the translation segment of the test without problem.  Yes, I had studied for this part.  I was good at German; in fact I would win the award for best German student later at the end of the year.

Now as I sat alone in the classroom, I was in a bad mood.   I stared at the Literature portion of the test worth about 10 points.  We were supposed to memorize the names and works of the greatest German authors - Goethe, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Gunter Grass, und so weiter (the German word for 'et cetera'.)  I decided this was a total waste of time.  I felt the same way about this as I did about the Chemistry Periodic Table.  Why memorize stuff I could look up any time I wanted to? 

Last night I had correctly anticipated I would be allowed to take the makeup test in private.  So why bother memorizing this stuff in the first place?   After all, I intended to thoroughly forget everything I had been forced to memorize the moment I graduated.  Here was a chance to cut a corner.  So I simply pulled out the book and copied the list.  In an odd attempt to deal with my guilty conscience, I even deliberately missed an answer.  Since I averaged a 90 anyway, I would cheat on only 9 out of the 10 questions. 

To my surprise, a classmate of mine opened the door and walked in.  He had come in to pick up a book he had left behind earlier.  The timing was exquisitely perfect.  One minute earlier and he would not have seen a thing.  15 seconds later and he would not have seen a thing.  He had a 75 second window of opportunity to show up out of nowhere and sure enough, that's when the door opened.

The boy was surprised.  He stopped in his tracks and did a double-take.  By his expression, this classmate had no idea someone was in here or he would have knocked rather than barging in.  I quickly closed my open book.  I remember the puzzled look on the boy's face; I am not sure he was positive what he had seen.  I wasn't exactly caught red-handed, but I'm sure the frightened look on my face was a giveaway. 

The boy apologized profusely for surprising me, found his missing book and left.  It was over in 20 seconds.

At the time I was deeply embarrassed.  However I wasn't too worried because it had been a highly ambiguous situation.  At best it was suspicious, but hardly conclusive.  I never expected the boy to say a word.  But as I later learned, he was obviously alarmed enough to report it.  

It is probably just as well as that I never realized I was under suspicion.  I would have been worried sick.  However, I was never called up to give an account of the incident, so I put it out of my mind. 

One day in the hallway next to the our beautiful Quadrangle, one of my classmates stopped me and asked if he could have a word with me.  This fellow student took me aside where it would be difficult to overhear us.

I was stunned when I realized why he had stopped me, but I said nothing. 

My classmate said there was an odd incident that he had been asked to speak to me about.  He didn't accuse me of anything.  He never once asked me if I had cheated.  Instead, he said he wanted me to realize I was a great student and that he couldn't IMAGINE someone of my talent would ever need to cheat.  And that's all he said.  He patted me on my shoulder and left.

I just stared at him in total disbelief as he walked away.  Rather than throw the book at me, instead this fellow student had been sent to counsel me.  I couldn't move.  I was in shock. 

.... he couldn't imagine someone of my talent would ever need to cheat.... I swear my mouth fell open at his approach.  That was brilliant!  This was exactly how to play me - he had complimented me and appealed to my sense of pride.  He went straight to my Puppy Dog side, not my Porcupine side.  What charm!  What utter bullshit!  But it worked.  I never cheated again.   There had to be someone's unseen hand involved in this.  I have no doubt that this student was coached.  I mean, he was a bright guy, but this was wisdom beyond his years.  I have little doubt this incident was discussed behind closed doors at great length.  We had a very strict Honor Code that had been drummed into us non-stop for my entire time at the school.  I had known kids who were suspending for cheating.  I also knew a young man who had been expelled.  However, someone had decided to give me a warning instead of taking me down like I deserved. Someone had to be watching over me.

With those other students as examples of the perils of being caught cheating, I was flabbergasted that I had been shown mercy. 

Furthermore, they even allowed me to save face!   They could have shamed me, but they chose not to.  I could have been forced to finish the year in disgrace.  They could have failed me in the course.  Instead I was allowed to graduate with honors in the top five in my class.  And they even gave me the German award to top it off. 

Unbelievable. 

This incident helped me realize I had made a huge mistake by cheating.  Being discovered was a huge blow to my pride at a time when my pride was basically all I had going for me.  I regret my mistake to this day.  I was wrong.  People trusted me and I violated their trust.

But I will say this.  Once I was confronted by the student, I never did it again. I knew that my name had surely come up before someone who had once trusted me.  Whoever reviewed these cases had to be deeply disappointed in me.  The knowledge that this school had been so good to me and that I had let them down weighed on my conscience terribly. 

Let me add that winning the German award at the tail end of my high school career turned out to be an empty moment.  For a kid like me who wanted recognition in the worst way, this should have been a proud moment for me.  No such luck.

I was unable to take any satisfaction in the award.  I could not bear to look Mr. Salls, my German teacher, in the eye because I was almost sure that he "knew".  It broke my heart to accept that award.  Serves me right.

 

Stealing

Believe it or not, I got caught doing something else that I was ashamed of.  I was a borderline thief. 

Unlike the cut and dry cheating situations, this one is going to require some explanation. 

One day in early May of my Senior year, I was called into the Headmaster's Office.  I turned white as I entered the room.  There was Mr. Murphy, Dean of the Upper School, Mr. Salls, the Headmaster, Mr. Lee, head of the athletic department, and Mr. Osborne, Mr. Lee's second in command.  These were the four most important men at Saint Johns.  

They all had a frown and they all had their arms crossed.  This didn't look good.  Oddly enough, as I first stood there, I had no idea what this was about.  I could tell something was wrong, but I didn't know what it was.  I would soon find out.

Mr. Lee spoke first. "Mr. Archer, will you please explain to us why you have two hundred dollars worth of unauthorized Saint John's sports equipment in the back seat of your car?"

Uh oh. 

How was I caught?  I drove my Volkswagen Bug to school every day.  It was a cheap used car I had bought with my grocery store money.  I was too embarrassed to park it next to the shiny brand new GTOs and Mustangs of the rich kids in the student parking lot.  Instead I always parked the car across the street next to the athletic department where no one would see what I drove to school. 

It was true that I kept St. John's sports equipment in my car.  I used it for my after-school basketball adventures.  Obviously somebody had noticed the stuff and said something to Coach Lee.  It wasn't hard to figure out... there were 6 red and white tee-shirts in the back seat with the SJS logo plainly visible.  There were two expensive basketballs that had "SJS" clearly printed on them.  There was other stuff too... 5 red gym shorts, many pairs of socks, and jock straps too.  All of this was laying there in plain sight in the back seat.  Not only that, I left the windows rolled down.  They could inspect it with their own hands if they wanted to. 

Unfortunately, there was no good reason why that equipment should have been there.  I had not asked permission.

Now I was facing the four most important administrators in the school.  They wanted an explanation.
 

My Pick-Up Basketball Career

So why was that equipment in my car?

The only way to make any sense of the situation is to discuss my strange obsession with the Saint John's Varsity Basketball team.

For the entirety of my Junior and Senior years in high school, I played pick-up basketball at city parks around the city two or three times a week on the afternoons when I wasn't working at the grocery store.  I went to all kinds of places to play.  Freed Park in Spring Branch.  Stude Park in the Heights.  Denver Harbor out on the east end.  Linkwood Park near Meyerland.  Godwin Park in southwest Houston.  Sometimes I played at the Jewish Community Center on Sundays.

Playing as often as I did, I had an extensive need for clean gym clothes.

In February of my Senior year in high school, my mother and I had a screaming match.  The tension had been building for a long time and finally the dam broke.  I was angry at her for an issue that will become obvious later.  Mom was just as angry with me.  She was mad at me for my sullenness, my disobedience, and my constant backtalk.  She screamed at me that I was a total jerk.

Angry and fed up, Mom looked for some way to punish me.  Unfortunately, her options were pretty limited.  Mom announced that from now on I could do my own laundry.  I protested.  What about my gym clothes? 

Mom looked at me with scorn.  "Grow up and wash your smelly gym clothes yourself!"

I could have just as easily done my own wash.  I knew how.  But I wasn't very good at ironing.  That particular skill escaped me.  I needed clean uniforms, but Mom had become so undependable doing the ironing that I decided it was easier just to use the grocery store money to pay the small cost myself.  As a result, for some time now, I had been taking my school uniform to the cleaners. 

Washing the gym clothes myself would not have required ironing, but I did not want to give my mother the satisfaction of seeing me wash my own clothes.  God forbid I should obey her for anything she told me to do.  Mom meant this as punishment and I intended to defy her.  That was the rebel in me.  

I had a better idea. Why not borrow some Saint John's gym clothes instead? 

Of course, it dawned on me that any request for 'permission' would be denied.  So I didn't bother asking.

Something interesting happened the first day I wore those clothes.  A kid looked at my shirt and asked me to explain "Saint John's".  He had never heard of the place.  As I told him a little about my school, I realized I was proud to be noticed wearing a shirt with the SJS logo on it.  For the rest of the day, I got a big kick out of wearing the school colors.  I felt like I was symbolically representing my school on the basketball court. 

From that point on, I wore that clothing with pride wherever I went.  Even though these were ragged, unimpressive gym clothes used in our daily Phys Ed program, it still meant I was wearing the SJS logo and colors as I went to the public gyms around the city. 

Thanks to these gym clothes, I had finally found a way to play basketball for my school.

I had not intended to continue borrowing gym clothes.  The whole idea was to flaunt my mother for a while.  However, once I got the unexpected recognition for "representing" SJS on the basketball court, I was hooked on wearing those clothes.  Besides, this would guarantee me an endless supply of clean basketball clothes.  So I continued the practice.

Senior Year Basketball Misery

Basketball was intimately connected to the misery of my final year at Saint John's. 

I agonized constantly over whether to go out for the team or not.

I was tall, powerful, and aggressive.  I was also a very accurate shooter.  I daydreamed about basketball constantly.  Basketball was my only outlet.  It was also one of my very few sources of self-esteem.  I wanted to play for my school in the worst way possible. My problem with acne had forced me to drop off the team in my Freshman year.  The acne also prevented me from playing in my Sophomore year.  In my Junior year, I decided not to go out for the basketball team in order to keep my grocery store job. Now it was my Senior year.  Last chance.  Now or never. I was hardly "college material", but I was good.  I was definitely good enough to play high school varsity basketball.  However, my skill in basketball was little known.  Only a very few people at school knew that I had secretly become a very good player.  I had gained my ability from year-round practice in the public gyms.  When I bought my VW Bug in the summer before my Junior year, I celebrated my new wheels by driving to different city parks every afternoon in search of competition.  Any time I wasn't working at the grocery store was my chance to play pickup basketball.  I wasn't dating, so what else was there to do for fun?  Basketball became my obsession.  I played against some really good athletes.  Almost all of them were varsity basketball players.  One boy I played against was all-city.  I didn't do very well against him, but at least he didn't rub it in.  Usually my opponents were powerful black kids with great leaping ability or the quick Mexicans who liked to use their elbows.

I always held my own.  My biggest advantage was my cleverness.  I learned to use my wits to overcome their physical advantages.  I was a master at faking defenders into the air and going around them. Sometimes I was a little too clever.  At a place called Stude Park in the Heights, a Mexican kid pulled a knife on me when I embarrassed him one time too many.  I decided that would be a good time to leave.

It was now my Senior year.  Thanks to 15 straight months of constant practice against tough opponents in the city gyms, I had developed into a very good basketball player.  I also possessed definite physical advantages.  I was the second tallest boy in school.  Furthermore, thanks to two solid years of weight-lifting, I was also one of the strongest boys in school. 

Now I had a burning desire to show everyone in my school that the Invisible Kid was one hell of a ball player.  I wanted to play varsity basketball more than anything else on earth.  It was a huge passion within me.  It would have been a heck an outlet too, something that might have helped me work off those vast reservoirs of inappropriate anger.  I was starved for attention and growing increasingly hostile towards the world.  Playing basketball alongside my fellow Seniors on a daily basis would have surely defused that problem considerably.

So what was stopping me? 

Things were not going well for me at my job.  Ordinarily one would think I could take time off during the basketball season and have that job waiting when it was over.  I did not believe I had that option.

Mr. Ocher, the new manager of my grocery store, didn't like me very much.  Now that I think about it, there were a lot of people who didn't like me very much in those days.  No surprise there.  As I turned increasingly cold and defiant, you had to be very patient to find my good side. 

Unlike Mr. Griffey, the kindly older man who had hired me a year earlier, the new manager was young, impatient, and authoritarian.  Mr. Griffey had been exactly the type of man I responded to well.  He was very kind to me and I saved my puppy dog side for him.  On the other hand, Mr. Ocher was exactly the kind of person I didn't respond to very well.  His abrupt, critical style made me bristle.  Any perceived slight and I would snap back defensively.  He would tell me to do something, but rather than just do it, I would challenge him to give me a good reason. 

Life isn't very easy when you have a personality disorder.  Ask me.  I can give you plenty of examples where my smart mouth was my undoing.  Not surprisingly, with an attitude like that, I was barely holding on to my job.  I might add this was the same bad attitude that would eventually get me dismissed from graduate school six years down the road.

Mr. Ocher did not appreciate my sarcasm and back-talk one bit.  Now that I look back, I can't believe I wasn't fired for insolence, but at the worst part of my Senior, I came very close. Right before basketball season started, Mr. Ocher wrote me up for insubordination.  This was the first step needed to justify firing me.

One day Mr. Ocher called me into his office.  First he chewed me out.  Then he said if I didn't shape up fast, he would terminate me.

Then he began to write me up.  If you think I can be long-winded, you should have read his masterpiece.  He cited me for four different infractions.  For 30 minutes I had to sit there watching him write the document.  He never stopped once.  I squirmed as he wrote long paragraphs containing actual quotes of my various inappropriate remarks.  The entire time I had to listen to his non-stop comments about my poor attitude.  He really let me have it.  The worst part was keeping my mouth shut the entire time.  As angry as he was, I knew if I uttered a single peep, I was out of there.

I will never forget the satisfaction on his face as he ordered me to sign it.   Mr. Ocher was in a great mood for the rest of the day.  I figured he assumed it was just a matter of time till I messed up again and then he had me. 

I was skating on thin ice here. Given my manager's hostility, I knew if I asked him for time off to play basketball for my school, that job wouldn't be waiting for me at the end of the season.  But gee whiz, I wanted to play basketball for Saint John's so much!   I was in agony trying to decide. 

It was one thing or the other.  I would have to choose.

I was more than willing to quit my job.  That's how much playing basketball at Saint John's meant to me.  But I wasn't going to quit my job unless I had a clear shot of playing a valuable role on the team.

So the question became this:  What if I did quit my job, would it be worth it?  I didn't want to just make the team, I wanted to be a starter out there.  What were my chances?   The last thing on earth I wanted to do was quit my job only to sit on the bench for an entire season.

I knew I was an excellent player, so why was I worried about keeping the bench warm?

I had two legitimate concerns that caused me to hesitate.

First, there was my blind eye.  I was an exceptional one-on-one player.  I beat everyone I played.  But I only had to deal with one player.  My blind eye was no handicap.  All I had to do was watch one player.  Team basketball was a much different story. 

Peripheral vision is important in a complicated sport like basketball.  On defense I was supposed to watch both the ball and watch my man.  But I could only do one of the two.  On offense, I had to move without the ball.  I could either look where I was going or I could keep my eye on the ball.  I couldn't do both.  Pick and rolls gave me a lot of trouble.

I knew I was able to overcome my handicap playing three on three pickup basketball.  However I noticed I had trouble coping when there were five players on each team.  The movement of nine other players was a lot harder to track than five players.  This had me worried.  My handicap might be too great to overcome.  This uncertainty gave me cold feet.

Second, I had no experience with this coach.  My gut told me he didn't like me.  Would this coach give me a fair chance?  Or would he favor the boys who had been in his program throughout high school? 

I figured the only way the coach would give me a shot would be if I was clearly better than the other players.  So how good was I compared to my classmates?  

I decided before I quit my job, I should first attempt to measure my ability against the other players.  Starting in my Junior year, I challenged every boy on the varsity to play me one-on-one.  I needed some way to know how good I was.  By the time I was a Senior, I had beaten every single starter on the team but one.  The only exception was the star of the team.  I doubted I could beat him, so I didn't bother trying.  I figured that made me the second best player in the school at one-on-one basketball.  But was this good enough to guarantee me a real shot at playing time?  One-on-one was a lot different than five-on-five.   My blind eye sabotaged my confidence. 

There was another reason for my One-on-One campaign.  I secretly hoped one of my classmates would be impressed and report to the coach how good I was.  I wanted the coach to hear my press releases and invite me to try out for the team.  If that had actually happened, I would have quit the grocery store job in an instant. 

However to my undying frustration, the coach never said a word.  To make it easier for him to notice me, I hung around basketball practice on the days I didn't have to work.  As I nailed jump shot after jump shot on an extra basket next to the full-court practice in session, surely he would notice my accuracy.  Nope.  He never said a word.  I never even caught him glancing in my direction.  As far as he was concerned, I didn't even exist.

In the end, I figured it out.  No one was going to beg me to play.  This snub, of course, was yet another reason in my endless list of reasons to be bitter.

Since the coach showed no interest in me, this posed a dilemma.  He wasn't going to come to me.  I would have to go to him and let him call the shots.  Did I trust him to give me a fair shot?

I had received encouragement from Mr. Lee and Mr. Osborne, the two coaches who would sit in judgment over the stolen athletic equipment.  Both men had specifically told me I had the ability to play varsity basketball.  Both men encouraged me to go out for the team.  If either of those men had been the coach, there would have never been any doubt in my mind. 

But the coach who was in charge was not the "encouraging" kind.  He was an unfriendly disciplinarian, the exact kind of man I had trouble relating to.  It was obvious that putting myself in his hands would be taking quite a chance.  So what should I do?  This was my Senior year.  In the face the coach's obvious indifference, should I take a chance and go out for the team?

Tough choice. 

Ultimately, I gave up.  I based my decision on the fact that the current basketball coach clearly didn't like me.  He had the exact same kind of personality as Mr. Ocher.  He wasn't going to put up with smart-mouth brat like me for an instant.  Nor did he have the patience or inclination to reach the puppy dog side of me.  To this day, I still regret my decision not to play.  This was the best chance I ever had to show my classmates that I wanted to contribute to my school just like they did.  I wanted to be part of my Senior class so badly and I knew this was the one chance I would ever have.  This was my final chance to come of out the shadows and be part of the Saint John's family.  But I dropped the ball. That said, looking back, I definitely made the right choice.  Let me add I no longer blame the coach.  In a team sport like basketball, a selfish, me-first loner would be a real liability.  If he could have "reached me", things would have worked out.  However, given my personality problems, no matter how sweet my jump shot was, I would have never clicked with that coach.  My lifelong dream was doomed to failure.  And I really did need that grocery store job.  But that didn't ease the disappointment.  Throughout the entire basketball season I was in constant turmoil over my decision.

Crime and Punishment

My decision to skip the basketball team led directly to the incident involving the stolen gym equipment. 

I lived and died a million times with my decision not to play.  The agony of passing up the one chance to ever show my classmates that I too had athletic ability and school loyalty caused me untold heartache.  Unable to bear the frustration, I turned my resentment towards the unfriendly basketball coach.  This was all his fault.  I developed a serious grudge for that coach

I was even more furious at the coach for not inviting me to play. I was furious at myself for not having the guts to quit my job and follow my dream.  In fact, I was sick about a lot of things.  I was sick of not dating.  I was sick of being invisible.  I was sick of this house and the holy rollers.  I was sick of studying on bathroom floors.  I was sick of always postponing any chance at happiness in pursuit of my shaky college dream.  And most of all I was sick because I had no way to pay for college so I could get the hell out of this place.

As the pressure built inside me, basketball was my only outlet.  Without basketball to keep me going, I would have lost it all. 

So during the St. John's basketball season,  I continued my regimen of afternoon pickup games in the city gyms.  I played with a fervor bordering on desperation.  It was the only release I had to keep my legion of inner demons at bay.

Then came the fight with my mother which led to my the decision to borrow the SJS sports equipment.  This happened right at the end of the basketball season.  Wearing the SJS gym equipment became my strange way of being true to my school.  I even wore those tee-shirts around the house.  What a sad, lonely kid I was.

Whenever I couldn't stand the smell any more, I would take the dirty clothes into the locker room and secretly exchange them for clean clothes.  I also borrowed a couple SJS basketballs to warm up with.  It wasn't basketball season anymore, so I figured they didn't need the balls anyway.  Who cares?  I will return them when school is over.

After doing this for two months, this became such a habit that I didn't even think twice any more.  If anyone wanted that stuff back, there it was in the back seat of my car.  Just take it.  I honestly figured that no one cared.  After all, it was just sitting there in plain sight.

That explains why the sudden call to visit the Headmaster's Office took me completely off guard.  I had been doing this so long I had forgotten it was "wrong".

However, now as I stood in the Headmaster's Office with these four administrators staring at me in exasperation, my borrowing spree didn't seem like a very good idea any more.   What should I tell them? 

To be honest, I think Coach Lee and Coach Osborne would have believed me if I had some way explain why these clothes were tied to my frustration over skipping the basketball season.  However, I was a pretty confused kid.  I would not have been able to explain these feelings in any coherent way.  Nor do I think explaining my grudge against the basketball coach would have helped win my case. 

Nor do I think that explaining my mother's washing decision would have won me much sympathy either.

In the end, I simply said I borrowed the stuff to play basketball after school and that I intended to return it all when school ended.  I pointed out that if I intended to do something wrong, why would I leave that equipment laying there in plain sight?

It's one thing to forgive someone who comes completely clean.  Unfortunately, my explanation stopped well short of the whole story. I think the men sensed I was hiding something.  This made their decision more difficult. 

I felt so ashamed of myself as I watched them wrestle to understand my explanation. 

As I stood before the four men, I expected serious punishment.  I completely expected to be suspended.  I knew I had done wrong.  I should have asked permission.  I also knew there was ample precedent for punishment. 

There had once been a star athlete at Saint John's who had been caught cheating on a final exam.  He was a senior who had an athletic scholarship to college already in place.  If ever there was a time to look the other way, his situation would have been it.  Not such luck.  The boy was forced to leave the school in disgrace.  He wasn't allowed to participate in graduation exercises.  He had been a sports hero. If they would treat this young man so harshly, what kind of treatment could a nobody like me expect?

However, there was hope.  As I watched these four men, I noticed they were fidgeting in their chairs.  I noticed in particular that Coach Lee glanced at Coach Osborne.  Coach Lee had the oddest look on his face.  What was that all about?  I got the distinct impression these men were at a loss to know what to do with me.  They dismissed me without a decision.

Later that day, Coach Lee, the athletic director, approached me in the hallway.  He told me to return the clothes and the basketballs and to not do this again. There would be NO punishment.  All I had to do was promise I would not repeat this mistake. 

Don't worry about that!  After the terror I had experienced facing these four men earlier in the day, I would never dream of doing it again.

To this day, I have never figured out why they gave me the kid glove treatment, but turned around and expelled other students.  My sense of justice said that I deserved to be punished in some way.

Based on the body language, Mr. Murphy was the only one who had obviously wanted to give me the guillotine.  Mr. Salls' face had been totally inscrutable.  On the other hand, Coach Osborne and Coach Lee knew how crazy I was about basketball.  They had spent enough time playing basketball with me that winter in our daily phys ed class to know that for a fact.  They seemed the most merciful. 

What I had done was clearly wrong, but at the same time no one could deny the equipment was there in plain sight no more than ten feet from the front door to Coach Lee's office. 

My crime ultimately boiled down to the fact that I had done something relatively harmless WITHOUT ASKING PERMISSION.

In the end, I assumed it was Mr. Lee who got me off the hook.  Mr. Lee had always been kind to me.  I think he appreciated the good job I had done with the football statistics for the past four years.  He also had some understanding that I carried some very strange energy about basketball.  He knew that I was a troubled kid, but he also had seen that I was a good kid.  I think Mr. Lee had compassion for me.  Surely that was my saving grace.

I guess they decided to take my word for it that I had intended to return the clothes and the basketballs all along.  There were only three weeks left in the school year.  What good would punishing me now do?  So they let it go. 

I was overwhelmed with gratitude.  Now I could graduate with my dignity intact.

 

Judgment Day

I have asked myself what I would have done if I had been in the shoes of the Saint John's administrators regarding the cheating and stealing incidents.  To tell the truth, I think they did the right thing.

I always wondered how much these men knew about my home life.  I had shared my problems with Mr. Curran on several occasions that year.  He knew I was having a tough time at home.  Perhaps Mr. Curran had explained my problems to some of the other faculty. 

Maybe that helps explain why they spared me not once, but twice.  

They had every right to use the figurative lash, but they chose to use their soft touch instead. In the end, I think the men who sat in judgment of me handled both incidents correctly. 

I can only wonder what they thought of me in private.  In the end, despite any disappointment they felt towards me, they never let it show. As I said, they allowed me to graduate with dignity. 

I will always be grateful to these men.  Looking back over time, these situations serve as clear examples that the faculty was silently taking care of a deeply troubled kid as carefully as they could. Saint John's was an elite institution for a reason.  Not only did it possess a gifted faculty, but it had coaches and administrators who used wisdom to guide the place.  To an outsider, St. John's may have seemed like a snooty rich kids school overpopulated with status worshippers, but I know for a fact this school was run by down to earth people with big hearts.

I don't think being "Dad" to a troubled kid was in their job description.  Nevertheless, in my case, several men chose to volunteer for the role anyway.  Through direct and indirect guidance, over the years several faculty and administrators quietly helped to raise me. 

I wish to add I didn't even realize it.  They were so skilled that I never even knew there were people at the school watching over me the whole time.  Indeed, I was so lost in my own turmoil that I had no idea these silent mentors even existed.

It should be clear that I am retelling these events from the point of view of an immature 18 year old kid who was about as lost as any kid could possibly be.  However the reader will have also noticed I frequently inject the commentary of an older and wiser version of that same poor kid.  That "older, wiser person" would like to point out that they must have done something right because I became a model citizen in my adult life.  

One thing that concerns me is the fear that the modern Saint John's community might not realize just how decent and talented these men were.  I don't know if the men who guided the fortunes of Saint John's back in the Sixties ever got enough credit for their wisdom and kindness.  Humble men that they were, I believe that many of their best moments have remained shrouded in secrecy all these years.

If you believe the true measure of character is the quality of the deeds men do when no one is looking, then we can conclude these men had great character indeed. 

One of my main purposes in sharing my story is to make sure these quiet heroes are recognized today for the humanitarians they were back in their day.  If anyone ever stumbles across my Saint John's history lesson, I want them to know the greatness in today's Saint John's can be traced directly to the legacy created by these caring men of yesteryear. 

CHAPTER SIX - Despair