Do You Think This Is Strange? (20 page)

I told my father that his reasoning was flawed. He sighed.

“We're not arguing on this one. You don't say certain words in public. You have to trust me on this.”

“But listen:
you
say those words in public.”

“I try not to. Just like the time you tried not to piss your pants and failed. Everyone knows that you shouldn't piss your pants. But you did it anyway. Does that make it right?”

“No.”

“It's the same with swearwords. You don't say them in public.”

“Can you say them alone?”

“I suppose you could.”

“Can I say them in my room?”

“Sure. Whatever. Why not?”

After that, I sometimes sat in my room and said every swearword I knew. They were bad words, but I didn't understand why. I suspected my confusion might have been because I failed to master the correct intonation and emphasis. So I practised them, like a wizard practising a spell.

“Shhhhhhit,” I said, then paused. “Cock
suck
er,” I said.

Sometimes my father passed by in the hall and opened the door to look in.

“Did you say something?”

“I was swearing.”

“Is something wrong?”

“No.”

“Then why were you swearing?”

“I was practising.”

“Practising what?”

“Swearing.”

He shook his head. “Great,” he said. “That's just great.”

“No, it's not,” I said.

“Shut the fuck up, will you,” he said angrily and slammed the door. I listened to him go downstairs.

For a few moments I sat quietly on my bed.

“Shut the fuck
up
, will you,” I said slowly. “Shut the
fuck
up, will
you
?”

—

I stopped repeating swearwords long ago, because they were ubi­quitous. In the shows I watched, in the books I read, on the websites I visited. There were no swearwords I hadn't heard.

There were no combinations I hadn't heard. Until today.

“Jesus
fuck
,” moaned Danny Hardwick as he lay on the ground.

“Jesus
fuck
,” I said under my breath, and the receptionist lowered her glasses and looked at me suspiciously.

My phone vibrated.

what are you doing

Waiting.

im waiting too

What are you waiting for?

i want to go home

i miss home

i miss you

I looked at the words on my phone for a full minute before I replied.

I wrote you a poem.

you wrote me a poem?

My chem partner is Saskia

Every day we eat lunch

inside the cafeteria

Together she and me make we

Say, i wrote this poem for you saskia

I wrote it for you, Saskia.

thank you

You're welcome.

squeak

Squeak.

Listen
: They sent home two of the boys I beat up in the cafeteria. They sent Danny Hardwick to the hospital for stitches. They made me stay.

I sat on a chair in a room in the principal's office until 2:30, when my father came to the office. He entered the room and stood in front of me. For almost a full minute he looked down at me, without saying a word, breathing heavily through his nose. I stared at the second button on his shirt. Then he turned and walked back to the door.

“Let's go,” he said. I stood up and followed.

“Can we stop for ice cream?” I asked as we walked out of the principal's office.

“Just shut up, Freddy,” my father said.

—

In the truck, in the parking lot, my father started the engine, but instead of driving me home, he slumped back in his seat, his hands on the steering wheel. I sat in the passenger seat and stared straight ahead.

The heater was on, but it was blowing cool air. My father never turns the heater off. It has been running since the day he bought the car, three years, four months, and nine days ago.

It makes him comfortable.

“God
damn
it, Freddy!” my father shouted and slammed his fist on the dashboard. “What the bloody hell is
wrong
with you?”

I had many answers for that question. It was, after all, the main question that has consumed me for most of my life. But I didn't say anything because I was sure he didn't want to hear it.

He leaned forward and lay his head on his hands as they gripped the top of the steering wheel. “How many times is this going to happen?” He turned to me. “I suppose they were annoying you, these kids. Is that what happened this time?”

“No,” I said.

“Do you know you've been suspended for the week?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know you might get expelled? Beating up three people in the cafeteria isn't a small thing, Freddy. It's a big thing.”

I stared straight ahead. Rain began to fall. I closed my eyes.

“Should never have let you go into boxing,” he growled as he drove. “Should have just let you get shitkicked some more times. Maybe you'd have learned something for a change.”

As we drove home from Hampton Park, my father asked me the same question he asked after I was expelled from Templeton.

“Why
did
you hit him?” he wanted to know.

My reply, both times, was the same. “Because he was trying to hit me.”

Both times, the rain began, and the windshield wipers beat at a rate of forty cycles per minute. I counted the beats and listened to the whirr of the wiper motor. It went whirrrr. Thump. Whirrrr. Thump. This was the noise it made in one cycle.

“Why was he trying to hit you?” my father asked.

“Because I kicked him in the back of his foot.”

“What the hell? Why did you do that?”

I didn't answer.

—

In at least one way, Hampton Park and Templeton College were similar: my shoulders were bumped at both schools.

Chad Kennedy liked to bump my shoulders at Templeton College, and Danny Hardwick liked to bump my shoulders at Hampton Park. But Chad was still the opposite of Danny Hardwick. Where Danny was bellicose and sullen, Chad was outgoing and loud. Where Danny was rebellion and subculture, Chad was mainstream and all-American. Danny was an outcast. Chad was the type of guy who created outcasts.

The two, although similar in behaviour, would not have liked each other.

Classically speaking, both Danny of Hampton and Chad of Templeton were bullies. Classically speaking, I was the person who got bullied. Having no friends to interfere or object, I have always been a target for people like Danny or Chad. Having never fought back, or resisted, I continued to be a target.

As it happens, never fighting back and never resisting is usually a good strategy, because I tend to bore my aggressors. A pigeon can only peck a button so long before it decides that no more pellets are going to fall. Like pigeons in a cage, Danny and Chad pecked at me, expecting that I would react, preferably with fear.

Anger would be fine, too, they assumed. They were wrong.

—

Listen
: The similarities frighten me.

In November of last year, I was expelled from Templeton College for fighting. The expulsion came at the end of a hearing, the same kind of hearing I would now face at Hampton Park.

At Templeton, it was the conclusion of the quote-headmaster-unquote that I was a threat to the safety of the other students. It was his finding that I was not able to control my violent impulses.

There were many other circumstances that influenced the conclusion reached by the quote-headmaster-unquote, but they were not significant enough to be included in his written decision to expel me. I know they were not significant factors because he said so in his written report.

It was not considered that I had done irreparable harm to the student body as a whole. It was so not considered that McClintock mentioned the irreparable harm three times in his report.

Chad Kennedy was the high school football team's starting quarterback, and the team, if it won the last game of the season, would qualify for the state finals for the first time in seven years. It was expected, by alumni, that the team should reach the state finals. Chad's starting position was guaranteed because the second-string quarterback, Ed Laughlin, the son of the leading donor to the school, was fifty pounds overweight.

But, in the end, Chad didn't start the playoff game. Instead, he watched from the side of the field, his nose taped, a set of stitches in the back of his head. Ed Laughlin started and led the team to an 18–0 drubbing at the hands of their archrival, the Upper College Titans.

The Titans' mascot is a giant stuffed missile.

Templeton lost the game and was eliminated from the playoffs. This meant a significant loss in revenue from anticipated home games, and “constituted a blow to the morale of the school.”

A
blow
to school morale.

“This was not,” quote-Headmaster-unquote McClintock read aloud, “a factor that influenced my decision.”

“Then why is it in your report?” I asked him.

He glowered. “It illustrates the impact your actions had on the student body. They may not recover.”

“They may,” I said.

“Irregardless—”

“Regardless.”

He looked like he wanted to say something, but held himself back. “Regardless—” he tried.

“Many students don't like football,” I added

“Freddy,” my father said softly and put his hand on my arm. “Just shut up, will you?”

It was also not relevant that a parent-teacher meeting took place one night after the Templeton Ruggers were eliminated from the playoffs. Nor did it weigh in his decision that several parents voiced their opinion that the loss could be attributed to a team that was not managed well, used primarily to generate extra revenue from home game sales, and not properly supported by the administration.

It was not a factor that many parents wondered whether the school was not making sufficient money, and that perhaps the admin­istration needed to review its policies, perhaps its staff.

None of this was a factor that merited consideration on the part of quote-Headmaster-unquote McClintock. His decision was determined solely by the facts of the incident. The facts were these: in the hallway of the Main Hall of Templeton College, at 1:05
PM
, Chad Kennedy fell back and smashed through the plate-glass trophy cabinet. A very large trophy fell from the top shelf, and he was knocked unconscious.

The trophy was for the most outstanding student of the year.

Several witnesses indicated that Chad didn't just fall. He fell because I pushed him. I struck him four times, causing him to lose his balance. To McClintock, this was an act of violence of such an unacceptable level that I should be expelled from school.

I tried to explain that the punches were not relevant to why Chad fell unconscious. He fell into the glass only because he stepped on his own shoelace when I pushed him backward. I pushed him backward because he was falling on me when he lost his balance. He lost his balance because I struck him. I struck him because he was trying to strike me. He tried to strike me because I pushed him. I pushed him because he pushed me. How far back do I have to go?

This was not relevant to McClintock.

“I don't want to know
how
you did it,” he said. “It's enough for me to know
that
you did it.”

In fact, it was only significant that I shoved Chad Kennedy. McClintock called this the Initiating Incident, and, after that, Chad Kennedy was justifiably defending himself. It was not considered that I shoved Chad Kennedy only after Chad Kennedy shoved me, for Chad Kennedy later told Principal McClintock that he was Only Playing Around and Didn't Mean Anything by It.

Nor was it considered that Chad Kennedy was four inches taller than me, outweighed me by forty pounds, and could bench press three twenty. In the opinion of quote-Headmaster-unquote McClintock, larger people should be just as safe from violent outbursts as smaller people.

No one considered that Chad Kennedy used to sneak up behind me between classes and give me gonch pulls. No one considered that Chad Kennedy snapped wet towels at me in the boys' change room.

No one considered that my actions were reactions.

“This is my point, Frederick,” said McClintock. “You have an excuse for everything you did. And every excuse blames Chad Kennedy.”

It was, in the end, concluded that I was unable to tell the difference between a legitimate physical threat and a case when a friend was playing with another friend, which was the circumstances of the incident that occurred between me and Chad Kennedy. As Chad told quote-Headmaster-unquote McClintock, I was Chad's friend, or so he thought, and I was probably jealous of Chad's position on the football team.

I checked Wikipedia. I couldn't identify any characteristics of my relationship with Chad Kennedy that would be consistent with friendship.

—

In making his decision to expel me, quote-Headmaster-unquote McClintock explained that he did not consider at all that I am autistic. This was a medical condition, and not relevant, beyond that fact that there was no one at the school with Sufficient Training in Controlling the Behaviour of an Autistic Student.

“This incident is explainable without invoking medical minutiae,” he said. “This was a simple act of poorly controlled aggressive behaviour.”

It was finally noted that I am disrespectful of authority, as evidenced by my dogged disagreement with McClintock about his reasoned assessment of the circumstances of the fight. This was indicative of a Stubborn and Irrational Outlook. Normally, this sort of outlook is controllable and mouldable by school counsellors, but no one at Templeton College had the sufficient training to control my behaviour.

It was not considered a factor that my past behaviour was not violent, yet it was considered that past behaviour was consistently disrespectful. Because I was a Growing Young Man, my temperament was beginning to change.