Principal's office.
The former principal had retired after 20 years in the same school. My 25-year old brother (he's 16 years older) still cringes in fear when his name is mentioned. The new principal is a touchy-feely music teacher who inspires no fear in the student body. How can you fear a man who taps a triangle and sings "LAAAAAA!" for thirty seconds before repeating it again. But my parents were old-line Germans who grew up in central Europe in the 30's- they had instilled a fear of all authority and job titles. I'm very nervous...but hopeful. At least I can explain my part and how the teacher wasn't there.
Instead I'm told to shut up. I'm told that fighting is wrong. That I should've ran and told a teacher.
"THERE WAS NO TEACHER!" I scream.
"Nonsense, Mrs. Collins was there the whole time and says she saw you attack Mark and keep hitting him after he gave up. That's very violent. I've called your parents."
Shit.
"She wasn't there until the very END! She didn't see Mark and Pete and Roger all jump me the second I walked out!"
He looked at me gravely: "You're not helping your case by lying. Pete and Roger say that you came up and called Mark's mother a name. Then he called you a name and then you punched him."
He hesitates. A look that I didn't know until I thought about it years later crosses his face. I think now that he believed me. But still he said something that revolted me like nothing that was ever said to me before at that time.
"Even if your version of the story were true, you should've run and told the teacher...there's nothing worth fighting for. Detention: 2 weeks. And I'll talk with your parents."
Nothing worth fighting for. He believed that too. I could see it.
Which is why he looked like a complete hypocrite at the school assembly the very next week talking about the "noble sacrifice" of our veterans during the Remembrance Day celebrations:
"Freed us from tyranny..." (nothing worth fighting for...)
"Protected our lives..." (nothing worth fighting for...)
"Fought and died for us..." (nothing worth fighting for...)
There were many other teachers just like him that espoused pacifism above all other values. I've met many of them.
- Gulf War 1 was wrong. It's all about the OIIIIIILLLLLLLL!
- Vietnam was wrong.
- M*A*S*H told us that being involved in Korea was wrong (Hey, those Commies are people too! Even though the results of their belief system was a higher death count than Hitler's!)
- World War 2: well that was an unambiguous "fighting evil" kind of war, but war is still wrong.
- World War 1 was the pacifist poster-child war. Wasteful, solved nothing. Much poetry about dying in horrible ways. Endless songs with the word "Woops!" in them. The war that put the first nail in the coffin of the "Glorious Adventure/Noble Bravery" image that war had up until that point.
So what's this got to do with me getting beat up all the time when I was nine? Not much really. If it was a movie, I'd have had one glorious final fight where I vanquished the bully, got the girl and won the respect of my peers. In reality nothing like that happened. I fought one pointless fight after another, got my teeth messed up more times than I care to remember, came home with bruises and blood on my clothes. Getting home unscathed after school was quite an adventure. I wasn't undefeated, but I wasn't conquered either.
The only way that others avoided the daily beatings I got was to join what was forming into quite a vicious gang. To give in. To do what others told them to do. To take the path of least resistence. Not to fight. Because to them it wasn't worth fighting about it.
I don't know if I was right to fight back every single time; I don't know what I'd tell another kid in my situation. It almost got me killed.
We moved away after my dad witnessed me calmly disarm a kid who'd pulled a knife on me and was about to stab me in the back with it. Rather than get a teacher I stared the scared kid down until he ran away, then calmly walked over to a nearby sewer grating and dropped the pocket knife in. I walked over to my Dad, who'd been waiting off school grounds to give me a ride home.
"That was your friend Scott." he said in a slightly dazed voice.
"Yeah. David Fuckface told him he'd get the beating of a lifetime if he didn't stab me. The knife's his Dad's. He'll probably get beat up and get in trouble with his Dad, too. That's why I didn't hit him. Should I have?" I looked at my Dad, who'd turned white with fear. Later he told me it was fear of what he saw me becoming...
"No. I...I don't know. Why didn't you get the teacher?"
"What teacher? Do you see one?" I looked around. "Besides. They don't believe me anymore...I could've kept the knife, but then, that's stealing, isn't it? I like it where it is."
"Will your friend Scott try that again?" my Dad asked.
"I don't know. I told him that anything David Fuckface would do to him was nothing compared to what I'd do to him if he came anywhere near me for the rest of the year. He was my last friend here..." At that point I started to cry...
(Humourous note: Scott's dad tried to make my dad pay for the pocket-knife. Fuckin' lawyers...)
We moved away from Scarborough four months later...
So, you ask me, what's the fucking point? What have I learned? It's wrong to ALWAYS fight. It's wrong to ALWAYS not fight. There is a PRICE to be paid, ALWAYS. Sometimes that price is worth it, sometimes it's not. Once paid, that price has a value, both to the persons who pay that price and beneficiaries of what that price has purchased.
By degrading all wars as wrong, pacifists devalue the price paid during those wars by the soldiers who fight, usually not out of choice, but out of a sense of duty, honour, and code, by devaluing what some of that spilled blood has bought us: freedom to speak, freedom to choose, freedom to live without the fears that others live in every day.
Jingoistic, ultra patriotic warmongers devalue the price paid because they are willing to spill blood over the most trivial of causes without thought or consideration.
And we devalue the price paid by pretending that this can never happen again and that we don't need to remember those that paid the price so that our lives are better.
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You make some excellent points. And out of all the insincere sentamentalist posts I've read on this Nov. 11th, yours sticks out as being the most astute. Great post.
Posted by gatmog on 11/11 at 04:17 PM
