Daddy Don't Hit Me - June 28, 2007
Pregnant with Possibility
By BC Woods
"And you're not comfortable!" Karen complained, throwing an elbow into my stomach.
"Well, I'm sorry, but there aren't enough seats for everyone." Inside the auditorium where my brother's graduation ceremony was to take place, I was drowning in a sea of white trash. To my immediate rear, a woman with large purple plastic rectangular earrings wore sweatpants and a t-shirt. Every now and again she would push the gum in her mouth into a pocket on her tongue and blow a bubble until it popped. A young man of no more than eighteen sat in front of me, with a child on his lap. At first I had thought, like me, it might be his younger sibling, but at a graduation like this it was more likely it was his own spawn.
"Jacob got his own seat," Karen rebutted, staring at our youngest brother. He was sitting glumly in his oversized auditorium seat with his chin resting firmly in the palms of both his hands. His expression was one of a child staring out a window at a rainy-day playground.
"Well you two will just have to take turns, we didn't save enough seats for everyone."
Before she could complain again, a woman in a business suit took the microphone on stage. "Again everyone, we are not able to start the graduation until the walkways are clear of people. It's by order of the fire marshal." All around me the crowd rose up in protest, as people continued to crawl through the cramped aisles in hopes of finding an open seat.
"Unless the fire marshal has a retarded child, I'm guessing he won't be here to see," I muttered.
"What?" Karen interjected.
"Nothing, honey. She just said that if everyone sits down, Bryan can finally come out on stage." I hoped that it wouldn't take too terribly long to graduate fifty people.
My mother suddenly leaned across from her seat next to me and stared into my face. I turned my head away from her and sighed. "You're not still mad about earlier, are you?"
"I don't want to talk about it, Mom."
"You have to admit it though...with those glasses."
I closed my eyes, and turned still further away from her. "Be quiet, please," I begged.
"...and you've put on a little weight," my mother added eagerly.
"Just stop right there, Mom. I'm not going to fight with you in the middle of a graduation ceremony."
"I can't help it! You do!"
Tired of listening to her, I put my hands over Karen's ears. "No, I don't. You ought to be ashamed of yourself for even thinking something like that. That's sick."
In rebuttal, my mother slapped our nearest relative on the arm, and whispered, "Be honest, doesn't BC look like a pedophile in those glasses?" My relative stared at my mother wide-eyed in shock. My mother took this as a sign of total agreement. I bit my tongue before it could get away from me. Whenever she thought I was feeling too good about myself, or was too happy, my mother liked to use whatever means necessary to bring me back down.
Laughing cheerily, my mother wrapped her arm around my shoulder. "Oh come on, BC. Don't be angry. You do. You can't blame me for seeing what's there."
Looking flatly into her eyes, my mouth trembling in anger, I mouthed, "I hate you."
In response, my mother laughed, squeezed her arm tightly around my head, and kissed me on the cheek. I felt like I had been raped. "BC, you big dork! Of course you love me. I'm your mother!" She tilted her head back and cackled like a witch. "I'm so happy to have all of my children here, together." I craned my head back, looked at the ceiling, and prayed to God that a skylight would fall down and decapitate me. After a moment, I decided that there was no God, took out my iPod, and turned on some music like a morphine drip. Although I could no longer hear her, my mother continued to talk.
For another ten minutes, as Karen elbowed me in the ribs for the crime of not being made of goose down, and as my mother continued to spew what I assumed were insults about my physical appearance, the people standing in the aisles took their seats. The woman in the business suit took the stage again, only this time she handed the microphone to someone else. The graduation ceremony was finally starting. I breathed a sigh of relief.
The administrator of schools, Martin Michaels, said, "May I now introduce, the graduating class of 2007!" in a timid voice, that I knew from my own graduation was the loudest sound his tiny lungs were capable of producing. A stream of students poured through the back door. "Bryan!" Karen shouted.
I waved at my brother, as the rest of my family contented themselves with screaming his name at the top of their lungs. Bryan rolled his eyes, shook his head, then put his face into his hands and sighed.
After I had written three personal experience essays for him, completed several credits of science and English in online courses, and made an adventure poster about his life, my brother was finally graduating. His friend Zane was also graduating due to my help. I had charged Zane $50 for completing half a science credit. And here I had thought that my knowledge of all the levels of the atmosphere would never come in handy.
After my brother and his friend took their seats on stage, followed by several girls with mysterious bumps under their gowns, the woman in the business suit again took the stage. A few announcements were made about students who had received awards, before the microphone was again turned over to Martin Michaels. "Cross your fingers, Karen," I whispered.
"Why?" she whispered.
"Because I think he's going to tell the John Anderson story, and it takes forever. We have to do everything we can to stop it." After getting Karen and Jacob to cross each pair of fingers on each of their hands, I joined in. Twelve superstitious symbols were all that stood in the way of Marty Michaels and twenty minutes of absolute boredom.
"Now I know you all didn't come here to listen to some school administrator make some long and boring speech..."
"Thank God for that."
"...but there's just one story I'd like to share with all of you tonight."
I suppressed the need to scream "fuck" as loudly as I could.
"I'll admit I've made a lot of mistakes in my career working with children. Sometimes I've been prone to judge people by their past performance. Well, boy howdy do I have a story to tell you about that." Marty Michael's voice is permanently leveled at the exact pitch and volume between "I give up on hearing this" and "barely audible," in a place I like to call, "The eternal hunt for intelligible sound." Due to the strange quality of his quavering speech patterns he becomes impossible to tune out.
"John P. Anderson was the kind of student a vice principal gets to know very well in the course of the school year." Marty paused for laughter, but was greeted with a few hundred facial expressions that showed no more excitement than they would if they were watching grass grow. Having heard him recite this story no less than five times in the course of my education at Aberdeen schools, and with the same reaction, I could scarcely believe he still bothered to wait for laughter.
After a longer than necessary description of John P. Anderson's indiscretions, Marty took the story where I had heard him take it so many times before. "Well, it so happened there was another student at that school named 'John T. Anderson.' These two boys couldn't have been more different. John T. Anderson was an all-American athlete, on the honor roll, very involved in school committees." Emphasizing the disparity in characters between "John T. Anderson" and "John P. Anderson" as strongly as he emphasized their middle initials, for no less than three solid minutes, Marty was finally satisfied that we understood the two men were not the same person.
"Brandon, I'm bored," Karen whined.
Scratching her head sympathetically, I whispered, "I know, honey. I'm sorry."
Marty suddenly said, "Instead of John T. Anderson, the secretary heard John P. Anderson," which I knew now meant the introduction of the characters was over, and the story was finally beginning.
I decided to amend my apology to Karen. "I'm so, so sorry, honey."
Rather than introducing the main thrust of the story with a few well-rehearsed lines that would have let the humor of the situation hit all at once, Marty chose to drag on the scenario for whole paragraphs, letting all humor that might have been in the story die a slow painful death. "Well you see, there was a conference every summer we could send children with leadership potential to. Every year we were allowed to send ten students. That weekend all the kids showed up to get on the bus, and there comes not John T. Anderson, but John P. Anderson, not with a suitcase, but with a garbage sack full of clothes."
"Never saw it coming," I said to no one in particular.
"Well you can bet how I felt about that." Marty put both his hands on his hips and huffed in mock exasperation. Several people blinked at him. It was the strongest reaction he had yet received. "I was worried about my career. I was worried about him damaging the school. I was worried about him assaulting other students at the conference. I was just worried silly, to be honest." From a person with the ability to use inflection to convey emotion the words might actually have resonated.
"I got a call that weekend, and boy howdy was I worried. I said, 'Let me stop you right there. Whatever he did, we'll pay for it. If he hurt someone or cut someone, just send us the bill.' " Marty again paused for the audience reaction. I believe someone in the back row may have popped their jaw while yawning.
"Well the man on the phone, if you can believe this..." even at its lowest setting in the stand, the microphone looked twice as thick and ten times as ferocious as Marty. "...the gentleman on the other end of the line had called to tell me that John P. Anderson had been elected 'Best Potential Leader' by all the students at the conference. Which just goes to show you... that you can't judge a book by its cover." Unaccustomed to the prolonged silence at the microphone, several people awoke from pleasant naps to see Marty Michaels expecting a thunderous applause that never came. After a few more uncomfortable silent moments, Marty finally gave control of the microphone to someone else, an expression of complete defeat on his unimpressive brows.
Karen slept peacefully against my chest. Jacob was nestled against the armrest nearest my elbow. "Wake up guys, he's gone now." I smiled at the stage. It looked like they were about to read names.
"Here at this school, we like to stress the importance of the individual. So, the students are going to be introduced by their advisors," announced the lady in the business suit. I now understood that she was the principal of my brother's remedial high school.
I had assumed that each teacher would call out the names of their students, and then hand them their diploma. I was wrong. Included with each student's name, was a brief three minute biography. Multiplying that value by fifty meant that it was going to take over two-and-a-half hours to graduate the entire class.
Their biographies were like insane Ad-Lib games using the same template. "Billy is a good boy, although we all know he's had his fair share of trouble... Robert's mother left when he was six, uprooting his moral center... so it was no surprise when Beth had her first child at the age of fifteen... Bobby excels in our welding courses, and has earned the respect of his peers... but Raylene has come through it all and now has a job at the local Wal-Mart... we wish him all the best." While the rest of the audience applauded, I found myself wishing for some kind of tranquilizer gun that could shoot birth control.
Most disheartening was the adviser who was charged with all the pregnant girls in the high school. Comprising over two-thirds of all the female student body, her group was by far the largest of graduating students. One girl, partially retarded, was loudly applauded when it was announced that she was "the proud mother of three." I figured that based upon their gender, the world had just had some combination of three strippers and criminals added to its population. Under the sound of the applause, I turned my little sister to face me.
"Don't listen to this applause Karen. Those are bad girls up there. Bad girls. Don't be like them." I shook my finger for emphasis. While recognizing that sometimes perfectly good people become pregnant at young ages, I did not feel it was necessary to share this belief with my sister. She looked incredibly confused.
"What are you talking about, BC?"
"Just please don't have kids until you're thirty, honey," I begged.
"You're weird."
Upon hearing the adviser announce that, through bureaucratic oversight, "Rebecca actually doesn't have any children," I applauded as loudly as I could, until my palms felt like they were about to bruise. I even emitted a few "whoos" and cries of, "You go, girl!" until I realized that no one else was cheering, and several people were staring at me. Rebecca seemed to be rather appreciative.
"BC, what are you doing?" my mother whispered, incredulously.
"Being the applause of reason," I replied, figuring if my mother was incredulous and offended by my applause, that I had to be on the right track in terms of morality.
"You're so judgmental," she sneered.
Mouthing, "I hate you" one more time, I applauded ferociously when Bryan's adviser took the stage.
Distracted by the sudden sight of my brother, as usual my mother provided an insightful comment to wrap up the moment, "Oh my God, Bryan is sooo tall." I ignored her, and pointed at the stage, for Karen and Jacob to see.
"Do you see, guys? Do you see Bryan?" The children clapped furiously.
Bryan stood on stage, his full height only made taller by his black gown looming over the other students. His arms were crossed, and he had an aura that carried the distinct impression of annoyance as his biography was being read. Of all the students who graduated that day, he was the only one to be visibly muttering beneath his breath.
As he had explained to me earlier in the day, he wondered why he even had to go. "I don't see what all this fuss is about. It's not even like I graduated from a real school."