The Golden Cocoon

Editor's note: The next few posts seem biographical in nature. The author generally regards such indulgences as pretentious, self-serving if not self-aggrandizing, and rather masturbatory and has assiduously sought to limit them. Our young President-elect of comparable age and to an extent, similar background, has not felt so constrained, already writing two autobiographies by his mid-forties. The point of these few posts is commentary about liberalism and privilege, not about the author. I attended the University School of Nashville from my eighth grade year of 1979-80, until I completed my sophomore session in 1982. I had also gone to elementary school at Harding Academy for several years and spent my seventh grade year at Montgomery Bell Academy. These, at the time, were the bastions of privilege in Nashville. Ensworth was perhaps in the mix as an elementary school for the elite here in that era, but nothing held a candle to the other two aforementioned institutions. MBA regarded as the conservative alternative in education for boys(Harpeth Hall was the girls' homologue), was to my experience overtly racist and anti-Semitic. I was consistently called "kike" and even "Christ-killer" by my peers in front of instructors who took no action on my behalf. A now prominent local high school championship level coach who was known as the smallest member of the football team at that time was one of my chief tormentors. He was 5-11, 145 and a senior, I was 5 feet tall if that and perhaps 90 pounds. Generally, one abuser was not enough, they worked in pairs, trios, etc. for their amusement at my expense. Two brothers who I had known since Harding Academy were among my worst persecutors. One was my classmate and the other a senior who went on to play safety at Vanderbilt University and who blew a game-saving opportunity at a tackle of an Air Force Academy fullback that cost Vanderbilt its last football bowl game. The main reason for my departure from this prep school was that after a full year of beatings, being spat upon, being thrown on top of locker banks that served the gym, and being unceremoniously tossed into the garbage, I fought back. During a pre-exam, pre-algebra voluntary prep session, the younger brother of the football player and his 6-2 red-headed friend who I'd also gone to Harding with, were flicking me around the ears with their fingers to the "Jew boy", "kike" refrain. I tried to ignore it and focus on Ms. Fairbarn but the nuisance assault continued. I moved, they followed. I turned after more taps and flicked back precisely the same way. Ms. Fairbarn could not have been oblivious to all the previous activity but had said nothing. When I defended myself, she immediately dressed me down-not them-me. I saw red and for the first time, adopted a disproportionate response, I turned after the next uncorrected little ear flip and stabbed the football player's brother with my pencil in the knee. He screamed, cried like a baby and he and his cadre of friends swore revenge. At the end of class, I had to run for my life. My bullies caught me near the area where non-driving students were picked up by their parents and started my pummeling only to be interrupted by my Dad who thankfully had just driven up to collect his somewhat battered seventh grader. He was and is one of the tougher people I have ever encountered and he quickly subdued the perpetrators and asked me what had happened. I gave him a brief synopsis, told him which one of the boys had been most responsible (the one I had poked in the knee), placed him in an arm bar because he was physically combative and was escorting us to the principal's office to sort things out. The older brother had been called by fellow students and a myth has arisen that he either beat my father up, that my father was attempting to molest younger brother, or that we were chased away in abject defeat. In the event, Mr. football did no such thing and we continued to the administrative offices where we realized that we would obtain no satisfaction, and had in fact, worn out my welcome at the school.
So, it was on to my mother's uber-liberal alma mater for eighth grade.