Teach Them Well

Forty years or so back, I had a high school chum, who happened to be a judge's son, and he and I had not seen each other in a few years (since sixth grade, and I believe it was then eleventh grade when we ended up at the same school again and reacquainted). We were pretty close friends from third grade on to when we ended up going to separate middle schools (then termed junior high schools). Well, I had not talked to this six foot three inch fellow in a few years and was just so delighted and surprised to find him again after a few years without contact. I had no idea what he had been up to or his current mindset. He asked me in a break in classes to follow him around Hillwood High School while he was distributing leaflets that I knew nothing about and had never even looked at as we walked down halls and he taped his flyer to some doors and slid it into a few lockers. One copy floated away, and I handed it back to him, catching a glimpse of a heading that said "RCYB", which I knew absolutely nothing about as I did not take the time to peruse the text. He asked me more than once if he "smelled" which should have been a clue to his psychological state, but was not to a sixteen year old. I told him "not more than anyone else". Well it turns out, the pamphlet was some Communist balderdash that he was either passing around as mischief making tomfoolery or maybe what he really believed in his mid-teens. I do not know, but think based on our talk that day that it was only attention-seeking and not ideological. In any event, I found myself, after we parted summoned to Vice Principal Welch's office where the head of school discipline awaited me with a real Federal Bureau of Investigation agent. The literature my long lost friend was handing out was some sort of agitprop against the country I loved then and now. I protested my innocence, and the truth that if I were old enough to vote, I would be a Reagan Republican. I heard the scare speech about how no political organizing was permitted on campus and how I could never be involved in anything like that in the future. As I was led out I noticed the Teacher's Union literature posted on the bulletin board that included the reminder to go canvas for exclusively DemocRAT candidates, but you young students better not have been politically active in Metro schools back then, at least if it was for some unpopular movement.