Jimmy and fireworks

I can’t recall which came first – the fireworks or what Jimmy did. I guess that, ultimately, the order doesn’t matter much anyway.

Both things happened at a school that no longer exists: Old Mission Junior High in a suburb of Kansas City. It was the early 1980s. I was in eighth grade, a time in hell for boys who lack boldness, brawn or the wherewithal to succeed at basketball. The only way out, I guessed at the time, was to become infamous.

And so I’ll tell my piece first: I plotted with two friends to set off firecrackers during the school talent show. We rode the bus together – their names were Brian and Jeff. They were stuck in a purgatory similar to mine and we figured badness was the answer.

My part was to smuggle the firecrackers from home, where I’d stashed some since summer. In retrospect, it seems like I was the catalyst, boasting that I had fireworks and wasn’t afraid to transport them on the bus then through school doors. Brian would bring the lighter; my parents didn’t smoke, but his did. And Jeff volunteered to light the fuse and throw the string of firecrackers beneath the bleachers with the whole school assembled.

For some reason, I wasn’t there when it happened – instead, I was in a makeshift study hall, some kind of mid-day detention for something else I suppose I’d done. But apparently, while a burly math teacher and some female colleagues performed “Leader of the Pack,” Jeff did his thing. As I heard it told later, there were a few dozen loud pops, then silence. The principal took the floor, demanded answers and both Brian and Jeff were quickly apprehended. Apparently they were done in by boastful word-of-mouth and the testimony of our fellow students rather than physical evidence.

The same thing was my undoing. I knew that, when I saw the principal standing in the cafeteria doorway and scanning the room through furious eyes, I was in deep trouble. It didn’t take him long to spot me. All I could do was watch him taking long strides toward me, although I wanted to run. He grabbed my arm and pretty much dragged me all the way to his office.

There was a police officer waiting, and here’s the first thing the principal said: “You know I can have you arrested, don’t you?” I shook my head and whispered an apology with the scant air left in my lungs. “Brian and Jeff are out of here,” the principal continued. “They’re waiting in a room away from your classmates until their parents come. I’ve suspended them. What do you think we should do with you?”

I shook my head again and mouthed “I don’t know.”

“That was a stupid, stupid thing to do, Roger,” the principal told me. “You’re lucky no one got hurt, really lucky. But since you weren’t there and both Brian and Jeff have admitted to what they’ve done, I’m going to give you two weeks of in-house suspension. I’ve already called your parents; they’re on their way.”

Of course my parents punished me as well – a couple months without television, if I remember right – but what I remember most about the consequences was that suspension. I had to arrive at school a half-hour before my classmates and leave a half-hour after dismissal so that I would have no contact with another student. I sat in a windowless, closet-like room that was bare except for a little desk where I sat and a big desk sometimes occupied by a substitute teacher assigned to keep an eye on me. One of the first things I noticed (and still recall) was that the room had no clock.

Over the course of those two weeks, my teachers would come by from time to time and bring me homework. Some would take time to talk; others just wordlessly dropped books and papers on my desk and departed. But one visitor, my music teacher, told me something that changed everything.

“This isn’t you, Roger,” she said. “You know it isn’t you. Take time to think about what you want to do, and then let’s talk about it when you’re back in class.”

And I did. She ended up being my music teacher during four of the next five years, and I focused my attention on saxophone, then theater, then writing. But I can point to those three words – “this isn’t you” – as the turning point for almost everything.

So that was the fireworks – then there was Jimmy. Like I said, it was the same year, although I don’t remember if it came before or after what I did.

Jimmy was a nice kid, though quiet and brooding. He wore bell bottom jeans with a long silver chain hanging from the hip pocket. He already had sideburns in eighth grade. I’d known him since grade school; I can’t say he was a friend, although we were friendly enough to each other.

One day, while in English class in the front of the building, my classmates and I saw police cars pull up the driveway with sirens and flashing lights. The officers hustled from their cars up the sidewalk, around the corner and out of view. The principal announced over the intercom that everyone should remain in their respective classrooms until further notice.

That notice eventually came and evoked rampant speculation in the hallways. By the end of the day, word inevitably got out: Jimmy had brought a handgun to school and stowed it in his locker. Somehow – again, probably because of inordinate boasts reaching many ears quickly – the principal found out and called the police. Even though none of us saw it, the story was that Jimmy was taken from school grounds in a squad car.

I don’t remember seeing him again – that is, until last month, almost 30 years later.

I was back at my parents’ house with my wife and son for a Thanksgiving visit. During each annual visit to the place where I grew up – the home where I lived at the time of the firecrackers – I take time to go through old papers, books and other materials from when I was younger. Collectively, it all forms a sort of roadmap for where I’ve been, where I am and, maybe, where I’m going next.

One of the pieces I browsed at length was my senior yearbook. I’d mostly taken it down from the shelf to read the autographs, the well-wishes for a nice life, which included many exhortations to keep playing saxophone and keep writing. That led me to peruse photographs of the bands I’d been part of, as well as seeking out the picture of my music teacher whose words had been so important.

Then I turned to the many pages of classmates with whom I graduated that year. There he was: Jimmy. Though I don’t know what happened after the day his photograph was taken, there he was with sideburns and an inscrutable look.

I wondered what words he’d heard in the wake of his day of reckoning at Old Mission Junior High. After all, in moments like that, those words make all the difference between staying in purgatory and getting out.