For me, one of the beginnings was Hugh Lance’s heart attack in the school parking lot. The next day he was dead and within two years the school was in a shambles. His replacement, Jack Rand, who had connections at the board of education, neither liked nor understood kids and covered up the fact by running the school with a limp hand. Easily intimidated—I suspected he had been bullied as a child—he became a pushover for the troublemakers in the building. He never walked the halls as Lance had done, and instead of dealing with the increasingly rowdy behavior during assembly programs, he simply canceled them. When I sent a boy to his office because he had KISS MY BALLS embossed on his T-shirt (T-shirts, tank tops, shorts and halters were now standard dress in warm weather), Rand sent the boy back with a note which said that according to the constitutional dress code, the boy was allowed to wear what he pleased. My run-ins with Rand increased, as did several of the other teachers’. Fifteen students could fail your class and Rand couldn’t have cared less. But if just one failed and that one contested the grade and threw a fit in his office and brought in parents and made his life miserable, then you were sure to be “investigated for unfairness and incompetency.” Realizing he could not control the students, he turned his frustrated rage, blindly and arbitrarily, on the staff. Fortunately for me, two incidents occurred that made him keep his distance. One day during a free period, I rounded a corner in the hallway to find him just a few steps ahead, walking in the same direction. At the end of the hall, two boys obviously cutting class were loitering and preparing to light up cigarettes. Rand approached them and said timidly, “You boys had better get to class. A teacher might find you here.” He gave an involuntary little jump when, right behind him, I said, “A teacher has found them.” The boys shuffled off (no need to hurry, since tardiness was a negligible offense) and Rand squirmed under his smile before he slunk away. The second incident was even more to my advantage. At faculty meetings, we all complained about the graffiti in the halls. His response was that that was the result of faulty surveillance by the teachers. When I pointed out that there were almost no graffiti in the rooms, the teachers’ territory, and that we could not be in two places at once, he resorted to his usual out: he wasn’t responsible for the change in society’s values and if kids didn’t respect property, that wasn’t his fault. The next day after school, I went to the custodian and got a wire brush and cleanser and a bucket of water and took them out to the front of the building, where we had a five-foot-high, ten-foot-long stone slab with chrome letters that spelled out AARON PECK HIGH SCHOOL. For five months, we had had to look at the spray-painted insertion of two letters, so that the name read “Pecker.” I went to work with the steel brush and cleanser. A few minutes passed before a car stopped and a man got out with a camera. He was a reporter for the local paper and asked if I minded having my picture taken. His thrust-forward face and eager eyes had “muckraker” written all over them and I was more than willing to cooperate. He wanted to know how long the “er” had been there and why the custodians weren’t doing this job. I told him they had their hands full inside the building, and besides, it was up to the principal to give the order. He asked if the principal was in the building and I said I doubted it. He asked if there were any other teachers still in the building; I said three or four. Next, he asked if Rand always left before his teachers did. I decided not to overstep myself on that one: I simply answered that I didn’t keep tabs on him. Then he left me and went into the building. In the next evening’s paper, there was a front-page story about Peck, accompanied by my picture. The story was continued on a back page, with photographs of the obscenities in the hallways. Rand was furious and when he called me into his office, he accused me of setting him up with the reporter. I told him exactly how it had happened, but he threatened he would have my job. I replied that he couldn’t do my job and that if he threatened me any further or tried harassment, I would give the reporter a call. For a month after the story appeared, the whole building changed. The graffiti were eradicated; kids who were cutting classes and roaming the halls were rounded up and sent to the deans; and “inappropriate” clothing was prohibited. At the end of the month, the campaign dissolved. Rand went back to hiding out in his office and the casual chaos settled in once again.