A 15-year-old boy, whom
I know very well, was a student at Concord-Carlisle High School in
Concord, Massachusetts, at the time. It was the day before the annual
Thanksgiving Day football game between Concord-Carlisle and Lexington
High School and there was a “rally” occurring in the school
auditorium. Concord and Lexington are old, historic, educated,
expensive suburbs of Boston that are considered to have superior
schools.
This ceremony consisted
of the members of the football team being introduced, one by one, as
each ran up on onto the stage, to great applause, punching on their way
a hanged effigy of a Lexington High School football player having
ketchup on its jersey to simulate blood.
My hero, the
15-year-old boy, was disgusted so he left the auditorium and went
downstairs to the metal-working shop. The Vice-Principal soon
appeared and asked my hero what he was doing. My hero replied to him
that he thought the rally was really stupid and so he had come down to the shop to work. The Vice-Principal then said, “Do you
mean to tell me that everyone else in the school is stupid and you
are the only smart one?” He then sent my hero home from school.
Now, I have related
this true story since it happened many years ago to a number of
people whom I judged to have the courage and honesty to face it,
to understand it. Old Frances Yates just laughed and giggled when I
told her. My most recent hearer was a nurse who replied “I would
have told the Vice-Principal, 'Yes, they are all stupid and you are
the worst of them.'”
This football rally
incident in these two classy USA towns strikes
No comments:
Post a Comment