Mr. Walker

Mr. Walker was a dean of boys at my high school. I had a rule about high school: Don't go to high school. Go to school high.

This more than anything describes why Mr. Walker didn't care much for me.

Mr. Walker was a distinguished black man. A preacher. An educator. An authoritarian. A royal pain in the ass.

Educators of his caliber breed kids named Klebold and Harris in my opinion. And he was one of the least evil of the administration at this place we refered to as Hell's High School.

I was trying to calm myself as Mr. Walker closed his office door behind me. I sat in the chair in front of his desk trying to contain my rage.

Rage. I had it in spades. My neck was burning. My face hot to the touch. Of all the injustices and offenses committed upon a teenager, this was the one that could not be tolerated. For all of the heat eminating from my visage, inside I was cold.

I had all of this cold, cold fire built up inside. Moments before it had all come flying out at once. And here I was sitting in this chair that had surely had a groove worn in it by now by my big behind, packing it all back down inside again. Bottling the anger up. Building up that cold fist of rage that comes flying out white-hot when forced to defend myself in the most basic way.

I was almost sixteen years old. At 5'11" and 200 lbs, no man was going to lay his hands on me in anger ever again.

They'll have to call a cop to stop me from dismembering you with my bare hands.

Disrespect me at your own risk.

So when that science teacher put his hand firmly around my shoulders and leaned into my personal space and whispered that he already had my name on a disciplinary form, and he couldn't wait to send me out of his class today, I told him to take his hands off of me or I would throw him out of the second floor window.

He responded by turning his fatherly gesture into a headlock.

I went to my knees. Any kid knows dead weight is impossible to hold.

When I shot back up it was right fist first.

You ever see a blind uppercut landed squarely on the chin?

It's a sight to behold. The recipient flys backwards and up at the same time. They stare right at you with their eyes fixed, a look of shock and disbelief and pain in their eyes as they go over the horizontal, and the back of the head angles down to the tile floor with the weight of the body all landing right on the neck.

That's when the lights go out.

I know I'll never forget it.

So there I sat in the chair, trying to get a handle on my anger.

"I'm not going to have any choice but to declare you incorrigible." said the distinguished man in the impeccable tie, leaning across the desk from me.

"Do you know what that word means, incorrigible?" he asked.

Of course, I did not. He handed me a dictionary and instructed me to address my ignorance.

"Unwilling or unable to be corrected." I read from the dictionary.

"That's you" Mr. Walker declared.

"But Mr. Walker, I'm not wrong. He had no business putting his hands on me. How can I be corrected when I'm not wrong?" I protested!

Be that as it may, guess who got kicked out of school?