Impotent demands, impotent defiance

A small clique of boys show up one morning very similarly (and somewhat thuggishly) dressed, enough that it seems unlikely to have been an accident, and rove down the school hallway, doing I don’t know what, intimidating people? But isn’t that what they try to do differently dressed? In an arbitrary show of authority they’re pulled aside, sent home to change, and the principal tells everyone over the P.A. system that we don’t do “dress-alikes” here, you will be sent home, etc. And I wonder, is that a thing?

The next morning — thanks in no small part, I’m sure, to facebook and txt messenging — several hundred students show up in red t-shirts. The administration pretends not to notice.

And it’s symbolic middle fingers all around, in the cauldron of mutual oppression that is the school building.

15 April 2008, 10am
Teachering