GuidoWorld

Chapter 4

“Yeooow!” Doug shouts as we walk away from the house. “I’m going home,” he announces, trying to sound too cool for words. “Driving my car, getting down with my lady…It’s going to be too awesome, dude,” he says almost bursting into flames, “What movie are you guys going to see?”

“Who cares?” Doug almost shouts, “As long as it makes her want to take her clothes off, I’d watch fucking Bambi. I’d sit through the most sappy boring love story if it gets her steaming.”

These are big words for a guy who’s barely even kissed a girl. When it comes to women, Doug is all talk and no action. It isn’t that girls don’t find him attractive, but he’s so shy and immature that he blows every opportunity which comes along. Doug is positively pitiful around girls, kind of a cross between a hyper Irish setter and a bumbling moron.

“Sca-rry” I hear shouted out behind me.

“Aaaarff” I shout back to Art Scooner.

Scary has been my nickname since I was a little kid. The guys in the house hardly ever call me Scary, but most every one else, including some of the teachers on campus, call me Scary more often than Gary.

“Hey Arf man,” Doug calls out to Art, “what are you doing this weekend?”

“The usual, ” Arf brags, “getting laid and getting paid.”

Within a week of meeting him I started calling Art “the Arf man”, because when it comes to sex he has no shame. Hell, this man would do it to his own mother if he had a chance. He has all the scruples of a dog in heat, hence, “the Arf man”.

“Me too,” proclaims Doug.

“Dougie boy,” Arf chides, “who’s the lucky guy.”

“Your sister,” Doug yells back attempting to save some face. Doug almost has to scream out his come back to be heard over the barking noises others walking to school make in response to the Arf man’s put down.

“Bad move Dougie,” Arf counters, “I can’t even get that bitch hot.”

As you can plainly see, it’s almost impossible to insult the Arf man, for he has no shame and no self-respect. He’d have no trouble going up to a nun and grabbing her breasts, or walking around town with a bearded lady if she was giving him some. The boy is ruthless and totally focused on sex.

No matter what you are talking about, Arf will find some sexual comment to add. Whether you’re talking about religion, politics, one’s family or even death, Arf will always come up with some obscene sexual reference.

Arf is great to have in your classroom, for his sexual humor livens up even the most boring lecture. The teachers often try to ignore his comments and just continue on with the class. Most teachers are too embarrassed to confront Arf on his comments, in fear of exposing their own sexuality or sexual knowledge.

The teachers who do confront Arf are usually sorry they did. Not only does Arf use their threats of discipline as an excuse to plead to be spanked or tied up, but usually makes some truly outrageous comment spelling disaster for the teacher for the remainder of the school year.

As an example, when Sandy, the history teacher on campus, went off on Arf for one of his more grisly comments Arf got into a shouting match with her calling her a whore and a fiery slut amongst other things. As an enraged Sandy went over to Arf’s desk to supposedly physically remove him from the classroom, Arf shouted out, “come get me you horny little wench.”

Sandy’s screams of anger were once again interrupted as Arf pointed out to the entire classroom how Sandy’s nipples were hard and “almost shearing her frilly little blouse in two.” Sandy’s blouse being fairly sheer was exposing this aspect of her anatomy. Though succeeding at removing Arf from the classroom, Sandy had truly lost the war. Sandy’s apparent arousal at Arf’s slimy remarks became legendary on the campus. For months hardly a day would pass in which some one didn’t write some rude comment on her blackboard, or make a groaning sound as she walked bye.

Luckily for Doug, who is completely overmatched in a put down war with Arf, Mr. Middleton’s car drives up in the middle of their exchange. Mr. Middleton is the Executive Director of Park Grove Academy, which means he is every one’s boss. The guy is a humongous bore, and we all do our best to ignore his attempts at “relating” with us.

All he ever talks about is our “little community” and the “growth” we all are making. He never refers to Park Grove Academy, as an institution, or even as a campus, but only as a community. This always strikes me as blatant propaganda on his part, trying to convince us we all belong together, or that we shouldn’t all revolt and bolt out of this hell hole.

Some “community” this place is. Seven brick “cottages” in a circle with the administration building set in the center. The watchful eye of the administration building makes it look more like a prison system than a community. In fact, between the ad building in the center and the school and maintenance buildings flanking both sides of the property, it is hard not to feel like you’re always under surveillance and being brainwashed.

A long time ago I saw this bizarre television show, called “The Prisoner”, in which this secret agent guy was nabbed and put away on some island. The sole purpose of this place, called “the village”, was to house and brainwash ex-dissidents into living robots. The entire show focused on the main character’s futile attempts to escape the village and avoid being brainwashed like the rest of the zombies residing at the complex.

That show reminds me so much of this place, where everyone smiles and tells you everything is fine, while strictly forbidding you to see the outside world until you have sufficiently learned what the house parents are teaching you. Mr. Middleton’s obsession with referring to this institution as a “community” inspired me to begin calling him the “village idiot”, for that’s what he is. He is this idiot always talking about our little community. A community much like the village on the television program.

Once Mr. Middleton is safely out of hearing range the conversations begin to start up once again. Doug, not wanting to continue his put down war with Arf, calls out to Cheryl and Staci who have just emerged from their cottage directly in front of the school building.

“Looking good!” Doug yells out getting both girls to turn around.

“Hi Doug,” they call back in unison.

There are two girls homes on campus which means that out of over 50 kids at the Academy, there are only a dozen girls. I for the most part avoid having anything to do with any of the girls on campus.

One reason is because most of the girls are too young or immature for me. Another reason is because none of them go to my home school or live near me. Yet, the biggest reason is that all the girls here date almost all the other guys on campus and life here is tense enough without having to deal with everyone’s jealousies and secrets.

The most popular girl on campus is Marta. She isn’t very attractive, but she dresses for success. If Marta is wearing skin tight white pants, you know she’ll be wearing bright red or dark black lacy panties. Her tops are always see through, and her bras, when she wears them, are always visible. I usually find Marta disgusting, but on warm spring days I have to admit she can look mighty appetizing.

Oddly enough, Arf seldom makes a lewd remark towards Marta, even when she purposely swishes right past him, or directs a suggestive comment his way. I’ve always assumed they screwed around with each other when they first met, and for some reason Marta left the situation with the upper hand.

The school at Park Grove Academy is right out of one of those old books. It’s this huge brick building which has a big red school bell out front and one of those old fashioned fire escapes you slide down along its side. The inside of the building smells musty like old wood, and the classrooms themselves have creaky wood floors and electrical outlets which would look familiar to Thomas Edison.

At this school, you don’t just learn history, you have its rank, putrid odors assault you until you are able to escape. Even if you were to spend two straight weeks in this rickety old building you still would be conscious of the pungent odors oozing out of every imaginable crevice.

The only thing less appetizing than having to eat lunch in this smelly old building, is having to eat lunch in the school cafeteria with Arf. Arf’s graphic and gross comments are made only that much more powerful by the smells in the lunch room.

When eating with Arf you are not only attacked by putrid aromas, but assaulted by one gross image after another. For Arf there is no better setting than the school cafeteria for his endless colorful banter regarding feminine hygiene, oozing orifices, and the resemblances between your food and the most disgusting aspects of animal sexuality.

“Hey Scary,” Eric’s voice calls out as he bounds up the front steps of the school building, “wait up.”

Eric lives in the cottage next to ours with the Bordeau’s. Most of the kids in Eric’s house are totally out of control and tragically idiotic, but Eric is generally pretty cool. Since all the kids in the Bordeau house are crazed geeks we all refer to the house as the weirdo house.

Every house on campus has a nickname based on the house parents’ last name. Our house is the Buffoon house since Frank and Jeanine’s last name is Muldoon.

Frank and Jeanine have been house parents here for almost three years, but most house parents never even last a whole year. Eric’s house has gone through house parents quicker than we can come up with nicknames for them, three sets over the last six months.

“Be real careful,” Eric almost whispers to me, “some weird shit is going down.”

“Why, what’s the rumor?” I ask trying to assess if there was some campus shakedown going on, or if this was just some more of the typical Weirdo house melodrama.

“No rumor, man,” Eric says looking about nervously, “Scott’s out of control, and they’re trying to get him in to see Dolittle sometime today.”

Dolittle was the nickname I came up for Dr. Ingram, the psychiatrist who comes to our campus every couple of weeks.

“Dolittle’s not due here till next Friday.” I point out.

“I know, man.” Eric responds looking truly frightened, “This is some sort of emergency meeting, because they’re afraid Scott’s lost it.” “Why?” I inquire getting more intrigued, “Do they want to do a Ramone on Scott?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Eric’s eyes scope the area looking for the next person to warn. “They want to get him hospitalized real quick.” Eric looks back at me and whispers softly, “He totalled Gerald last night, and Gerald had to get twenty stitches over his eye.”

“Seriously?”

“No shit man,” he says urgently, “Tod had to take Gerald to the hospital…Well I’ll talk to you later man,” Eric announces as he bounds down the hallway to spread the news to some of his friends.

Scott is by far the scariest kid on campus. He just turned 17, but looks like he’s in his twenties. Scott is about six four and weighs well over 200 lbs. He’s all muscle, and no staff wants to tangle with him. Even Mr. Johnson who is a black belt has no desire to mess with Scott.

Legend has it that Scott once almost killed a man when he was just a freshman. The story goes that Scott was caught flirting with the girlfriend of a varsity football player. The player walked up to Scott and told him to leave. Scott said he’d leave soon, and turned back to talk to the girl. The football mutant then told his girlfriend to come with him and she did.

From that day on, Scott was a marked man, and every football glandular case went out of his way to hassle and abuse Scott. Well, one day Scott went up to the jock with the girlfriend and told him to call off the dogs. The football star just laughed and turned away saying, “get a life kid.”

Scott supposedly responded, “Okay I’ll take yours,” and began pounding away on the big slug. It took five people to peel Scott off his prey and the police had to escort him out of the school in handcuffs. The stories regarding how close Scott came to killing the football star vary, but he nor Scott were ever seen at that school again.

Park Grove is Scott’s seventh placement over the last two years and his reputation preceded him. He’s kept to himself the two months he’s been here and no one has had the guts to talk to him. Even the campus sluts keep their distance not sure of how to approach this behemoth.

If it is true that Mount Scott has finally exploded, you can be sure that no one here at school will even bump his shadow. I hope Dr. Dolittle doesn’t arrive here till after I’m back at main streaming, for I don’t want to be here when they try to extract him from the school building.

Already the tension is building in the hallways as Eric and his house mates are busy spreading the word. Arf walks up and says, “I don’t know what everyone’s so worried about, there’s no way he’s coming to school today. Shit, they’re probably going to need the cops just to get his ass out of that house.”

“Probably,” I mumble in response hoping Arf was right.

“Catch you later, man,” Arf offers before heading off to class, “I’ll catch you up on things if you miss the big show.”

“Thanks Arf,” I respond still wondering if he’s right about Scott not coming to school.

“If you want to thank me,” Arf yells back, “give me your cousin’s dorm number at school, so I can bounce on all her Suzie Sorority friends.”

In a place like this where hardly a day goes by without some kid going off or having to be restrained you wouldn’t think Scott’s situation would be such a big event. Yet, there is a huge difference between one of Will’s little temper tantrums and an explosion from a guy like Scott.

Most kids here flip out because they’re spoiled little brats, or they’re just pissed off about something someone said or did. No one panics when they act out and getting them back under control, though sometimes taking a long time, is no big deal.

Scott, being older and bigger than most of the adults on campus, becomes a real management problem. Not only that, but he’s older like me, and that means this is his last chance. Soon as you’re eighteen the only places left for you are state mental institutions and jail.

Scott’s outburst last night, sending Gerald to the hospital might be enough to cause Scott to be discharged from Park Grove. If they take him away today, it might be to some mental institution, or to some hearing to decide where they’re going to place his ass. Scott, knowing that he might have blown his last chance or be going to a real hard core institution, will leave here fighting for his life.

Seeing kids flip out or go nuts for a few minutes can actually be funny to watch, but watching some kid be taken away for good is pretty scary. It reminds all of us that time is running out, and if we don’t get it together, we could end up prisoners in some adult institution for years.

I’ve seen kids foaming at the mouth kicking and screaming while being taken away in restraints. I’ve seen the terror in their eyes, and carry that memory around as the last moment I ever saw them. Most of us don’t think it will happen to us, but then again we never thought we’d be at places like Park Grove either.

Jesus, if something is going to happen to Scott, I hope I’m not here to see it. I’m not really friends with Scott, hell, I doubt if we’ve ever said more than ten words to each other. But I just don’t ever want to see another kid taken away.

My first period class is Math with Jack Scoff. Can you believe that? Some parents with the last name of Scoff named their little baby, Jack. Of course we all say his name very fast so it sounds like jacks-off or jags-off, and the man surely lives up to his name.

Actually math class is a breeze. Jack is so easy to make fun of, and this is the third straight year I’ve had the same text book for math. I haven’t flunked or anything, they just keep giving me the same book and give me credit for different courses.

The first time I used this book was at Huntington and I received credit in Basic Math Principles. When I came here Len told me to start the book over calling it Math Applications. After next week, while still using the same book, I’m supposedly taking Consumer Math.

For me, a math course by any name, is still the same book. Three years and I’ve never been through the entire book once. Each year they start me over at page one and act like I’ve never seen the book before. I sit there, yawn, make jokes and try to remember what’s on the next page before I turn to it.

Today we’re learning how to write checks. Sitting back for a moment I can not only remember what’s on each page, but I also remember the answers to all the questions. Before turning the page I can remember the picture of each check to be written out, and all the directions in red ink above and below the checks….God, I love the challenge of being in Special Ed.

Since Jack usually takes a good ten minutes to get into the material, I position myself near the window to watch and see if Scott is coming. So far all seems quiet, but Jack is called to the hallway to talk to a couple of the other teachers. Jack returns looking more nervous and fidgety than usual, and I get the distinct impression that the entire school is on red alert.

If Dr. Dolittle were to show up today, it would be the first time I’ve seen him here on an emergency basis. Usually if a kid is acting out they either hospitalize the kid, or wait and have him see Dr. Dolittle during one of his scheduled visits. After a quick “evaluation” by Dr. Dolittle the violent kid’s meds are increased to sedate his ass and keep him out of trouble.

I call Dr. Ingram Dr. Dolittle for he never does anything. He shows up twice a month talks to a few kids for no more then 10 minutes and then prescribes a whole mess of assorted medications. Most of the kids on campus take medication, usually some form of anti-depressant to “help you process” as the staff often say.

Actually the drugs are for the staff so they don’t have to spend the entire day wrestling with out of control kids. Sometimes I don’t blame them, but usually I think its kind of nazi-ish to drug out most of the kids. Drugs like Lithium, Benzedrine, Thorzine, Prozac and Tegretol are the most popular here on campus with many of the younger kids on Ritalin.

Sometimes the “drug therapy” on this campus gets way out of hand. I remember last summer when every house on campus was going crazy. Kids were running, getting high, selling drugs on campus, fighting, getting herpes, and one girl got herself pregnant. People near the campus were calling for the Academy to be closed down. In reaction to all the craziness the staff in each house decided to zonk out every kid on campus who was getting in trouble.

Well, at the end of each summer we have a “community” festival in which we all compete in sporting events, from track and field to swimming and softball. By the time the festival came around almost all the kids here were fairly zoned out on recreational and prescription drugs. The competition went on as scheduled with most of the participants with the reflexes and metabolism of an eighty year old.

The funniest part of the afternoon was the two mile relay race, which should have been timed by a sundial rather than a stop watch. By the time the winners crossed the finish line even the most zealous house parent had lost interest. The Thorzine Olympics as I like to call them, lasted much longer than the participants. The handful of unmedicated kids, such as myself, cleaned up that day easily outdistancing their groggy competitors.

Out of the eight boys in our home, only four were on heavy medication. This allowed us to not only win the most medals, but fully appreciate how ridiculous most of the events looked. One of the major reasons I have been so mellow while I was here was to avoid being medicated. My life is my humor and my energy, and I am terrified at the thought of losing either.

Oh, oh! Time to pay attention. Jack just started a sentence with the word “now”. Whenever Jack’s about to start asking question he begins a few sentences with the word “now”. Such as, “Now that we have found the value for x, what do you suppose we do next?” or “Now once you have determined how much interest you have gained over a one year period, how would that effect your original principle?”

Right on target. Jack, after starting two consecutive statements with “now”, is going about the room asking questions regarding how to fill out the stupid checks in our books. Let me take a minute and offer a couple of answers then I can get back to my thoughts.

What a breeze. With Jack all you have to do is raise your hand a couple of times early in class and then you can be assured he’ll never call on you the rest of the period. Unless of course, you do something stupid like start snoring or laughing loudly while he’s talking.

The key to success in any classroom is learning how to meet your teacher’s needs. Sometimes all it takes is being clever, sometimes it takes hard work, and sometimes it takes acting like the bullshit you’re learning interests you. Some kids like Tony pass courses by sucking up to the teacher, laughing at everything they say, and telling the teacher how much they have learned.

My problem is I don’t play the game. I do what is convenient and say what I honestly feel. A major mistake in the academic success field. My problems in school started way back in third grade when one day I woke up and realized all the other kids had learned things while I was day dreaming.

As I mentioned before, my home has always been kind of gonzo. Between my mom’s battles with her alcoholic boyfriends and them whipping the shit out of me when they got tired of hitting my old lady, I had plenty of reason to escape. My out was my head. My fantasies didn’t only avoid the craziness surrounding me, but actually became a source of great joy and safety.

I don’t know why, but I always liked myself. Instead of wasting my time being angry at my mom and her loony boy friends, I had fun in my own little world. I remember thinking it was so weird when kids at school were crying when their mothers left. For me, school was a nice quiet place where I was free to play all the games I wanted in my head.

Occasionally a teacher would disturb my play by asking me a question for which I had no clue what she was referring to, but by and large they left me to myself. Since all my play was internal, I seldom presented a problem for my teachers or classmates who generally stayed away from me.

Then one day in third grade I woke up. I don’t know why I finally decided to pay attention, but it just happened. I remember the day real clearly, and I remember the fear it caused even more sharply. Hell, here I was in a room full of strangers, who all seemed to know each other.

They all talked like members of a secret society, talking about things I knew nothing about. They knew how to write, not just print, they knew their multiplication tables, and could read out of the books they held in front of them. Me hell, I knew nothing. I knew how to print and could add a few numbers, but Jesus these kids were geniuses.

Right there that day in third grade, I had this mondo anxiety attack. I felt like I was in some foreign land being asked to eat fried insects by people I neither trusted nor understood. Suddenly my snug classroom playground was snatched from me, I was alone, completely petrified and all so stupid.

The next few weeks I paid attention and tried to learn. My efforts proved futile for a whole lot of reasons. First, the kids in the class were way ahead of me. Second, the stuff they were doing didn’t interest me. And third, a lot of what they were being taught seemed like bullshit to me.

I started asking the kind of questions that teachers hate, when they are asked to reflect on why something is true, or how we know something for sure. Why does the letter “C” sound like a “K”, or if its so good to tell the truth why do we get punished when we do?

Even at such a young age I expected, no demanded, that everything make sense. Soon my attention waned and I began to retreat back to my dream world. Yet, as I got older I found myself drawn to this spectacle of learning. Each day I found myself questioning more of what I was being expected to learn, and found that my questions were bothering the other kids as well as the teachers. That was until I discovered how to make the other kids laugh.

By fifth grade I was able to get even the most studious and loyal kid to burst out laughing in the middle of class, even at their teacher. By then I was no longer just questioning what we were being told, but openly challenging it. Lacing my rebellion with humor got many kids on my side. Soon teachers were complaining that I was a severely disruptive influence in their classrooms.

My popularity grew as quickly as did my bad reputation, and each visit to the principal’s office drew rave reviews from my new friends. In just two years I had gone from being the quiet outsider, to the talk of the school. Yet, my growing popularity had its downside. My mom, not pleased with the school’s insistence to meet them regularly for conferences regarding my “problem behavior”, decided to place me in a Catholic school.

A Catholic elementary school is no place for a smart alec, especially one who seized every opportunity to question those in authority. Before going to this school, I knew nothing about religion, and had only gone to church on a couple of occasions. My mom didn’t seem to belong to any specific church, and the only one I remember us going to was a Methodist one.

Almost every day brought a new battle for me at Our Lady of Humility elementary school. The teachers at this school were anything but humble, asserting that everything they taught and believed was true and God’s word. This religion thing drove me crazy, and I was forever trying to prove them and their beliefs wrong.

My greatest triumph at Our Lady of Humility was getting Father Andrew to admit that hell and the belief in God being all forgiving didn’t make sense. He even went so far as to say that an eternal hell might be more a figure of speech than an actual place.

Yet most of my battles with the teachers at that school proved to be extremely futile. Even if I logically backed them into a corner they would end the conversation with some statement about the mystery of God or some other such nonsense. Logic for them was something that could be conveniently discarded when it threatened one of their millions of “Truths”. After all, how could my opinion matter when pitted against the very word of God.

Religion in general seems to make people very judgmental, and I was quickly viewed as an evil person by more than one teacher at Our Lady of Humility. Since guilt and the fear of God did not affect me, I spent most of my days at Our Lady of Humility enduring a host of bogus punishments ranging from cleaning the gymnasium to spending a day of silence in the church. I got to know all the priests there, along with their belts and the back of their hand.

I soon tired of finding any joy in even battling the prejudice and propaganda I found at every turn at this institution. My frustration turned into openly challenging their every expectation. After a week of refusing to pray, I brought in a prayer to some obscure Hindu god I found in one of my mom’s old eastern mysticism books, and read it aloud in rebuttal to morning prayers.

Needless to say, my stay at Our Lady of Humility was rather short. Within a year I was placed in a special education classroom for the “behaviorally disturbed”. Though somewhat a promotion from the nazi-prison known to many as private education, I was still angry and determined to have people listen to me. No matter what the cost.

Class is over and its time for me to enter the twilight zone, English Lit. with Alice. Alice is one of those sappy aging earth-mama’s who feel sympathy and support cure every ill known to man. When you talk to her she tries to look like she’s listening to you more intensely than any other person you’ve ever talked to. The problem is she’s as dense as a black hole and doesn’t have a clue of what anyone is talking about. I guess one could say Alice has her heart in the right place, but her head’s up her ass.

“Scary!” I hear being launched at me as I walk upstairs for English class.

“Mental,” I say as I turn around and see Mel, whose full name is Mendal, hence Mental, “what’s up.”

“The doc-in-a-box is here,” he delivers with all the drama of a television reporter announcing the president’s been shot.

“No shit. Anything else?”

“No, no one’s seen anything,” Mental says sounding slightly disappointed, “Catch you later, man, I gotta run.”

Mental was always running from one place to another. No matter how many tranquilizers they gave him, he still travelled at the speed of sound. He knew Dr. Dolittle as well as anyone, and was the first to call him doc-in-a-box.

His reasons for coming up with such a unique nickname for Dolittle were quite logical. First of all, the only place any of us ever saw Dr. Ingram was in the little office in the basement of the administration building. It was a darkly lit little box of a room resembling a cramped bomb shelter. On the far side of the room was a one-way mirror where your house parents, the school psychologist and any other “necessary” people sat in to observe your session with Dr. Dolittle.

When you walked into the room you would see Dr. Dolittle in one chair, always looking over some notes, and an empty chair next to the doctor awaiting you. He truly was a doctor in the middle of a box when you saw him.

Also, his short “interviews” seemed to have no point to them. Sometimes he’d ask how you were feeling, or if you’ve had any interesting dreams, but usually he just let us blow off a little steam and complain about life at Park Grove. Most kids took advantage of being able to take free shots, or publicly humiliate their house parents who they knew were seated behind the one way mirror with their supervisors.

No one who ever was interviewed by the doctor could ever imagine how they could serve any “therapeutic” purpose. The only therapy Dolittle employed was the prescription meds he handed out. All of the bottles of “mind candy” as us kids referred to the meds, came in bottles and boxes which the staff kept locked away in their office. Since Dolittle’s only recognizable role was to distribute “mind candy” all over the campus it was easy to regard him as the doc-in-the-box.

I myself have only been interviewed by Dolittle on two occasions, and have never been given a prescription. Luckily, Frank and Jeanine try their hardest to keep all the kids in our house off meds, and most of the time they are successful. Yet, I’ll have to admit when someone in our house goes nuts or acts goofy all the time, I’m one of the first ones to suggest they see Dolittle.

Though Mental sees the Dr. quite regularly, no one on campus is drugged up like Ramone. Rumor has it that Ramone used to be a real terrorist, setting fires, beating up teachers, things like that. Now he’s this super mellow guy most of the time, and only acts out to get more mind candy.

The day before Ramone came to Park Grove all I heard was stories of this madman about to come to campus. Three or four kids knew him from previous placements and were telling everyone how Ramone was a modern gladiator gone totally out of control. The next day this chunky but solid kid with distant eyes shows up. His reflexes were real slow, and in fact he didn’t seem to recognize the people who were calling him Ramone.

Over a month went by before I ever saw him talk. God, the kid was a veritable zombie, no sense of humor, no anger, not even a smile. He really gave me the willies with his icy stare and mechanical walk.

I guess he was here about two months before he lived up to his reputation. Late one night, I was woken by the sound of breaking glass from a couple of houses down. Ramone had thrown a big chair through the picture window of the O’Grady home where he lived. He continued breaking things and constantly needed to be restrained for well over 3 days. Every time they let him up, he broke something else in the house. Nothing calmed down until he was able to see Dolittle who upped his medications.

This soon became a pattern for Ramone, who like an active volcano would spout forth every so often striking terror over the entire campus. His violent episodes always lasted until his prescriptions were somehow intensified. After getting more meds he always went comatose and barely moved above a geriatric shuffle.

One day at lunch during one of his comatose recuperation periods I decided to go up and try to talk to Ramone. No matter what I said or did he just sat their with a blank look on his face. Finally, after I asked him why he freaked out so often, his face tightened into a slight grimaced smile and he slowly said, “more mind candy.”

Those were the only coherent words I got him to say that afternoon, but it let me know he was purposely acting out to get more meds. Now maybe he wanted more meds because he was addicted to them or they made him feel good, but I always got the feeling he just wanted to see how much drugs his body could absorb.

Kids I’ve known in places like this often try to be the best at some of the most bizarre things. One guy I knew wanted to be able to belch the loudest, another guy I once roomed with tried to memorize the most phone numbers. A lot of kids try to set the record for longest time being restrained, or take pride in being the best at aggravating others and making them go off. Some kids want to be the best at lying, stealing, or getting everyone to beat them up.

I think Ramone wanted to set the record for ingesting prescription drugs. Every time his dosage was raised he seemed to view it as a personal victory demonstrating to all of us his incredible strength and endurance. When you’ve spent the bulk of your teens in institutions you take any victory you can find, even if it is stupid or self-destructive.