i'll have a phrase stuck in my mind for ages + when i finally figure out where its from well GUESS WHERE its from...

I saw my old high school earlier today on a trip into Fresno. It's changed a lot. For one thing it's a lot bigger and cleaner looking. The whole neighborhood surrounding it looked better. It started me thinking about my time there.

  When I was a kid I loved school. I remember being so excited about finally entering high school that I didn't sleep a wink the night before I started my freshman year. But my high school experience wasn't what I expected. It was a rough school in a very bad neighborhood and right from day one I was aware that I'd have trouble there. Half the kids couldn't read or write above a 3rd or 4th grade level and most didn't want to be there. There were constant interruptions and fights in class. I remember a girl built like a linebacker picking up a 19-inch computer monitor (the old heavy ones) and hurling it across the computer lab at the teacher.

  In many of my classes I wasn't learning. Because so many of my classmates couldn't read the books assigned or do more than simple multiplication and division, the entire class was stuck in a never ending cycle of remedial education. It had a deleterious effect on my mental health as did the constant taunting (I was fat, my clothes were second hand, I sweat a lot even in winter etc) and being told by the 90% African-American student body, "You ain't black. You just a dark white boy lolololol. We don't claim none of your fat white *!&^" (the irony being often,the kids saying this were more obese than I was). There weren't very many white students, I imagine they knew better - it was a death sentence offense at that school, especially if you were male. But there were a sizeable group of Mexican kids - about 50 or 60, and they had no problem 'claiming me'. Particularly the girls who sort of adopted me and liked touching my poofy Afro hairdo. (I miss having hair, but I digress).

  Very early my junior year (October of ‘89, I think) I just stopped going. Mentally I was in a very bad place. I wanted to hurt people and my dad had a lot of guns. Being a retired US Army drill sergeant he’d taught me to use them all on hunting trips. So I had the means to do some real damage. But I wasn’t an idiot, so I realized that I had to take myself out of the environment. My dad would drop me off at the front gate at 7 a.m. and I'd walk to the gym, circle round the back, walk through a hole in the chain link fence and catch the city bus from the bench on the opposite side of the weedy field behind the gym (the field is gone now, part of a much larger gym today). I'd ride the bus to my mom's house and play Nintendo all day. Since I had been catching the bus to my mom's house every day after school already (and because the school's attendance secretary apparently forgot I existed) my dad remained unaware.

  I remember one morning I was playing video games and the kitchen phone rang. My sister picked it up and told whoever was on the line to wait and headed to my mom in the living room where she was reading a National Enquirer (she loved those Bat boy and Elvis lives stories). Mom came to me in my brother's old bedroom panicked and said "It's your dad! I think he caught us. You want to talk to him?"

  I said no. Just because he called that doesn't mean he caught anyone. Ask him what he wants. Then, if he knows I'll talk. So she did, reluctantly (expecting to have her head bitten off). It turned out my dad's car broke down one town over while he was out doing something or another and he needed a ride home (his home). Mom and I both nearly collapsed from relief after she hung up.

  The close call prompted me to go to my student counselor the next day and just spill the beans and tell him why I'd been ditching so much school and admit I wanted to hurt people. He took me seriously, thanked me for coming in before I did anything rash and he helped me get into a home schooling program the same day (my dad was furious and thought I should keep attending regular school, He claimed my mom must have “put me up to it” and saw my asking for home school as an excuse to drop out - he stopped letting me visit my mom after that but I was less than a year from turning 18 and I knew I could hack it). The program sent me to a credentialed teacher for an hour each Thursday where I’d pick up a load of work and drop off the previous weeks (I had to go over it with the teacher while he graded it. Turned out he was an ordained Presbyterian pastor and we'd talk a lot about Scripture - at the time I was an ignorant backslid Pentecostal and I didn't think much of his his reformed theology - boy, look at me now).

  I spent less than a year in that home school program, learning at my own pace (which was fast) and doing grade appropriate lessons for the first time since the 8th grade. I started community college (without a diploma or GED) the next spring and only saw a handful of my old high school classmates over the 2-years I spent there. Quite a few have been killed since then (gang violence), imprisoned (same) or have just disappeared as adults. I’ve looked a few of them up from time to time on Facebook just to see how they've changed.

  A few have become pastors but pastor's of 'name it and claim it', prosperity gospel churches. I sense a mission field but I'm reluctant (forgive me Lord). Thus far I've completely failed with my living siblings and all of their children (Jake's been my only success, in that I prayed and prayed and talked him out of the new age movement about 10-years ago). My mind asks me, If my own flesh and blood won't listen to me, why would kids that didn't even like me when we were at school together? But it's a fear I need to get over. I feel the call.