How We Cheated In HIgh School: A Story Of Guilt And Physics

(I went to the Moth Story Slam last night. The topic was CHEATING. This is the story I mostly didn’t tell.)

Señor Dubois spoke English (and Spanish) with a French accent.

Supposedly, he had assumed the identity of ‘high school Spanish teacher’ to escape his past as a colonel in the Tonton Macoutes (the Secret Police who worked for Haitian dictator Papa Doc Duvalier) (when it came to back story, the rumor mill at my high school did not fuck around- I mean, why else would a Spanish teacher have a French accent?).

In high school, cheating was a way of life- I watched people cheat constantly, helped a lot of people cheat, even cheated myself, at times (look, any time you cheat, you’re cheating yourself, okay?).

I felt so guilty about cheating in Physics junior year I went to confession (and this was in the 80’s, when they were trying that thing where confession would be face to face- no screens, just two folding chairs and the priest, “Hi there, Sean. Been a while.” Ulp.).

When I told my Father Confessor about the Physics cheating he was like, “Maybe if you feel so guilty about it why don’t you just… stop?” So I did. Thereafter, the class went poorly for me (ironically, I ended up taking a physics class in grad school and absolutely loved it; “Ohhhhhh, so that’s what happens to a baseball after it leaves the pitcher’s hand!”).

Totally unprepared

Señor Dubois usually gave us a couple of Spanish quizzes every week. "Is the window open?" "What color are the shoes?" "How is the weather at the beach near the bookstore in the south?" That kind of thing. Five questions, printed twice on an 8.5 x 11 inch sheet of paper that was torn in half (to save los àrboles), passed out, collected, then passed out again, so everybody got somebody else’s quiz.

Then Señor Dubois would write the answers on the board. We would each correct each other’s quizzes, then pass them BACK in so he could enter the grades in his grade book.

Smart way to keep us on our dedos de los pies, without giving himself a ton of extra work.

But.

All you had to do was somehow get the pen you used on your quiz to the person correcting it, and they could change whichever of your answers was wrong (or even just fill in the right one, if you left it blank). You could get a 5 every time if you wanted (once in a while people would purposely get one wrong, like the "oblivious tourist" in a Hawaiian shirt who guesses the red queen right in three-card monte) (why is that guy wearing a Hawaiian shirt in Times Square?).

So every time Señor Dubois turned his back to write the answers on the board, pens flew around the room. A ballpoint Battle of Britain. You caught the pen, you fixed the quiz. 5’s for everybody (a few 4’s, make it look good you guys, we're not all masterminds).

One day somebody threw their pen to Joe… Kelleher? Maybe Caputo (Catholic high school in the Bronx, everybody was either a Kelleher or a Caputo).

Joe wasn’t paying attention.

Physics. Newton’s First Law. The thrown pen tended to remain in motion until it was acted upon by Joe’s face.

It stuck in his cheek, quivering, like when Robin Hood shoots his second arrow so accurately that it splits the shaft of the first one, and they zoom in on it to show us what a great archer he is (we get it, he's amaaaaaazing at archery - please, show us another side to the character, like he loves smash-up derbies or something).

For a brief, endless moment, we all watched. Joe. The pen. Joe's face. The pen in Joe's face.

Potential energy.

My high school was founded in 1841, but they had just moved to a new building. The brand-new one was only 4 or 5 years old. Update! Modern!

Somebody in charge thought carpeting all the rooms was a great idea, same way they thought having built-in windows that didn’t open would be awesome (the air in the building just constantly recirculated through the air-recirculator contraption, like in a submarine) (which meant the entire building always, always, always reeked of the fried onion rings they made in the cafeteria last week- take that, thoughtless architect!) (I bet there’s no fried onion rings allowed on submarines).

We’ve all seen medical procedural shows, so we know head wounds bleed a lot (those shows are obviously popular because you can explore the drama of the relationships between the people who work in the hospital, and also have the high stakes of people coming in to the ER- chest pain/allergic reactions/fainting spells/open wounds/they didn’t know about Urgent Care etc.) (I asked an ER doc up in Montana once how close to reality those shows are, and he said “I thought I was gonna be having tons of sex in the store room. Total bullshit. I’ve spent a lot of time crying in the ambulance bay by myself, that part is definitely real…”).

The face is part of the head. Joe pulled the pen out of his face. Blood geysered, arterially pumping several feet across the room (are there arteries in the face? 'Cause it definitely pumped...), drenching the erstwhile architect’s carpet.

“Señor Dubois. Look. My face,” Joe said. Real calm, matter-of-fact almost, the way a veteran tour guide might share something inconsequential before they tell us about why we're really here: “... so this was where the Black Dahlia usually had her dry cleaning done…”

The Bronx.

Joe went to the Dean’s office for bandages, disinfectant, possibly cauterization- he was fine.

We all got 5's, some bloodstained.

When we came back the next day, the air, as always, reeked of stale onion rings.

But the carpet?

Spotless. If carpets could gleam, it would have glemt.

You know who’s probably pretty good at getting blood out of a carpet?

The Tonton Macoute.