Skipping Skool: Not Kool

By Julian Glander

“I heard you either have to kill someone on your first day to gain respect or become someone’s bitch for protection.”

“I heard they do weird stuff to you if you drop the soap.”

“Let’s work on our nicknames. I want to be The Widowmaker.”

My friends’ understanding of prison culture may have been a little shaky, but their comments did nothing to ease the anxiety of my first ride in a police car.

The day had started out like any other. It was the spring of my sophomore year of high school, and in the warm, cloudless air my peers and I could smell the end of the school year approaching. It smelled like freedom. At lunchtime I met up with Taylor, a freshman I had been dating for three weeks. Taylor was one of the most attractive girls in her grade–– she had the elegance of a Disney princess, the body of a department store mannequin and the bone structure of a cable news anchor. That alone should have been enough of an indicator that she was out of my league. Her hobbies included drinking, smoking and having the kinds of fun I could only read about in the magazines my dad kept in his sock drawer. My hobbies included Legos, Math Club and flinching every time someone motioned to give me a high five.

Taylor got plenty of attention from guys, but for reasons that will probably remain beyond my comprehension forever, she liked me. Cowering behind Myspace comments and text messaging, I managed to initiate what was considered a “relationship” at the time, and it had been going strong for an unbelievable twenty-one days. I had never been friends with one of “those kids” before, much less romantically involved with one; I was thrilled, intrigued and most of all terrified.

Our previous “dates” had consisted of sneaking into an R-rated movie, secretly drinking wine coolers behind her Aunt’s house at a family reunion, and stealing plastic earrings from the mall just to prove that we could. On this particular day, her plan was for us to leave school during our lunch period and go to McDonald’s.

A little angel in my head cried out “Julian, don’t do it. Skipping school is a sin.” Of course, a little devil rebutted with “Julian, this thing you have with Taylor is probably your only chance at touching a girl’s boob before you’re married. Don’t mess this up. Do it.” The logic was inarguable.

We embarked on our journey with her best friend Lexi, notorious for being the first girl in her grade to go to a college party, and her friend named Jason, who I recognized as the kid who slept through every second of Intro to Biology the previous year. On our walk I learned he had spent most of the class “tripping on ludes,” a term I made sure to Google later.

Our school was surrounded by an acre or so of flat, open land, so we had to make our escape discreetly. As we snaked through the parking lot my heart was pounding like the hefty, embarrassing bass drum I didn’t want Taylor to know I played in the marching band. We moved stealthily under cars and past Deputy Rembert, the school security guard, who was part law-enforcer and part former janitor who liked to use his taser to impress sixteen-year-old girls.

When we were finally off school grounds my anxiety over being caught allowed itself to be replaced by the more familiar social anxiety of eating with members of the elite party class of my school. At McDonald’s Taylor taught me the trick of asking for a free cup of water and filling it with soda. She was so wise and confident–– I considered proposing to her on the spot but figured I should save it for a more romantic setting (Wendy’s, for instance).

We sat down and I had barely raised my first McNugget to my mouth when a cop car pulled up. A police officer got out and began talking to the manager, who pointed at our table. The cop sauntered towards us and bellowed authoritatively, “You know, it’s illegal for you kids not to be in school right now if you’re under sixteen.”

Jason, Lexi and Taylor sighed, more annoyed than anything else. I was overcome with fear, assuming I would be spending the next five to ten years in a maximum security penitentiary without possibility of parole. I did what any brave, upstanding citizen would do in my situation: I excused myself and hid in a stall in the bathroom.

“Come out when you’re done, buddy,” the cop said, rapping on the door of my fortress.

“Y-yes sir,” I stammered while texting “i m so sory, plz dont disown me” to my mom.

After being thoroughly searched for drugs, weapons and stolen babies we were herded into the police car. Lexi and Taylor used the situation as an opportunity to take Myspace pictures of each other while Jason took a nap. We rode to the Hillsborough County Juvenile Attention Center, which the cop described as “like a prison, but for kids.” At this point, the girls began whispering to each other about what our prison lives would be like, if they would end up as cellmates and if it was really possible to make a knife out of a toothbrush. I wanted to point out that I had learned from Prison Portraits on the Discovery Channel that one could make a knife out of almost anything, but a heavy feeling in my throat kept me from contributing to the conversation.

When we arrived at the Juvenile Attention Center we were placed in separate cells for the rest of the day. I wasn’t sure why skipping my lunch period warranted riding in a cop car, being placed in a cell and getting called “nancy boy” by a policeman under his breath until it was explained that I was part of the county’s new Crime Crackdown initiative (part of the much wider-reaching American Alliteration Act). I was suspended from school for three days, enough time for a rumor to circulate among my band-geek friends that I had fled the country with nothing but the clothes on my back and a briefcase full of hamburgers.

In confinement picked up some pamphlets from the 80s with titles like Gangs: Bad for the Community, Bad for You and Skipping Skool: Not Kool. I thought they were hysterically cheesy but my mom didn’t see the humor when she came to pick me up. Our car ride home was a nonstop barrage of furious comments ranging from parental standards like “where did we go wrong?” to the more creative “what are we supposed to do with you? Call an exorcist, get the devil out of you?” and my personal favorite, “do you hear that? Do you hear it? That’s the sound of your future flushing down the toilet.”

My parents grounded me until the end of the school year, but they let me off early after I convinced them I had learned my lesson. I hadn’t, of course–– to this day I maintain that such a drastic punishment for wanting McNuggets was a grave injustice and a waste of the police force’s time and energy.

Still, the incident forced me to accept a truth I had been trying my hardest not to confront for most of my adolescence: I was not cool. There was nothing cool about me, nor was there any potential for future coolness. But if cool was knowing how to make a crack pipe out of household objects or raiding my parents’ liquor cabinet when they went out of town for a funeral or eventually dropping out of high school to work at a water park, maybe I didn’t want to be. The cop was right–– I was a nancy boy. A nancy boy with a future. A nancy boy whose parents cared about him enough to consider putting him on a leash at the age of fifteen. Most importantly, a nancy boy with a cherished and well-worn copy of STDs: The Real Party Pooper.