Dazed and Confused

Suzanne Carlson

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"I have read the Class History [of 1893], and the one feature that stands out clearly is that high school pupils are the same, year in and year out.”

—Elnora Wood, Banner Yearbook 1922   

t’s a Friday morning in early November and class is in session at Rockville High School.  The halls are silent and empty. Chipped orange lockers line the walls, broken only by classroom doors and entrances to other hallways. Everything about the school feels worn and lived-in, like an old couch in a basement. The corners of walls and lockers are rounded from hundreds of hands dragged across them; the steps of every staircase have been hollowed out in the middle by hundreds of pairs of feet and thousands of school days.  Nothing matches. Student-made murals clash with decades of different paint and tile that overlap like a poorly patched quilt. Everywhere, there are garish posters advertising various clubs and good behavior (“Stand up for what’s right, even if you’re standing alone!”). There are only a few windows; outside stretches the suburban hills of Rockville, blending into the remaining farms in nearby Ellington. The view is gray and misty. It is that brief time of the morning when everyone in school is at their best - fresh, alert, productive. An electronic bell tone sounds from above. Time to change classes.

Students flood into the hallway, adding even more color and texture to the patchwork scene. Everyone jostles and jockeys for position. Some fight the current to stop at their lockers or talk with friends. The bathroom doors don't open. They’re supposed to be unlocked between classes, but the hall monitor has disappeared. Almost all of the bathrooms in the school have been locked because of vandalism. Only the one in front of the main office stays open continuously throughout the day. Eight stalls for a total of almost 1,200 students.

A few teachers lean up against the wall outside their classrooms, keeping an eye on the activity in the hall. Next to them,  words of inspiration have been painted vertically next to the lockers. “Community & Teamwork,” and “Create.” Members of the National Honor Society were instructed to paint the maxims prior to a visit from the Reaccreditation Committee four years ago. Drew Tullson chose “Apathy and Mediocrity,” as his slogan. It didn’t take long for the administration to discover what he’d done, but the rumor of his prank spread. The words are now under layers of cream-colored paint, forgotten by most students, completely unknown to the new freshmen.

“Overall, I liked high school. I had fun.”

—Lisa Rodriguez, Eckerd College, Rockville High Class of 2005

Vernon, Connecticut merged with Rockville, Connecticut long ago, but the residents of Vernon-Rockville know on which side of the hyphen they live. Vernon has strip malls; Rockville has a quaint, partially-restored downtown. Vernon is a pleasant blend of farmland and suburbia; Rockville is mostly decaying apartment complexes and enormous Victorian mansions with gingerbread trim that have been diced up into multi-family units. Vernon has groomed soccer and baseball fields; Rockville has bent basketball hoops. Vernon is rich. Rockville is poor.

Rockville started off as a mill town, powered by the cascades of the Hockanum River. In 1851 the town built its first, official school and began taking in students from the surrounding area. Since then, Rockville High has changed locations, upgraded buildings, and evolved to fit a growing town and a changing world. The school has a few famous alumni: Charles Ethan Porter, a black artist and contemporary of Mark Twain, the Fifties pop star Gene “The Rockville Rocket” Pitney, and Bill “Romo” Romanowski, of the NFL’s Oakland Raiders.

“Now, we step down from the footlights to let others play their scene. We shall be the interested spectators. Farewell.”

—Banner Yearbook, 1951

 

“This is bullshit, man!”

I was standing with some other 2005 graduates when Mike Tingley arrived.

“Nobody knows me! I can’t fucking believe this. I helped carry this team to the best season they had in twenty years. Nobody here remembers! I’m a fucking legend, and nobody even notices.”

Mike has a faded football jersey draped over his shoulder; it falls to the ground. He stoops to pick it up and then starts pacing around our circle. The other ex-football stars nod sympathetically and start pulling dip and chew out of their aging varsity jackets. There’s a warm smell of mint and burnt marshmallows as they tuck pinches and clumps up behind their lips. The school’s state mandated no-smoking policy applies even to alumni on Thanksgiving.

“Can’t fucking smoke, gotta get some tobacco somehow...” Ed whines.

Tim gives up. 

“Yeah, guys, I’m out for a bogey-break,” he says, before ducking through the gate and out to the parking lot. The others nod. Everyone’s already starting to look old, despite the gelled hair and flashy earrings. I wonder how, at barely twenty, these guys can already seem so tired. Sean, the tallest of the group, spits his tobacco juice into an empty Dasani bottle, while everyone else just turns their head slightly to avoid spraying the stream down the front of their jackets. 

Sean goes to military school. The rest never left.

Cars began filling the parking lot behind the school by three that afternoon; students tailgated and rallied up until kickoff at six. The game started out well with three quick touchdowns for Rockville, but the Rams quickly lost ground after that. 

South Windsor fans screamed from across the field.

“Raaaaaawkville, Raaaaawkville... YOU SUCK!”

The problem with the cheer, was that several groups were doing it and none of them were in synch. The result was an endless, off-beat loop of hate-filled, high-school rivalry.

Rockville’s cheerleaders fought back through gritted, smiling teeth; the marching band played fight songs from their bloc in the stands. A Rockville coach tried to motivate his team by screaming in the face of a player, then punching him in the ass for good measure.  The boy ran out onto the field; the play ended a few seconds later with an offsides call against Rockville. Rams’ cheerleaders screamed louder. 

Fans spilled out of the bleachers and wrapped themselves around the field's inner fence.  There were thousands of people at the game.

“At least it isn’t snowing like last year!” a player’s mother calls brightly from her station at the concession stand. Two years ago they had to bring snow plows in to clear the field.

Everything on Rockville’s side is all-American blue and gold. South Windsor wears a darker, more dangerous maroon. We sip hot chocolate and scream louder as we watch the grisly game unfold. Our troops look exhausted.

Sean stands grimly next to me while we watch the Rams start to slip; they give up a pass, then a point, then a touchdown...  Sean’s blue eyes narrow, the muscles of his jaw tighten.  He tells me about what it’s like up at military school in Vermont, the training, the pressure, the discipline. He’s been caught for illegal substances; he’s had his share of fledgling addictions. Even when talking about the very real possibility that he’ll go off to war soon, he can’t take his eyes off the game. He’s not paying much attention to our conversation;  whenever an exciting play starts, he trails off. He might as well still be out on the field.

“God, I miss the feeling...”

 

“This book is respectfully dedicated to all the boys and girls of the town of Vernon and the city of Rockville that they may cherish with pride the memory of a virtuous ancestry.”

—Cascades and Courage: The History of the Town of Vernon and the City of Rockville, Connecticut. Compiled in leisure hours by George S. Brookes, Ph. D.

 

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to an old newspaper clipping tucked into my classmate’s binder. I saw her last name in the heading.

“It’s about my Dad.  He got arrested for a DUI.”

“Oh,” I say. I didn’t know what to say next.

“Why did you keep it?”

“Because it reminds me of the stupid shit my family does.”

She didn’t say “So I won’t make their mistakes,” or “To encourage me to make better decisions when I’m an adult.” She never graduated. She's still living in her mother’s house in town---with her two children.

Not all the girls who got pregnant dropped out. After last year’s graduation, the front page of a local paper presented a photo of a smiling, blue-robed graduate... with a toddler under each arm. The twins were born the year before; her mother and grandmother raised them while she went to class.

MySpace profiles of recent graduates often show baby photos. The moms usually come from the Rockville side of things. One girl’s MySpace profile announces, “I’m a sexy momma!” Another has a slideshow of photos from her son’s birth. Snapshots of keg stands and smiling faces wreathed in thick marijuana smoke are juxtaposed with grainy camera-phone photos of pink, wrinkled newborns. The mothers and mothers-to-be send nice little notes to each others' MySpace pages.

Of course, the girls from the Vernon side of the income line are not immune from vice.  Backstage at a school function last year, an unwitting student took a sip from a water bottle, only to find that it was filled with vodka. The bottle belonged to a member of the National Honor Society. She and a friend, another member of the NHS, had shared such water bottles for years. Both were suspended from school---briefly, but allowed to remain on National Honor Society.

Their class vice President was not so lucky. She wasn’t allowed to walk down the aisle at graduation after being arrested for drug possession.

Recently, a disturbing story has been recurring in the local newspapers:

A Vernon man was served with an arrest warrant Monday morning for another sexual assault charge stemming from his use of the profile Web site MySpace.com[...] This would bring the total number of suspected cases to around 10. Leonard’s next court date is December 11. ( The Hartford Courant)

Dave Leonard was the “Vernon man” in the article. His sister is still in high school. After he graduated, he began to troll MySpace. He found girls between the ages of twelve and fifteen, convinced them to meet him, then had sex with them. Dave’s first arrest was for an incident that took place in New Britain in 2004. He graduated from Rockville High in 2003.

 

“Going to Rockville High School is like blowing your nose in 200-gritsandpaper: it’s abrasive, annoying, and moderately painful...”

—Drew Tullson, United States Air Force Academy, Rockville High Class of 2003

Rockville High has had five different principals over the last four years. The parade began when Mr. Erardi retired. He is remembered as being fair and just; liked by everyone. Almost a saint. The Last Good Principal. A plump, cheerful, red-headed woman named Mrs. Pierson replaced him. Mrs. Pierson was an energetic, midwestern mom who had never dealt with New Englanders before. Almost everyone hated her. She was treated with suspicion and often, disgust. Students, parents, and teachers talked about her the way they would talk about a flu epidemic, or a snowstorm. After barely a year, she resigned and was never heard from again. Her existence was never formally acknowledged: the principals' portraits hanging in the library remain exclusively male.

The next principal was Keith Gerritt. Mr. Gerritt was devoid of personality. Students and teachers maintained a wary truce with him. Mr. Gerritt didn’t ruffle many feathers, but he didn’t accomplish much either. Shortly after his arrival, Rockville came up for reaccreditation by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC). That's when Drew Tullson chose "Apathy and Mediocrity" as his slogan to adorn the hallway.

The NEASC committee noted that, “Rockville High School is experiencing a period of leadership stability after undergoing a five-year span of on-going changes in the principal position. The current principal has been in place for little more than one year.” Not long after NEASC filed the report, Mr. Gerritt resigned.

The superintendent took over as principal until a replacement could be found. Yet another search committee was formed. This time, the committee selected a young high school vice-Principal named Brian Levesque. 

Mr. Levesque began his tenure by banning all food and drink outside the cafeteria. Suddenly, there were no more cream cheese smears on the walls or milk carton explosions in stairwells. When teachers protested, Mr. Levesque offered a compromise: Clear plastic bottles filled with water--and only water--were allowed.  Students were outraged. They began calling Mr. Levesque “Mr. Clean.” The name stuck: Mr. Levesque is totally bald. 

After a few weeks, everyone calmed down. People stopped carrying liquor mixed with Gatorade to class; no one got hammered in the back row of World History anymore. Life went on, one day at a time. So far no one has failed a Breathalyzer test at a school dance.

 

“They were four wonderful years, studded with many memories. Remember?

—Banner Yearbook, 1951

          

 

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