Staying In Trouble.

WHEN I WAS in ninth grade, in 1969, I went to school in the same building as my sister, who was a high school senior. For me, that didn't work out well. it was almost like having a parent or guardian or supervisor, lurking. One fine day I got wind that some students were planning a walk out, to protest the Viet Nam war. I was down with, solidly against American imperialism, then and now, only in secret, as a fourteen year old in a conservative, establishment, patriotic family, in which opposition to American foreign policy was traitorous. I skipped class and joined the protest. it consisted of little more than a lengthy declaration by a long haired male activist about the inalienable right to protest, and the willingness of all concerned to endure the consequences of our action, in defense of a higher moral principle. Little if anything was said about the war, which by 1969 was going badly for the imperialists, and widely unpopular. Guess who was looking out the window of her psych class. Sure enough, sis tried to blackmail me; mums the word to mummy, in exchange for certain domestic considerations and accommodations. Too proud for my own good, not the sort to accede to blackmail, I ended up in, as we used to delicately say, "deep do do". The folks were quite unhappy, using as their pretext my having skipped class. We all knew what the real issue was. i would have respected them more had they simply come clean. Maybe they were secretly proud of me for standing for something, but too proud and patriotic to admit it. I got into even more trouble as a high school teacher than as a student. I swear I got summoned to the principal's office more often than the most deliquent deliquent. the two causes were my preference for having fun in class, and my insistence on teaching American history accurately, rather than patriotically. The incident I remember most fondly, and relate most frequently, is when the big man called me in and asked: "why are you telling your classes that Thomas Jefferson was a non Christian who ridiculed religion"? The problem, as usual, was my response, which was: "why don't you take a wild guess". I'm pretty sure that was my last year. My life, riddled with controversy stemming from my contempt for social norms and normal behavior, collided with more grand adventure when I swallowed my pride and joined Facebook. Maybe I missed the old AOL chatrooms, and the trouble they got me into. I saw Facebook primarily as an opportunity to promote this website and to push a progressive agenda, in the age of Trump. It was a good choice. I joined one of what must be millions of exclusive progressive discussion groups; I would like to join them all, to promote my website and push a progressive agenda among fellow agenda pushers, and I plan to go about it diligently. As I previously states in another essay, this business of "friending" folks on Facebook I can barely take seriously; it seems too much like grade school; make a list of friends, in order of importance. My friends in the corporeal world I can call, email, or visit; Facebook adds nothing to a friendship decades old. i harbor no illusions that putting someone's name on a list on a computer screen will result in actual friendship, hence, my disrespectful attitude. Facebook cautions people to avoid friending (shouldn't it be "befriending"?) people you don't know, then, promptly proceeds to send lists of strangers as suggested friends, what Facebook calls "people you may know". Sure, I may know the guy in Shanghai walking down the street right now carrying a briefcase and smoking a cigarette. I just might. Wee, Facebook, we all know, is a monstrous corporate hypocrite, promising this, doing that. eager to please, i clicked on every potential soon to be friend in the group,,,, and about half of them accepted my offer. The leader, however, was not pleased. Something to do with respecting privacy and behavioral norms. Again, the societal norm thing, back from the dead. If only he had known. He informed me that he had blocked me, until such time as I, in his words, would "rectify". Well, I rectified. I promised better behavior, and a future replete with nothing but socially acceptable behavior and meritorious contributions. He's a nice guy, and I am pleased that he seems pleased, once again, with me. But somehow I now, I just know, that its only matter of space and time until I run afoul of the law, or of social norms, again, and again. So far I have survived the Pentecostal conservatives as the senior center, but only by, as we say, the skin of my teeth, whatever teeth skin is. My next intolerable infraction might be wearing sweats to a recital, or sipping a drink through a plastic straw an an environmental protection meeting, a clandestine beer at a high school basketball game - it could be anything. But, inevitably, it will be something. We live in a very anal, conformist, judgmental culture, one which views departure from norms very negatively. maybe its our English German cultural heritage. Whatever it is, it sure as hell aint gonna change, but then, neither am I.