Fate Lent A Hand

It took the entire weight of the Chicago Public School system to get me to try marijuana.

My freshman year of high school, I attended the Yeshiva, a private, religious institution that was part of the Hebrew Theological Seminary. My father and many of his family members had graduated from there. Even as early as twelve years old, living away from home was a preferable arrangement for both of us.

However, during the early part of my sophomore year, my father was called to the Dean's office and asked politely, but firmly, to withdraw me from the Yeshiva, suggesting that I might do better in a more secular environment.

I moved back home and was enrolled in William J. Bogan High School. I was given my schedule and started attending classes, but one period was marked 'Study Hall' that met in the auditorium. My first day, I walked into the auditorium and a group of older kids were sitting in back talking quietly among themselves and doing homework. I sat down with them and buried myself in a book.

I also noticed that down in the very front of the auditorium was a large class of very unruly students who were being continuously disciplined by a teacher yelling and waving her arms.

Each day I would enter the study hall and sit in the back with the kids who were conversing quietly and doing their work. One day I needed to get signed out of the period and I asked the kids what I was supposed to do. They confessed that they did not know, but the only teacher was the one down front, and maybe I should ask her.

I hesitantly walked down the aisle to the front of the stage and showed the teacher the note. Her eyes literally bugged out of her head and her gray hair stood up on end. She grabbed my arm and led me to the assistant principal's office. After conferring for a few minutes, the teacher left, but the AP started yelling at me that I was cutting classes and was going to be suspended.

They called my father, and once again I sat in a hard, wooden chair in the outer office, waiting for him to leave work and come to school. When he arrived, I tried explaining what happened, and when I repeated the story to the AP, he grudgingly said he'd look into it.

The next day at the beginning of the study hall, the assistant principal took me into the auditorium and questioned the students in the back of the hall. They said that I had been sitting with them every day, and either participated in conversations or did my work.

Apparently what had happened was that the kids in the back were seniors who had open study, meaning they could leave the school for lunch and study periods, but these were the A students who opted to remain in school. The loud, chaotic group down front was the study hall where the teacher took daily attendance.

The AP called my father and it was decided that no disciplinary action would be taken, but of course, from then on, I had to sit with the study hall. That very first day, they sat me next to Pete Valdez, the biggest pot dealer in the school. As soon as I sat down, he started talking to me and asking me how I got sent down to the study hall. He asked me if I had ever smoked pot before. I had never considered it, although in 8th grade we were shown those grainy pictures of emaciated junkies.

By the end of the period we had made arrangements to hook up after school. He took me back to his house and he showed me what pot looked like and how to roll a joint. He lit it up and did a hit, then passed it to me. I coughed it out and he laughed and said don't take such a big hit. We finished the joint and sat back listening to a band named Black Sabbath.

The rest, as they say, is history.