Flashback

On a recent sales call, I met an extremely polite young man - let’s call him Drew - who looked to be about the same age as myself.

Drew and his fiancé lived in a relatively new doublewide set on a parcel of land down a long unpaved driveway, which winded behind their neighbor’s property.

The young man met me at my car and immediately greeted me politely and with questions about our product. Drew wanted to know where we could put it, and how it would be situated on his property. Fairly typical questions from all customers.

Standing outside, we briefly went over these items before entering his home to discuss some of the broader details of the project.

Once inside, seated at his kitchen table and discussing the minutiae of the project as well as the investment it would require, he asked about financing options, which we discussed briefly.

After returning from gathering my information and plugging it into our system, Drew and I began to discuss exact costs and specific financing options.

I noticed something different about Drew. He was constantly wiping his lower lip with the collar of his sweatshirt. The more we discussed finances and credit scores, the more he needed to use his sweatshirt as a handkerchief for his lower lip.

Apparently, Drew was a bit of a nervous drooler. He was right to be nervous in this case; he told me his current credit score, and it was not going to qualify him for any financing.

We parted ways as politely as we came together.

All the way home, I laughed, not at Drew, of course, but because his drooling flashed me back to my days as an Assistant Principal:

I had known Darnell since he was in 6th grade, and I was interning as an administrator at his middle school.

It’s hard to call a 6th grader a jerk, but it’s a lot less difficult if the 6th grader is Darnell.

Although, I cannot say his personality had much of a chance. His mother was no model citizen, never mind worth being called a parent. She gave birth, for sure, but a parent she was not.

Darnell would take out his cell phone and call his mother every time he got in trouble - roughly every 10-minutes. One day I was fortunate enough to be there for the phone call, in which Darnell handed me his phone as his mother screamed, “I am sick of these white people calling me all the time.”

“Hello Ma’am, this is Dave, I am curious as to who all these white people are who are calling you about Darnell? Darnell is the one calling you right now, and pretty much all day, from his cell phone, which he will not give up. Also, none of his three teachers in the IBS (Intense Behavioral Support) room where he spends all day are white. Are there random white people calling you telling you they are from the school we should know about?”

Mom immediately backpedaled, and said she had to go - no time to discuss her son’s behavior and academics. Surely, she had much more pressing matters to handle.

Fast-forward four years, and Darnell is a freshman at the high school where I am an assistant principal. Did Darnell graduate 8th grade? I guess that is one way of putting it.

Another way is referred to as social promotion. While this may not be the best educational answer to Darnell’s situation, it would do even more damage to everyone in middle school who would have to share a classroom with Darnell as he aged into adolescents, grew a beard, and started driving to middle school - all the while refusing to cooperate with endless opportunities for a free education.

And so, Darnell graduates middle school and becomes a high school student, having little to know academic knowledge to succeed in high school level classes and no desire to learn.

Darnell was brought to my office by one of our amazing SROs (School Resource Officers) who caught him trying to leave campus without permission.

I hid my true feelings as Darnell entered my office and greeted him with a smile. “Good to see you again, Darnell. How have you been?”

“Oh man, not you. Anybody but you. I remember you.” Darnell said this as he sucked his thumb.

Yes, he still had not kicked the habit of thumb sucking. He only managed to stop sucking his thumb long enough to complain about being in trouble. Then, the thumb went right back into his mouth - social promotion and quality parenting at its best.

After Darnell left, the SRO filled me in on Darnell’s resume for the last four years. This thumb sucking, 80-pound, skinny-little-whiner, was now a “shot-caller” in a local gang, moving drugs.

In my best Hollywood gang scene imagination, I could not envision him angrily bossing around fellow gang bangers while sucking his thumb and complaining about their inability to move enough weight? This is the new age gangbanger? Fiersome.

His older sister, who was a senior, was the brains of the operation. Darnell assuredly followed her orders.

She was actually highly intelligent, but her mother - the ever-amazing parent she was - decided to use her daughter’s brains to expand and progress the family business of being in a gang and hustling drugs. Her daughter, at the age of 16, had tattoos to broadcast her life’s path - one of which was a large 9MM Glock on her chest, which she broadcast proudly each day she violated dress code.

It was the kind of heartbreaking scenario far too prevalent in public education.

Darnell proved to be far less of a headache then I imagined he would be, as he rarely bothered to attend school.

A few months went by and winter settled in. Sometime shortly after returning from our Christmas break, the SRO came by my office and asked if I had read about Darnell in the paper.

I prepared to hear about a gang shoot-out, his arrest, or his overdose, but none were true - well, not exactly.

Apparently, Darnell called 9-1-1 from his car to report someone had shot him while at an intersection.

When the first responders arrived to administer aid to his gunshot wound, the police also questioned him about the events.

Darnell, who I imagined was giving his statement while sucking his thumb, let the police know someone shot him through his window while he was at the intersection. He did not know who it was.

As they pressed him for details, Darnell assured them he was shot through is window.

The police eventually pointed out to Darnell his window, all of his windows, were fully intact. It was winter. His windows were rolled-up. How could he have been shot without the bullet going through the window and causing it to shatter?

Perplexing.

Darnell later confessed to shooting himself while driving without a license and carrying his illegal handgun - at least he wasn’t still attending middle school and influencing other 6th-8th graders about the glory of gang life.