Hug

Lately I've been doing a best of the best list in my head. I can't remember where I got the idea, but I find that it's so easy to think about things that piss me off so I wanted to see how hard it would be to do the opposite. What's the best meal I've ever eaten? What's the best movie I've ever seen? What's the hardest I've ever laughed? With it being back to school season, I started wondering who's the best teacher I've ever had. The jury is still out on that one, but I know who wins best principal.

As I get older and look back over my life through more mature lenses, I realize that my academic career was often affected by some of the things going on at home. Throughout elementary and junior high it seemed to be intermittent. I always got good grades in core subjects, but that citizenship grade was always iffy. Someone could've made a fortune by making a talks too much in class rubber stamp. But high school was a different story.

Maybe it's a little bit whiny now, but around Ninth Grade I went through the emotional equivalent of World War III outside of school. Whereas I'd always been a little angry growing up, I progressed into full on hatred. Truth be told, I was in a lot of pain, but I'd developed this mentality as little kid that anger was more useful than sadness. So despite how I truly devastated I felt about things going on in my personal life, anger was the offense that's the best defense. I lashed out at everyone. I cursed out teachers, administrators and students, because--as weird as it sounds--it felt like the right thing to do. I couldn't let anyone run over me. I had to stand up for myself.

The fact that I was in a magnet school that posed the first academic challenge in my life didn't help. I'd never gotten so much as a C before, so getting Fs really didn't go over well with me. I think that was the final straw that caused me to go over the deep end. I went into full on depression. The idea of killing myself started swirling around in my head, but I wasn't quite there yet. Subconsciously, I think I started self-sabotaging so that I could get there. I did even less in school, cursed out even more people and just stopped caring about everything. I wanted to get expelled.

So what does this have to do with my selection for best principal? Within the first few months of school I was probably sent to the office about a dozen times. Usually the principal was busy and I ended up talking to the Dean of Students or the Vice Principal. On one particular day I got sent to the actual principal. I let her have it. I said enough to get myself expelled from every school in the country. This was pre-9/11 when anger used to excuse people saying stuff like, I'll burn this motherfucker down!

When I had nothing left to say, I waited for her to give me the get out speech. She stood up, walked over to me and gave me a really tight hug. In the calmest voice in the world--and I will never forget it--she said, I love you. This was in the fall of '96 a year or two before Good Will Hunting came out, so I don't know where she got the idea from, but it had the same result. She hugged me and said:

I love you. I don't know what you're going through to make you feel like this and I know you think that no one else in the world cares about you, but I love you. I know what you're trying to do. You think that if you act out and keep coming in this office that I'll expel you. That's not going to happen because I love you too much to give up on you or to let you give up on yourself.

I don't know what possessed her to do that, but I cried like everything I'd ever cared about died at the same time. That lady's shoulders had to have been soaked by the time she let me go. Then she handed me some tissue and told me to get myself together and go back to class. She never spoke of it again, and I don't think I ever told anyone else about it. I won't lie and say that all of my problems went away, but I don't think I ever cursed anybody else out after that. Don't get me wrong, I expressed my opinion A LOT up until I graduated, but not like I did before. Something changed that day. I can't explain what it was, but I was different after that.

My only regret in the last few years is that I didn't go to my high school reunion, because she was there. She's retired now, so I'll probably never see her again. But if she ever stumbles across this...

Thank you Ms Linette Adams. You might have actually saved my life that day.