I went to high school in the late 80s, the very late 80s as I graduated in 1989. I was a mediocre student, mostly due to complete lack of motivation. While there were times in my student career where I could definitely have been called a bad student, I was never a bad kid or troublemaker. Through all the years of my schooling from kindergarten till graduation I can only remember maybe 5 incidents where I had to face some kind of administrative discipline. This is the story of one of those times.
I don’t know if this is still a thing but when I was in school every morning we had a “moment of silence” put there as a replacement for prayer in school and the Pledge of Allegiance. “The Pledge” is a leftover piece of rabid American patriotism left over from the Cold War. I can’t imagine any other countries have their school children pledge their allegiance to flag and country every morning, but we did and we really didn’t know any better. This whole activity took 2-3 minutes and was just a formality to get through to start the day and get onto school stuff.
The details here are somewhat hazy, it was probably my junior year (year 3 of 4) and I know I was in history class. I don’t remember the teacher’s name, she was a small, dark-haired woman who was generally pleasant. In the class with me was a tall, red-haired fellow named Zach. Zach and I weren’t best friends but we were on good terms and if I’m not mistaken that morning before class he and I had been discussing Bob and Doug McKenzie from SCTV. We both found this classic bit of Canadian stereotyping pretty amusing especially the idea that their theme song could be our new national anthem. Being high school boys we made the bad decision to sing this out during “The Pledge” portion of our morning ritual.
I had never done anything like this, I was not the “class clown” or a person who liked to draw attention to myself. I went to class and waited nervously for things to begin. The announcement came over the intercom “Please stand for a moment of silence followed by the Pledge of Allegiance.” The class stood, everyone bowed their heads for the moment of silence and then the person reading the announcements starts “I pledge allegiance…” at which point Zach and I both bust out with the “Coo roo coo coocoo coo coooo” of The Great White North National anthem.
Honestly, the other kids in the class were shocked, like genuinely shocked. I don’t think anyone in the history of Acadiana High School had ever been so bold or so insane as to desecrate the dignified moment that was the “moment of silence followed by the Pledge of Allegiance.” There was a brief pause then the teacher erupted “To the office…NOW!” I looked at Zach, at this point we realized that we were in trouble. Now, this was before I realized that trouble was a fake idea so I was actually pretty scared. The teacher marched us down the hall to the office and brought us to one of the assistant principals, a man called Mr. Gleason. She briefly explained what we had done and Mr. Gleason exploded in anger “How dare you mock the flag, people fought and died for that flag” was what I can remember. We learned at this time that Mr. Gleason was a veteran of the Vietnam War and he was pretty fucking pissed that we had even the slightest intention of sullying the American flag and everything it represented. He went on, getting angrier and angrier at us as he spoke.
Honestly, I was terrified. I was not the kind of kid who was used to having people go nuts and yell at them for 5-10 minutes about how I had disgraced the nation and the memory of our war dead. And yet, in the back of my head I kept thinking “at no point was it our intention to mock or disparage anyone” but I kept that to myself and let Mr. Gleason make his impassioned point. After he was done, he sent us to detention, I don’t remember anything about it, not even how long we were there. I think we were made to write the Pledge of Allegiance a hundred times or something like that.
That was the first and really last time I ever got in trouble in high school.