How Even the Most Intimidating Tapestry of Lies Remains Vulnerable to Truth
The inescapable futility of authoritarianism
The guidance counselor called me into his office. I didn’t know why I was there, but I suspected I was about to get yelled at. This was around 1989. The school was a brick fortress. I remember walking through the front door and being engulfed in shadow.
The guidance counselor still dressed like it was 1970. The local stores didn’t carry any modern clothing. He wore a yellow shirt with dark brown pants and light brown shoes. Two enormous, triangular collars lay flat against his chest. When he turned too quickly, the collars generated lift and swung out like knife tips.
He moved to stand behind his shiny leather chair and gestured that I sit on the uncomfortable plastic stool in front of his desk. The stool was made out of something that looked like a mix between plastic and granite. All school supplies were made out of that material because it was virtually indestructible. I’d been hit in the face with that stuff, it never even chipped. If you peered into the gloss you could see evidence of some kind of fiber.
When men call you into their office, they take their sweet time about getting to the point. You’re subjected to man noises and man smells. They walk leisurely behind their desk. They shuffle stacks of paper, then they touch the desk. They’re touching all sorts of things including themselves. They touch their belt buckle a lot. The door to the outside world is closed. There’s no escape.
He finally sat down. That was a relief because it obscured the suggestive stroking of his belt.
“I suppose you’re wondering why I brought you in here?”
“Yes.”
“It’s about that state test.”
“Oh.”
“You did about as well on it as it’s possible to do. You scored in the 99th percentile.”
Hearing that, I felt nothing.
I looked past the guidance counselor at this little closet of an office. There was a bookcase with ancient books. They showed signs of water damage. It was like a mini-library that appeared as if it wanted to crawl off the shelves and slink away.
There was a computer, but it was turned off. Our school had a lot of computers, they were generally turned off. I think our teachers feared them. Many were kept under opaque dust covers. The district had spent who-knows-how-much money on those computers only for the teachers to set them up in a room and never use them or provide any instruction on them.
When we were very good, we got to play The Oregon Trail. That game taught us that pioneers died of dysentery.
Despite the books and the computer, the guidance counselor’s office felt like a cell. I got the impression that he was imprisoned there. He couldn’t escape, and so he’d dedicated himself to preventing anyone else from access to the kind of life he’d been denied.
The information about the test was starting to sink in. First, it had to get past all my defense mechanisms. I was still worked up and thinking that I’d have to deny some wrongdoing.
I’d already come to understand that tests didn’t mean much. You did the best you could because it drew too much attention to fail. This wasn’t the first time somebody had brought me into an office to discuss a test score. I was accused of cheating when I was younger. I hadn’t cheated and I stuck to my story. I offered to take the test right in front of them if they needed me to demonstrate anything.
When it came to making an effort to prove my innocence, the powers of authority lost interest.
The longer I sat with the knowledge of this test, the more I felt a sense of validation. I was mistrustful of my school. I was mistrustful of my whole community. I felt being there was a huge waste of time.
There were scraps of evidence that suggested they were feeding me a mountain of lies, but those scraps came floating by like motes of dust. Most of the time, you faced an unrelenting tidal wave of intolerable authoritarian self-righteousness.
“Keep doing what you’re doing and you’ll see!”
See what? They never said. They spoke in vague threats and innuendo.
“You’ll understand when you’re older.”
Understand what?
“Because I said so, that’s why.”
That’s not a reason.
These unquestionable figures of power claimed they would teach us how to achieve success, satisfaction, and riches. But they were all miserable people in unfashionable clothing, tucked away in a maximum security fortress in the heart of a frozen wasteland.
Was it so unreasonable to assume that the only thing they could teach me was how to end up just like them?
The guidance counselor’s admission that I’d scored in the 99th percentile on this test, no matter what the test was, felt like drinking a cup of hot chocolate on a cold winter’s day.
What he said to me was less important than the fact that he’d called me into his office to say it. I got my information from inference.
The message trickled down my throat and warmed my spirit. It made me feel a sense of validation for ideas I’d suspected but never truly dared to believe.
I couldn’t help myself, I smiled.
The guidance counselor noticed this and he sighed in disappointment.
“I’ve seen other kids do well on this test. Then they think they can go off to college. Almost every time, they fail out and their reckless choice ends up being a huge financial burden both on them and their families.”
“Didn’t you go to college?”
“Well, yes, but that was a long time ago. College is different now.”
The guidance counselor was very sincere when he talked. He had a voice like you’d find in a 1950s documentary about rodents. I could imagine him intoning, “Let’s stick our camera into their homes and observe these delightful little creatures! Oh, look, they’re all dead.”
“Did you hear me?” he asked.
I realized I’d slipped into a daydream. “Yes,” I replied quickly, “you said ‘almost.’ As in, almost all of them fail.”
He smiled warmly and shook his head. “Don’t get fixated on the wrong thing. Listen to what I’m saying. Everybody’s going to pressure you with this idea of college. But there are better opportunities for people like you.”
“People like me?”
“Let’s say people like us.”
“Uh…”
He lifted up the paper on his desk, then tossed it down with contempt. “This test score doesn’t really mean anything.”
Sometimes my mouth is faster than my brain. “If it doesn’t mean anything, then why did you make us take it?”
Some of the warmth left the guidance counselor’s face to be replaced with annoyance.
“The state requires it,” he said. “These out-of-touch people who live thousands of miles away think they can dictate how we should live our lives. But they don’t know what’s best for us.”
He pushed the paper aside, and now his face showed open contempt. He pretended it was for the paper, but I knew it was really pressure not to defy him. I’d seen that look before.
What he didn’t know, what nobody knew, is that I’d started to develop a hunger for that expression. It was the mask that indicated the heading that would lead to the truth. There was a vague threat of punishment, but I’d deduced that didn’t mean anything. All I had to do was feign compliance and then continue my journey when nobody was watching.
I was lying, yes, but they were asking me things they didn’t have any right to know.
The guidance counselor continued to talk. I sat there politely and listened. I agreed with him. I nodded my head. I took notes. I did everything my awful prison of a school that celebrated ignorance in the middle of nowhere had hammered into me.
When we were done, we both stood and the guidance counselor shook my hand as if to offer me respect. There, in his decrepit hole with the water damaged books slithering off the walls and the computer lurking beneath the plastic dust cover, he performed a ceremony of promise. If I did as I was told, perhaps one day I too could have an important and prestigious job like him.
I could be part of the club.
What joy.
“Remember,” he said, “kids from our town fail out of college. It’s a waste of money.”
“I understand.”
Then he showed me out the door by placing his hand on my shoulder in a way that felt creepy.
I left, feeling proud of myself for having done well on the test. It confirmed a few things for me. Years later, I graduated from that horrible community and escaped to a place I’d been told would “indoctrinate” me.
I graduated Summa Cum Laude.
