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197 13 slam books and second chances It can be said I was a sensitive man, maybe too sensitive to adjust well to my environment. Undoubtedly there are many others like me in school today. I seemed to have had no one looking out for me and my vulnerabilities.Who is looking out for them? Maybe there are no answers. Maybe we cannot protect everyone. Or maybe we can come up with some strategies to offer the sensitive , vulnerable kids a safety net. Certainly we can refuse to tolerate verbal or physical abuse of any kind. — September 2, 1999, letter to the author from Phil Stegmaier, former student at Taft High School, Chicago, Class of 1968 There comes a moment in everyone’s life when we must let go of childhood. For much of my life, I have dwelled in old memories of childhood in a Swedish household in Norwood Park, questioning why certain things happened to me, attempting to reconcile the past, and harboring a desire to walk down an alternate path once forsaken. I have often dreamed of a second chance, desiring to go to back to boyhood and bind up the wounds, bring closure, and move into the light of today. I longed for an escape from my childhood, but for many years, I could not escape. Separated from my grammar school, William J. Onahan, by distance and time, the dark memories of eight years of ceaseless torment, abuse, and nervous anxiety that began with a first-grade teacher’s thoughtless joke to an entire class would not recede. Mrs. Margaret Deaton, in a moment of mirth that ushered in so much misery, connected my last name to the dirty-gym-socks-smelling Limburger cheese, making ridicule in front of thirty-five easily amused first graders. Thereafter in grammar school, I had no name to answer to other than Cheese, except among a handful of neighborhood friends who organized a small circle I embraced as my “Society of Outcasts.” I desperately tried to conceal the shame of my parents’ breakup in this stratified, rigidly conservative Catholic neighborhood at a time when divorce raised eyebrows and provoked gossip. I was stigmatized—utterly 198 slam books and second chances cast aside and tagged with an embarrassing schoolyard nickname that set me apart at a moment in childhood when social conformity, clothing style, good looks, and athletic ability counted for everything. The wretchedness at school matched my wretchedness at home and left me no place of refuge or encouragement. I came up short in all of the important measures of popularity and acceptance. My reputation as a nervous kid, easily frightened and inept at sports and just about everything else I ever attempted, spread across the public parks and baseball diamonds. I stumbled, fumbled, and dribbled basketballs off my foot while driving for a layup in gym class; I crashed into the hurdle barrier instead of leaping over it during track; I dropped easy passes from the quarterback and harmlessly tapped the ball back to the pitcher with the bags jammed during softball games. And of course I hid out in the shallow end of the pool during summer day camp swimming lessons. Inevitably, I was the last one picked for team play in gym class, forcing Mrs. Healy to assign me to a squad amid a chorus of jeers and groans as I took my place in the lineup of boys. That was me. I was a mess, a hypernervous , naive, and vulnerable mess, by the age of nine. I would return to my homeroom from lunch or recess and find personal items in my locker missing and my desk in disarray. Textbooks, papers , and pens were strewn across the floor, a large glob of Elmer’s glue was left dripping from the chair, or an obscene drawing or message of hate was pasted inside the locker or desk. “Hey, Cheesy Boy! How would you like your ass kicked after school?” As I glanced about the room, I observed my classmates suppressing laughter as they looked up at the ceiling or straight ahead, feigning innocence. The novelist William Golding might have found modern parallels for his novel Lord of the Flies if only by casual observation of the daily travail of a boy’s unhappy existence in what many Chicagoans living in other parts of the city perceived to be an oasis of quasi-suburban living. It is my nature to question and analyze the motivations of people...

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