James Herndon - How to Survive in Your Native Land

Chapter I

AKite

I might as well begin with Piston. Piston was, as amatter of description, a red-headed medium-sized chubbyeighth grader; his definitive characteristic was, however,stubbornness. Without going into a lot of detail, it becameclear right away that what Piston didn't want to do, Pistondidn't do; what Piston did want to do, Piston did.

It really wasn't much of a problem. Piston wantedmainly to paint, draw monsters, scratch designs on mimeograph blanks and print them up, write an occasional horrorstorysome kids referred to him as The Ghoulandwhenhe didn't want to do any of those, he wanted to roam thehalls and on occasion (we heard) investigate the girls'bathrooms.

We had minor confrontations. Once I wanted everyoneto sit down and listen to what I had to saysomethingabout the way they had been acting in the halls. I was letting them come and go freely and it was up to them (Iplanned to point out) not to raise hell so that I had to hearabout it from other teachers. Sitting down was theissueIwas determined everyone was going to do it first, then I'dtalk. Piston remained standing. I re-ordered. He paid no attention. I pointed out that I was talking to him. He indicated he heard me. I inquired then why in hell didn't he sitdown. He said he didn't want to. I said I did want him to.He said that didn't matter to him. I said do it anyway. Hesaid why? I said because I said so. He said he wouldn't. Isaid Look I want you to sit down and listen to what I'mgoing to say. He said he was listening. I'll listen but Iwon'tsit down.

Well, that's the way it goes sometimes in schools. You asteacher become obsessed with an issueI was the injuredparty, conferring, as usual, unheard-of freedoms, and herethey were as usual taking advantage. It ain't pleasant coming in the teachers' room for coffee and having to hearsomebody say that so-and-so and so-and-so from yourclasswere out in the halls without a pass and making facesandgiving the finger to kids in my class during the mostimportant part of my lesson about Egyptand youought to beallowed your tendentious speech, and most everyone willallow it, sit down for it, but occasionally someone wises youup by refusing to submit where it isn't necessary. But anyway, it's not the present point, which is really onlyPiston's stubbornness. Another kid told me that whenPiston's father got mad at him and punished him, as Piston thought,unjustly (one cannot imagine Piston considering any punishment just), Piston got up in the middle of the night,went into the garage and revenged himself on his father'scar. Once he took out and threw away two spark plugs. Another time he managed to remove all the door handles. Youget a nice picture of Piston sitting quiet all evening longbrooding about not being allowed to watch some favoritescience-fiction program because he'd brought home a noteabout unsatisfactory this-or-that at school, sitting there unresponding and impassive, and then his father getting upin the morning to go to work, perhaps in a hurry or notfeeling well, trying to start the car or looking at the lockeddoors and rolled up windows and the places where the doorhandles had been pried off. How did any of us get into this?we ought to be asking ourselves.

It was probably Frank Ramirez who brought up the ideaof making kites. Frank was a teacher, not a kid; we wereworking together. All the kids were making them suddenly;they scrounged the schoolrooms and maddened the shopteachers looking for suitable lengths of wood. Frankbrought in fancy paper. The kites were wonderful. Naturally we plunged down to the lower field to fly them. Theyflew well, or badly, or not at all, crashed and were broken,sailed away, got caught in overhead wires, the kids ran andyelled and cried and accused one another. It went on for several days and of course we heard a lot about classes overlooking the lower field being interrupted in the most important parts of the lessons about Egypt, for after all those kidswanted to know why they couldn't be flying kites instead ofhaving Egypt, and Frank and I were cocky enough to statealoud that indeed we also wondered why they couldn't beflying kites too, after all who was stopping them? Piston,up in Room 45, was preparing our comeuppance.

Piston had been making a kite for several days. He continued making it while others were flying theirs. It had onlyone definitive characteristic too; it was huge. The crosspieces were 1x2 boards. The covering was heavy butcherpaper, made heavier by three coats of poster paint in monstrous designs. The cord was clothesline rope. It was twentyfeet long. Piston was finished with his kite about the timewhen everyone else had finished with the whole business ofmaking and flying kites and had settled down in the roomanticipating a couple of weeks of doing nothing, resting upfor some future adventure. Piston produced his finishedproduct, which was universally acclaimed a masterpiece.It was. Pictorially monstrous as usual, its size, itsheavyboards, its rope, aroused a certain amount of realawe.Piston was really something else, we could see that. Noneof us had had such a concept.

But when Piston announced he was prepared to fly it, weall hooted, relieved. It was easier to have Piston-the-nutback again than to put up with Piston-the-genius-artist. Noone had thought of it as something to flyonly as something to look at and admire. In any case, it clearly wouldnot fly. It was too big, too heavy, too awkward, unbalanced,there wasn't enough wind, you couldn't run with itwehad lots of reasons. Stubborn Piston hauled it down to thefield past amazed windows of classbound kids ignoringEgypt once again to goggle and exclaim. Down on the grasswe all gathered around the inert monster. If nothing else,Frank and I thought, Piston had prepared a real scene,something memorableDavid being drawn through thestreets of Florence.

The kite flew. Piston had prepared no great scene. Instead he had (I think) commanded the monster kite to fly.So it flew. Of course it flew. Two of the biggest and strongest boys were persuaded to run with the kite; Piston ranwith the rope. Everyone participated in what was believedto be a charade. We would act as if we thought the kitewould fly. It would be in itself a gas. They ran; he pulled.The kite lumbered into the air, where it stayed aloft menacingly for perhaps four or five minutes. Then it dove, orrather just fell like a stone (like an avalanche!), with acrash. When it crashed, everyone was seized with a madness and rushed to the kite, jumped on it, stomped it, toreit ... all except Frank and I, and we wanted to. (Greatdifficulties at that very moment were angrily reported to uslater by teachers of Egypt classes.)