Orphans

We only ever caught glimpses of him during those first few weeks of the school year, darting around the halls and holing up in the art room as he prepared it for the class. For Mitch and I, it was a horrendous torture to have to wait out the time it would take to ready the room. We were really only going to school to have access to that room in the first place, and waiting for a new teacher to get his stuff together was sending us over the line. Mitch started calling him, “The Mormon”, thanks to the teacher’s shined black dress shoes, slacks and a button-down shirt, with horn-rimmed and short slicked back hair. Most of us “Art Kids” from the previous year were apprehensive�"last year’s teacher had left the position due to a mental breakdown, and her psychosis had spilled over into the classroom to a degree. We were nervous about this Mormon. But after about two weeks, Art Workshop was opened to those who could get to the daily sign up sheet in time, and soon I was the first to encounter this new addition to the school.

            Skyline Alternative High School was set up as an unconventional alternative to the other high schools in town. They had just implemented a new kind of curriculum when I started going there at the end of my freshman year. They’d done away with periods and separate classes, opting instead for a more lax and cathartic environment for students who perhaps had learning problems, or simply didn’t take well to the authoritative model used in most schools. There was no homework, no due dates, and if you ever scored less than seventy percent on an assignment, you’d be allowed to do it again (sometimes in a different, fresher layout) until you scored higher. In effect, it was a place where you could excel at your own pace, even graduate early if you so pleased. But mostly, for people like us Art Kids, it was a place to relax and be creative.

            The room hadn’t changed too much since the previous year, before Ms. Dolph had lost it. He’d moved some tables around and reorganized a bit, but it was still the musty art room I remembered. I was the first one in the day Workshop opened again. Mr. Young, the new art teacher, was behind his desk invested in a stack of papers. He did indeed appear “mormonish”, and I immediately had the sensation of being a troublemaker in the sights of a policeman. There was an awkward silence that followed when I entered, and to fill it I went to the old mainstay of the art room�"the boombox in the corner where we’d previously been allowed to play our own music during class.

            “Ok if I put something in?” I asked him.

            “Sure,” he said.

            I popped out the tape that was already inside and read the label. It was Tool’s Aenima. I was instantly puzzled, and turned to see the juxtaposition of this dark, metal sounding band’s recording with the straight-laced man behind the desk. Not to mention they were one of my favorite bands at the time.

            “Is this yours?” I asked.

            “Yep,” he said, again nonchalant.

            This would be the first in an endless series of events that would reveal more about the man who became our art teacher, and created a haven for people like Mitch and I at Skyline. We all quickly discovered that Mr. Young was not what he appeared to be, and in the end, I think that’s something we were all thankful for.

 

            Growing up, I’d been placed in numerous kinds of advanced classes over the years. Most of them were focused on ways they could stimulate and challenge kids that were otherwise bored in day-to-day classes. First, there was Gifted Education in elementary school, where nerdy kids got together to do higher-level science projects and solve brainteasers. Our teacher was a Mrs. Hougan, and I can still remember her arrogance even to this day. The group was small, with perhaps just five or six students chosen from our grade level. This gave most of the kids in the group the feeling of being elite, and they expressed this quite outwardly. I quickly became disinterested.

In middle school, I was ushered along into another similar program, called the Young Readers. We were like a pre-teen book club, meeting a few times a month to read literature and give speeches. The prospect had at first seemed intriquing, but once I got there, it was more of the same�"smart kids being bullies. I withdrew from the program, probably becoming one of the only kids to drop out of such an opportunity. But I did gain exposure to a couple pieces of writing that still impress me now: Ray Bradbury’s The Veldt, and Graham Greene’s The Destructors. However, my feelings and boredom at school would soon be transformed when I would start an Art class with a notorious teacher.

Mr. Flood�"just “Flood” to his students�"was a revelation. He was a stout man, always in ragged jeans and a paint-splattered sweatshirt, with dark curly black hair and beard, and eyes that were drowning in mischief. He allowed us to be free in class, to explore our craziest ideas and learn how to form them into real, tangible things. He taught me how to express myself. I was always a terrible artist, but Flood and I got along great, and I started coming out of a long-sealed shell in his classroom, setting the stage for my attraction and comfort in art classes over the next few years.

 

It wasn’t long before we’d assembled ourselves into a kind of gang in Art Workshop, albeit a pretty mellow one. There were kids that would wander in and out of the art room sometimes, usually completing a project for a credit they needed, but those of us in this rag-tag “gang” were there for as long as we could get away with it. Skyline was the last stop for a lot of us, having gotten kicked out or dropped out of the other high schools in town. And since Workshop was the best place to be, none of us ever wanted to leave.

There were really only a handful of us. Jared, a new addition who’d recently moved from Pennsylvania, was the best artist in the room by miles, and we all felt like he had real potential. Emily, a girl we all liked that made colorful abstract paintings. Mitch was the resident hippie and proponent of all things marijuana. Others trickled in and out, sometimes joining out little group for a few weeks before moving on. Skyline was like that, you never really knew how long someone would be enrolled at any given time. Students there had jobs, bills, babies, drug habits, family problems… you name it. Real world responsibilities that often took precedent over going to school. So those of us that did stay formed a tight bond, and soon tried to bring Mr. Young himself into the fold.

It started small, with us just trying to get to know him better. We knew his name was David D. Young, and it became a sort of guessing game to try and discover what the middle D stood for. We pestered him endlessly about it, which I can imagine might have been a bit much, considering most of us were of the pushy, boisterous persuasion anyway. It’s part of what put us at Skyline in the first place, after all. He wouldn’t budge for the longest time, and my admiration goes out to him in his attempt to keep the teacher-student boundary firmly in place. This was after all his first year teaching, we discovered. But eventually, he broke, told us his middle name was Dean, and started inching towards a friendlier role with us kids.

He never really “joined” up with us; after all, he was still our teacher. But it was obvious that he had taken an interest in some of his students, perhaps realizing that being a teacher isn’t so much about standing behind glass to observe, but about reaching people’s trust to inspire. He entered some of our work to be displayed at the school district headquarters�"somewhere I’m sure was previously devoid of Skyline student work. He even came to a few of my first concerts with my fledgling band, which at the time meant the world to me. He did, however, refrain from accepting the invitations to our weekly parties, to our dismay.

“You comin’ by Friday, Mr. Young?” Mitch would always start with a smile.

“No, Mitch, I don’t think I will be.”

“Ah come on, we’ve got the three B’s! Beer, B*****s, and a Bong!”

“That all sounds wonderful and highly inappropriate, Mitch.”

Sometimes Mitch would press him for hours about this, partly as a joke to get a rise out of him, but also as a genuine invitation. None of us had ever uttered such an invitation to a previous teacher in earnest, but we all seemed to feel that Mr. Young was one us�"whether he liked it or not.

“Discovering Young’s own artwork; drawing us in closer”

One day, Mr. Young brought in slides and prints of some of his own artwork, preparing a portfolio while we worked on our own projects in Workshop. A few of us caught a glimpse of it, and were stunned by the kind of work that he had done. Sculptures of resin casted doll heads with a bundle of maggots where a brain would be. Installations of jars of old baby teeth and other macabre imagery. We were all a bit shocked, but also immensely impressed. This was the first time I’d had an art teacher that was actually a great artist as well, and one who’s style was right up the alley of us Art Kids. It was just another way that we all became closer.

 

By the time I reached seventh grade, I was no longer able to take Flood’s art class. He specifically taught the sixth graders, and once I’d moved up to the next grade level I was assigned a less enthusiastic teacher who simply couldn’t compare to Flood. I did discover, though, that I could skip my end of the day study hall period and instead help out as a Teacher’s Assistant. One of the spots available to be a TA for was Flood’s art room. Soon I was back in cahoots with my old mentor, but this time behind the desk with him, no longer so stringently subject to the divide we’d had a year prior.

I spent a few days a week doing this, and over the course of that year I was able to watch him lead a class of kids to care about what they were creating, and to show them the real power that art can have over a person. I also got to know Flood better as a person. He told me about the property he lived on a few miles out of town, where he’d built a large fire pit that could be covered and used as an earthen kiln for firing clay. He was also a big music buff, and we bonded over hard rock bands (though, admittedly, his taste was a bit harder than my own). One day he handed me an ancient looking cassette tape, something to educate myself with. It was Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and it was a life changing album that lived in my stereo for nearly a year.

It was through little moments like these, gestures that extended beyond the classroom that made me feel wholly welcome, a rarity when compared to my academic track record. I soon learned I was one of many to be indoctrinated into the ways of Flood, as former students from the high schools and beyond would regularly stop by the classroom to pay him a visit. He had made an impact on so many lives that they still trickled back to see him, if only to recapture the happy memories they’d made in that place.

Flood used to tell me stories of his life, how he grew up and the people he’d met along the way, including his sometime housemate named Dave. Flood had told me he was a wild man from out west, who still carried two pistols on his sides, and was often unpredictable. His voice always took on a more serious tone when he spoke about Dave, and even in telling me about him, I always felt as though he was just giving me snippets of a much more complex man than he let on.

Near the end of the school year, Flood and I had become good friends. We were even planning a trip with a few others over the summer to go to a music festival together, detailing out the great bands we’d see and the fun to be had on the road. But a few weeks later, Flood was absent from class, a rarity for him. He came back the next day with a bandage covering his arm. He said he’d burned himself using his kiln, but there was something in his eyes that told me that wasn’t true. He seemed shaken up, and more rattled than an eccentric art teacher should be. I would soon find out why.

Again, Flood was soon absent from school, this time for three days in a row. A lot of us who were frequent patrons of his room began to get worried, as a substitute had been found to take over the art class for a period longer than just a couple days. I asked our assistant principal on my way out of school on day if he knew anything, if Flood was okay. We had all started to believe that maybe some illness or tragic accident had befallen him, but it was much worse than that.

The look the assistant gave me when I asked, “Do you know what happened to Flood?” was one of pain and pity. He knew something, that was obvious, but he also couldn’t tell me. I pressed him, and he admitted that he knew Flood was alright, in a general health sort of way, but that that was all he could say at the moment. I went home frustrated and worried, as I’m sure a lot of kids did, until my parents called me into the living room that evening when a news report came on.

I don’t remember the specifics of what the newscaster was saying. I remember Flood’s photo was in the top left corner of screen. They were saying words like “meth lab” and “tri-state sting operation”. I felt my stomach implode.

The details came out later. Flood had had a man living with him who was involved in a methamphetamine cartel that reached from Montana to Nevada, and had produced such pure product on the premises that it was estimated to be worth 1.2 million dollars on the street. Flood himself had only been charged with possession of marijuana, something none of us were really surprised about, but nonetheless was tied to the bust because of his property. Instantly I knew he would never be able to return to teaching, and just like that, I lost the only confidant and mentor I’d had in that school.

I had to endure the last weeks of the year listening to terrible rumors being spread about Flood, and watching the happy smiles on the faculty members who had never liked him.

 

While Mr. Young had certainly become friendlier with us over the school year, he was careful to keep a disciplinary hand poised ready for when he needed it, and for this I actually respected him more. There was a day where Mitch and Carly (another one of us “Kids”) had ended up getting into a playful paint fight. They’d gotten back to class early during the lunch period, while Mr. Young was still out of the room. In the ensuing lull of supervision, they managed to douse each other and half the room in bright red acrylic paint. I walked in just as it was happening, and admittedly was laughing when Young made it back in. He was furious. The usually easy-going and mellow friend of ours turned back into the responsible teacher that he was, and marched both of them to the principal’s office (after a long period of scrubbing and washing, all the while with both of them still laughing). They were both banned from the art room for a period, but there weren’t really any hard feelings�"they’d earned their punishment.

The rest of the year, we knew not to test him by pushing things too far. Instead, we stuck to our work and only did what we knew we could get away with. In this sense, he’d created an environment where we were free to create and explore our own ideas about art and creation, while still maintaining the rocky balance of keeping us troublemakers under control.

To our dismay, however, we found out as the year wound down that Young’s teaching contract would not be renewed. He’d only been hired on as a one-year replacement, with hopes of becoming a full-time faculty member. I suppose it could be chalked up to his lack of previous teaching experience, or some other such technicality, but to me and many others it was the same kind of endings we had gotten used to over the years. With one exception.

After finding out that he wouldn’t be coming back the next year, all of us were adamant about taking souvenirs from the art room. Basically, stealing things. His response to us was along the lines of, “If I didn’t see it happen, it must not have happened”.

We raided the place.

Posters were pried off the wall, half-empty paint jugs were taken, engraving tools…you name it. There was a feeling of power in the destruction of the room, a sense that if we weren’t going to return to the homeostasis we’d finally found in this room, that we were going to take it with us in some small form. It was then that I finally understood the story of The Destructors, where a group of kids destroy an apartment and pile of money for the thrill of it. There was a method to our madness�"we wanted to take a piece of our best year with us�"but it was also an act of chaos. We were angry. Angry that our haven had been revoked. Angry that a man who had worked hard and initiated real breakthroughs was out of a job. Angry at the system that told us to sit still and be quiet all our lives, and was now taking away one more piece of expression.

In the end, I never went back to Skyline the following year, opting instead to just take the test for the GED and be done with school. I never forgot the sense of comfort I’d found in the safety of that classroom; one that even more richly fulfilled me than Flood’s, who I ran into again a few years later.

I was working at a video store, having a smoke break outside when I saw him. It was startling at first, and I nearly didn’t recognize him as my mind had somewhat wiped him from my memory. It was a surreal experience. We chit-chatted for a bit, and I was happy to see him, but all the while the thought kept tugging at me that this was the guy who…could have been. He could have been a life-long friend and mentor. He could have been someone who could have taught me about art and the world. But in taking the risk that he had, he had annexed himself from those future possibilities, and instead became someone I would have a short chat with before going back to a day job.

Mr. Young, on the other hand, I have stayed in contact with over the years. He became a real friend after Skyline, with both of us moving on after feeling like getting the shaft by that school. He came to more shows when the band was performing by where he moved to in southern Montana, and after our relocation to Portland he even got in touch to have a drink when he was in town. And for the fact that he never let things slip away from him in the way that Flood did, he has my eternal respect.

 

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[DavidRyanM]

Very rarely do you make those real connections with someone who you don't perceive to be in the same social standings as yourself, but those are often the people who surprise you most by being exactly like you and exactly opposite of everything you first believed.