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The Great Bathroom Wars of 2000
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The Great Bathroom Wars of 2000 |
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LoveBug
Moderator
Member Elite
since 2000-01-08
Posts 4697
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***This is a little lengthy, so bear with me! This is a true story, all facts, but the language has been cleaned up and names changed to protect the guilty and the stupid!*** The rashness, the ignorance of youth. Was that why I did it? Is it that the “bad teenager” in me finally came out? I like to think that my ancestors had something to do with it. Fighting for freedom on the hills of Scotland and Ireland, and later, fighting for their freedom on the hills of Virginia. I know that my little escapade was nothing compared to those wars… but the same principal applies. Freedom. Either way, I became one of the key players of the Great Bathroom Wars of 2000. “Dang! How are they gonna lock the bathroom? I gotta pee!” Justin Hatfield, the great football hero, pounds on the locked door. The day before, some girls were caught smoking weed in the bathroom. Our inexperienced and child-like principal, Mr. Justice, got the bright idea to lock all of the bathrooms. A group was forming around Justin, his fellow athletes at the front. “If I can take Cameron’s 350 guard, I can take this freakin’ door!” Justin got in a football stance, reared back, and hit the bathroom door with all of his might. Everyone cheered when they heard a satisfying crack. My friends and I watched in amusement. “Justice is an idiot, but this is just funny!” said Kelly. “Ah, well they won’t keep this up for long. If an athlete is dissatisfied with anything at this school, there’s something terribly wrong!” I said. (Yes, my school is one of those ran by players and their coaches) “Uh oh, here comes the turtle now!” said Jamie. “The Turtle” was Mr. Justice, named for his shape. “WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?” he screamed. “You locked the dang door, and I gotta pee!” said Justin. “I don’t care what you have to do! You are paying for that door!” Justice grabbed Justin by the arm and led him away. “BACK TO CLASS, EVERYONE” Justice yelled behind him. “Heck, if I gotta pee, I’m gonna pee!” said another athlete, who then proceeded to urinate on the damaged bathroom door, to the amusement of the crowd. “God, it is freezing in this school!” said Andrea. “I know they haven’t fixed the heat yet, but we need to do the best we can,” said Mrs. Jones, our science teacher. “Heck, the air conditioning was broken last year, and the heat is broken now. They ain’t gonna fix anything here, especially with Justice in charge!” said Andy Williams. “No heat, locked doors, sucky food… we might as well be in prison!” I said with a laugh… but then I stopped laughing when I realized that I was right. “We are in a prison, by God!” said Steven Lytris. “They even give us numbers!” said another classmate. “I have an idea,” said Kelly. By the end of the period, everyone in that class had a sign that said “WHS penitentiary, prisoner # [student number]”. I made it a point to make mine especially big, so Justice could see it a mile away. During lunch, I have quiz bowl practice. We were in the middle of being quizzed on geography when we heard the roar of a crowd. One of the guys ran out, and ran back saying, “It’s a riot out there!” I jumped out of my seat and headed towards the noise. I couldn’t resist seeing a good riot (actually, my first riot). I found that my friend wasn’t exaggerating a bit. The entire school was out there… students on one side, Justice on the other. (The teachers, who never liked Justice, were watching from their rooms with amusement.) The bell that ended lunch rung, and the student started chanting “Heck no, we won’t go!” Andy Williams then proceeded to walk off campus to his car, screaming “I AIN’T TAKING THIS CRAP! WHO’S WITH ME??”. About 10 other guys followed his lead, getting into their cars and leaving to the cheers of the crowd. I found my friends and Kelly asked, “Do you want to leave?” I thought about it for a minute. My parents would kill me, that’s for sure. I also stood a chance of losing my scholarship, which I had worked so hard for. “Nah, we don’t have cars, it would look stupid for us to just walk away” I said. As we returned to class, we saw several athletes smoking in the hallway. “If we can’t smoke in the bathrooms, we’ll smoke right here, by God!” said Steven, who blew smoke into the camera. After school that day, I walked up to Mrs. Jones and asked, “Will I lose my scholarship if I get suspended?” “I guess you’re planning on doing something tomorrow. I guess I can’t blame you. Well, you might get put on disciplinary probation with the academy, but they can’t take away your scholarship. But we never had this conversation” she said with a wink. “Best of luck”. When I got home, I talked to my parents about what had happened at school. My sister and I told them everything, but they wouldn’t budge. “If you girls get suspended, you’d better be runnin’ scared if you see me!” said my dad. “There’s no reason for you to act stupid,” said my mom. “If you walk off or anything, you will get in BIG trouble, I promise!” “Well, if you don’t want me to walk off, don’t send me to school tomorrow!” I said. I didn’t plan on saying anything, but it just came out. I was a little shocked at first, but not nearly as shocked as my parents. The next day didn’t seem very special. I actually thought it was going to be anti-climatic… but I couldn’t have been more wrong. I have Home Ec first period, and Mrs. Maruthes’ gas stoves were the only things that kept us from becoming popsicles. Steven and I took our usual seats, in front of an open oven turned up as high as it could go. We were passing around a letter I had written to the daily news, along with several petitions against Mr. Justice. I was just starting to get warm when Kelly asked to go to the restroom. Our teachers were given keys to open the bathrooms when we needed it, but no self-respecting teacher would leave a classroom of 30 to take one to the bathroom, so Mrs. Maruthes refused. A little while later, she asked again. Again, Mrs. Maruthes refused. “I have an ovarian cyst, and it’s really bothering me. Please take me” pleaded Kelly. Mrs. Maruthes smiled… SMILED at my best friend in pain! I wasn’t going to take it anymore. I stood up, grabbed my books and Kelly’s hand, and started to walk out. “Where are you going?” asked Mrs. Maruthes. “We’re leaving!” I said. “Whoever doesn’t think that this crap is right can come with me!” Then I walked out of her class. I heard the people I left in class cheering, but only Jamie and Andrea came with us. Justice heard the noise and chased us down the hall. “Where do you girls think you are going??” he asked. “My friend has a medical condition, and YOUR teacher wouldn’t unlock the bathroom for her! We don’t think it’s right, so we’re leaving!” I screamed, never slowing my pace. People rushed to the doors when they heard goody-goody little me screaming at the principal. I heard Justin scream “Give ‘em heck, girl! We’ll be with you at lunch!” “You’re such a good student, why are you doing this?” asked Justice as I got halfway down the stairs. “You are too smart for this!” I turned around and said “Exactly! We are all too smart to sit here and take this crap, so that’s why we’re leaving!” Then I walked down the stairs and across the road. “Call your mom, Kelly. She won’t get mad.” We were at a local gas station. I didn’t really know what to do next. Kelly’s mother hated Mr. Justice, and since Kelly was the main “victim”, I thought that her mother would be the best person to help us. She called and told her everything, and she said she would be down there in a minute. It was about 20 degrees, and we were all freezing. It was then when I remembered what my parents had told me: “If you walk off or anything, you will get in BIG trouble”. I was thinking of what my parents had in store for me when Kelly’s mother pulled up. “We have to wait here until all of your parents get here,” she said. “Erica, your father will be here in a minute”. My heart started to pound when I remembered his words: “You’d better be runnin’ scared if you see me!” My friends knew how my dad could be, and they gave me sympathetic looks as we sat in Kelly’s car, waiting. Sure enough, my dad’s S10 pulled up before anything else. “Get in the car” he said through gritted teeth. My heart started pounding, and my blood pressure rose, making me dizzy. I stumbled into my dad’s truck, and he sped off towards the school. “WHAT DID I TELL YOU?” he screamed. I prayed for strength, and said, “What did I tell you? I told you that I would do what I thought was right, like you always tell me to do, and I did!” My dad sighed and said “I outta knock you out” as we pulled into the parking lot. We got out of the car and went up to the school. Justice met us there and took us into his office. As soon as we sat down, Justice started giving his side of the situation, which were mostly lies. He said that Kelly didn’t ask to leave the classroom until five minutes before the bell rang (because during the whole period, we were circulating a letter and a petition), that one set of bathrooms was always open, and that he was meeting with the student council to talk about solutions. The last two statements were true, but not until he found out that parents were coming to the building. My father believed everything he said, of course. When Justice was finished, I then proceeded to tell him exactly how I felt. I figured I might as well, seeing that these were probably going to be my last words. “Let’s start from the beginning, Justice” I said. “First of all, Kelly had been asking all period to leave the room, and you can ask anyone in there. And as for the letter and petition, you are mistaken. There was not one, there were several! The downstairs bathrooms weren’t open until my dad came here, and you forget that I am a member of the student council! No meeting was ever mentioned to me.” Justice ignored what I said, and turned to my father and said “We have had a problem with drug usage in the bathrooms. This policy was implemented to restore discipline and order,” he said. “If you ever looked at the cameras that my parents’ tax money put in, you would see that people are smoking in the halls now that the bathrooms are locked. I know that your precious athletes don’t have the same set of rules as the rest of us, but still!” I said. My adrenaline was really pumping now! Justice cleared this throat and said “I was not aware of that, but we will look into it”. “If you weren’t blind, you would see that your policy that was written to restore discipline and order isn’t working! If you thought it was working, or if you had any kind of response to me, you might actually talk to ME instead of my father!” I couldn’t believe I was saying any of this. I was the “goody-goody”, the honor roll student… but it also felt so good to finally say what I wanted today, not trying to please anyone but myself. I was shocked, but I was pleased with myself. Justice never really had a response for me during that meeting, but I clearly saw which side my father took, although he seemed to have a little more respect for me ever since that day. When I walked out of Justice’s office, it was lunchtime, and the students were on the breezeway again. My dad turned to me and said, “If everyone in this school walks off, you had better be in class” he said before he left. I walked out on the breezeway to talk to my friends. While I was walking, I got a lot of pats on the back. “That took guts, girl!” said Steven. “My mom called the news!” said Kelly. “They’re sending a reporter down here right now!” Must be a slow news day, I thought. Justin stood in front of everyone and said, “When that news reporter gets here, we are all going to walk off campus!” He walked over to me and asked “You’ll be with us, right?” Before I could answer him, we saw a white explorer with “NewsChannel 3” painted on it. The whole school roared as it parked in front of the building. “Let’s go!” said Justin. He walked across the street, stood on the other side, and flipped off a shocked Justice. The entire school followed his lead, while I stood frozen on the breezeway. The entire student population was on the other side of the street now, and beckoning me over. I remembered what my father said, and sat down on the breezeway to a chorus of “boos”. Then something hit me… it wasn’t the “boos”, because I couldn’t care less about what anyone thought at that moment. All I cared about was what I wanted, about my freedom. It was easy for my parents to sit and dictate my life, because they didn’t have to live it. It was easy for them to tell me to sit and take whatever Justice handed to me, because it wasn’t their freedom that was being taken away. This was my life, and my freedom… my choice. I got up and crossed the road. Justice wasn’t far behind. “We talked about this, young lady! What would your father think?” “I don’t care!” I wasn’t on the news, and my parents never found out that I walked out the second time. I’ll never know why Justice didn’t call him, but I really don’t care. I was punished with being grounded from the computer, and losing my parents trust. I don’t understand why they don’t trust me anymore. I never lied to them or anything, but parents are just like that, I guess. Justice wouldn’t allow the news team to interview any students, so it was a very one-sided story. It doesn’t really bother me, though, because everyone who was there those two days knew that what we did was right. The student council did meet, and our treaty ended the wars. There is a log in each classroom, and parent volunteers act as bathroom monitors. It’s not perfect, but both ends had to give up something, just like every great compromise. The descendant of the great Scottish and Irish warriors fought her own little war, and she learned a lot from it. She learned that she can stand up for what she thinks is right, and that her beliefs are more important than anything else. People will hear about this for a long time. They may agree with us, and they may not, but nothing can take away the lessons she learned and the independence she gained from the Great Bathroom Wars of 2000. < !signature--> "Where there is great love there are always miracles" -Cather "Love heals everything, and love is all there is"- Zukav [This message has been edited by LoveBug (edited 12-20-2000).] |
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| © Copyright 2000 Erica N. - All Rights Reserved | |||
Elizabeth
Moderator
Member Ascendant
since 1999-06-07
Posts 6871Minnesota |
This was awesome...it's always important to do what we think is right, not what everyone else tell us to think. I enjoyed the read! Thank you for sharing!  |
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raleighbttrfly Member
since 2000-11-21
Posts 160Raleigh NC |
This was grate! I remember when i was in school the bath room stales had no doors. We all complaned but nothing ever happend, I'm glade that even if you all had to compermise at leas something happend. It's so funny the school are so worried about kids smoking they don;t have the time to worry about the important issuse. Or maybe they use smoking as an excuse to look like they are doing something whene they are not. And beside all of us that smoked jest did it across the street anyway.LOL If tennagers want to do something like have a smoke they will and a truttle will not stop them. Not that I am defending underage smoking but i think the school system has bigger fish to fry. Glade you stood up for what u belived. And thanks for the post.  |
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Tamma
since 2000-01-17
Posts 794In His Arms, Harpers Ferry, WV |
I thought this was funny...kinda reminds me of the fox show...Boston Public www.angelfire.com/wv2/poetrycorner I'm just a girl looking at a guy asking him to love me |
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Christopher
Moderator
Member Rara Avis
since 1999-08-02
Posts 8296Purgatorial Incarceration |
You little rebel you!  Well written Juliet. C |
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Alwye
Moderator
Member Elite
since 1999-06-16
Posts 3850In the space between moments |
I finally got the time to read this, yay! You rock girl! *high five* It's great that you stood up for what you believe in. Some rules that are put upon us are just insane and must be protested. I'm glad you did so, my friend, I'm proud of you! *Krista Knutson* I'm a slow dying flower In a frost-killing hour The sweet turning sour and untouchable... -Natalie Merchant |
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Moon Dust
since 1999-06-11
Posts 2177Skelmersdale, UK |
Well done, guess I just recently learned the same lessons, but that's another story. And yours was very well written. When freedom wisphers your name, it's time to fight for it. |
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Romy Senior Member
since 2000-05-28
Posts 1170Plantation, Florida |
I remember taking part in a "sit in" on the school lawn one afternoon. We had gripes too, (bad food, unfair rules, etc.) I don't know now how true it was or if things were just being blown out of proportion. I do know that it felt good to "stand up" for my beliefs at the time! It was part of growing up for me, practice for later years. Thanks for bringing back those memories! |
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Dopey Dope
Moderator
Member Patricius
since 2000-08-30
Posts 11132San Juan, Puerto Rico |
This was a GREAT bathroom war.........oh gee......i don't think i'd ever do that. On the other hand.........i don't think i would ever need to do that......Oh well nice one here lovebug. I was born myself, raised myself, and will continue to be myself. The world will just have to adjust. I'm in love with my shadow I admire it daily |
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Larry C
since 2001-09-10
Posts 10286United States |
LoveBug, Epiphanies. Seldom are they free. But they are liberating! It isn't always easy to learn that the authorities make mistakes too. My dad always said if I got spanked at school I'd get it at home. It didn't help that my teacher was our neighbor. I think dad pretended not to know when I got my one and only spanking. Interesting how shools teach us more than they intended. And by the way, I like your style. And I like how you write too. If tears could build a stairway and memories a lane, I'd walk right up to heaven and bring you home again. |
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Marshalzu
since 2001-02-15
Posts 2681Lurking |
Very well written and incredibly enjoyable to read. |
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LoveBug
Moderator
Member Elite
since 2000-01-08
Posts 4697 |
Bah! Ancient history! Thanks for the nice comments though.. I've learned a lot more since then.. and soon I will be the authority in a classroom! AH! I will post something new before my rotation here is over, I promise. Oh, make me Thine forever |
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Jeffrey Carter
since 2000-04-08
Posts 2367State of constant confusion! |
I love this story LB, it reminds me of my own high school days or should that be DAZE? lol |
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