T. Johnson - Welcome to Braggsville

At end, it was Candice he wanted, and Charlie he missed, at least the Charlie he thought he knew, and Daron considered his education complete, for he had learned the most important lesson: Nothing was as it seemed.

With them he was the opposite of what he was with high school friends like Jo-Jo, with whom he watched Baywatch and, later, porn, beheaded mailboxes and knighted possums, skipped rocks and classes. Jo-Jo? Did he ever like BSG as much as he claimed? Probably not. He certainly never wore the BSG T-shirt Daron gave him for his sixteenth birthday.

No. Nothing was as it seemed.

Virtue, e.g., exempli gratia, for example, he always thought meant: a good thing, a positive quality or characteristic; he did not think it to mean simulated as opposed to actual. A few days after SF, he received from school a notice hand-addressed to Daron Davenport. His mother blew her whistle. Ignoring her complaint, brushing the spelling off as a typo, Daron ripped open the letter to discover that he was being summoned to a Faculty and Student Review Board for a disciplinary hearing regarding his role in recent unfortunate incidents. The letter quoted some code of conduct he allegedly endorsed by virtue of enrolling .

No, nothing was as it seemed. Words were different, definitions ramifying until a profusion of meanings rendered them meaningless. Review meant investigation, just as religious meant superstitious, life of the party meant insecure, and standing up for oneself, macho. Holding a door for a woman? Chauvinistic. Words he’d long thought he understood grew to unwieldy dimensions, taking on new connotations and denotations both, over the last couple of years. Currency, for example, also meant recency (which wasn’t in many dictionaries), as well as whether or not an object possessed value at certain times and in particular circumstances, like the day he tried to use Braggs-bills a few miles over in Vickstown. Of course there was also recent, of recent-unfortunate-incidents fame, recent meaning, in this case, that Louis’s death was three weeks past, but still felt to Daron like that morning, every morning. And the lesson to be learned from it escaped him.

He didn’t understand how different his education had been, how profound his deficit, until arriving at Berkeley, where he learned that being valedictorian in a small segregated high school was about as honored as Confederate dollars. Likewise, what he learned in Berkeley was a grossly inflated currency with zulu value at home, as his parents unintentionally demonstrated when they reviewed his transcripts during a brainstorming session, as his mother termed family meetings.

What! D’aron broke curfew? D’aron let Marci copy off his test? D’aron was caught shoplifting? We’ll have a little brainstorming session at home. It was a term borrowed from the younger teachers, the ones who also said that, Everyone is a winner, No one is a loser, and Every effort is worth an A. To storm the brain. Like a fort! Like a hurricane! The term had a cosmopolitan air that excited his mom, who read parenting magazines with a keen appreciation for her geographical isolation, but disgusted his father, who said, If a picture is worth a thousand words, I reckon a kick in the ass must be worth at least a million, and I’m one damned generous Christian dictionary.

But D’aron was too old for corporal punishment. Depositing him across the knees conjured new connotations, as his mother discovered the hard way when one of the young teachers walked in on her punishing D’aron for skipping a week of ninth grade math and spending the afternoons at Pickett Rock pokering with Jo-Jo. The next twelve weeks of mandated Wednesday counseling sessions ate up work hours and raised issues that Mrs. Davenport was well prepared to keep buried away her entire life as opposed to exhuming in a windowless office furnished like a regional airport hotel. As she explained during the last and final psychological suppository session, walking out instead of responding to yet another question conflating her father and sex, This is worse than coffin birth. I’m perfectly happy being unhappy if this is what it takes to be happy.

And when his father, mad as a wet cat, last raised the hickory switch to tan D’aron’s hide — in tenth grade — the boy run off and spent the night at Quint’s, avoiding his old man for a week.

Daron, for his part, thought talking was the worst possible thing to do with his parents. He had never gotten along better with them than during those months in Berkeley when they communicated primarily through texts and e-mails, when Reach Out and Touch Someone became Reach Down and Type Something, but if he texted his mom while she was in the same room, a common practice with his friends, she made a horse face that broke his heart.

Brainstorming, therefore, had at last taken root in popular opinion throughout the household. In this session, they were to come up with job possibilities. Daron wanted to take a one-year leave of absence from school. His father knew Daron didn’t want to enter the hotbox even as a visitor. The house rule, though, had always been, School or work! (Also often intoned in the manner of Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now and followed by a humming of Ride of the Valkyries .)

But after reviewing their son’s record of completed courses, and hearing a brief summary of each, they were flabbergasted. Math and science, yes, but [Novel, Nov-ooo, Nove-o, Noo-voo?] Russian Cinema, The People’s History, Introduction to Ethnic Studies: The Native Today? It was as if these classes existed only to prove that they could. His father rose from the kitchen table, bearing his weight with his knuckles, leaning over Daron. These are like gonzo porn.

At least they get paid for that, don’t they? asked his mom.

With a hairy, calloused hand, his father picked a syllabus out of the pile and read a course description: This class will prepare students to recognize and become knowledgeable of people’s biases based on race, ethnicity, culture, political ideology, sexual orientation, age, religion, social and economic status, and disability. Students will also learn to recognize how dominant culture influences marginalized groups. She-it. God-der-damn-it. What about hair and eye color? Or foot size? I could have saved you, no, me, a bunch of money. At least for what this class costs.

It’s not all critical theory. We learn about the world differently now. You didn’t… you know.

His father stood behind him and placed a hand on Daron’s shoulder. His mom following suit, Honey, please.

His father took several deep breaths, squeezing Daron’s shoulders tight enough to send a warning to his neck. Critical theory, you say? Named assly, all right.

Can you explain that better, dear?

School’s different now. (Daron stands at the free-throw line, gathering his energy. No bouncing, no lead-in, folks, he just shoots and…) I know it might seem strange, but I’m honored that you share your feelings with me. (… brick.)

Frowning, his mother blinked as though momentarily blinded.

Are you going to feel honored when I knock you into next week? I will. His father cracked his knuckles as he picked up another syllabus. Listen to this one. He snapped the paper in the air. Don’t believe everything you think. His father pondered that a moment. Ain’t that the truth. That professor’s a real genius. I don’t need to go to college for this stuff. I woulda told you this, son: People generally aren’t too fond of people who are different. No one can warm to everybody. That ain’t never gonna change. Only thing’ll change is what counts as different, from time to time. So, try to take ’em as individuals. Know you can’t fix the world. Get rid of niggers, you got coloreds. Get rid of coloreds, you got blacks. Get rid of blacks, you got African-Americans. It’s all the same if you don’t like ’em. See, ’cause if you don’t like ’em, you’ll make some new shit that’s too clever for them to know all fuck what’s happening. Like Ed down in purchasing, he calls ’em Mondays. You think that changes what’s in the man’s heart? You think a different word confuses his emotions? No. Why Mondays? Why? Why? Nobody likes Mondays. Do I agree with Ed? No. He’s funny, a real cut, but I don’t agree with him. I woulda guessed you didn’t either and that I didn’t have to pay for my son D’aron Little May Davenport to take a class to tell him to act right and treat people goddamned fairly. It’s a damned insult to your mother and me. It would be like if we went out and rented ourselves a kid to come live here on the holidays. Analyze stable and dynamic inequities? Analyze heterogeneous interactions? Analyze class markers in language? Professor, there is another word in analyze that oughta put you on the scent of how this smells to me. He turned away from Daron, skimming the rest of the list as he paced, Diversity and Social Justice, Urban Fieldwork, the New Democracy.