It is the first Friday night football game of the season. We won and emotions are soaring with excitement. To follow up this victory, a dance is beginning in the high school cafeteria. It’s the first big social event of the new year and everyone is out on the dance floor. The music is loud and pulsating. My eardrums are humming in annoyance. Kids are reconnecting with each other. Even though the evening now has a slight chill, most people are still dressed in shorts and flip flops, refusing to surrender to the slight hint of fall.
There must be over 300 kids in the cafeteria. I think most of them are here now. Some have already made their obligatory entrance and are now coolly leaving. They have better things to do than to hang at their high school on a Friday night.
Bill comes in about a half hour after the doors open. Unlike the others, he is wearing heavy, ditty corduroy pants. He had on work boots. And his flannel shirt has a rip on the shoulder. His hair is greasy and unkempt.
“Sorry I’m late “ he offers, as if there is an expectation of punctuality. “I had to take care of a few things at home”. He is alone of course because Billy is just so strange that no one hangs with him. He is one of the invisibles. No one includes him in conversation. He sits alone at lunch and associating with him is cause for embarrassment.
“I’m glad you could make it Bill,” I tell him, “that will be five bucks to get in.”
“Okay.” He ruffles through his multiple pockets and drops items on the table: a comb, keys, rubber bands, matches, gum and then finally a wallet. He produces four dollars and then begins to search again through his pockets.
“I was just so busy getting ready to get here, I must have forgotten all of my money. I remember saying to myself, ‘don’t’ forget your keys, your comb and your gun’. I forget to remember to bring all my money”, he chuckles with this statement.
At first I thought he said gum but when he patted his right pocket, something hard hit his hand.
“Billy, did you say ‘gun or gum’?” I ask.
He looks directly at me. I must have flinched a little as I asked because the expression on his face changed to a little bit of worry.
“Gun, I said gun, why? Aren’t we allowed to bring our guns to the dance?” By the time he finished the question, my face gave him the answer and now he begins to panic. The music is loud and thumping in the background. Kids are coming and going and I have a kid with a gun. I am trying not to panic.
“It’s not a good idea”, I tell him with as much calmness as I can muster. “Lets go into the faculty room right now, just you and me and let’s leave it there for safe keeping so no one takes it from you at the dance.”
“Oh, ok, good idea”, he replies. He seems relieved that I am looking out for him. As we walk towards the room, I signal a security guard to join us. The three of us enter the room and I turn to the guard and calmly tell him that Billy is going to place a gun on the table. The guard looks at me in complete bewilderment. Billy puts the gun down and I ask him to step away from the table. The guard snatches the gun and checks to see if it is loaded.
“Will I be able to get my gun back at the end of the dance”, he asks in a meek, childlike trusting voice.
“No”, the guard answers loudly and definitely, “No, you can’t have your gun back, you can’t bring a gun to school.”
Billy now looks at me with an expression of hurt and betrayal, “Am I going to get in trouble for this?” he wants to know.
“Well, we are going to have to call your dad. Lets go over to my office” I tell him.
“Oh brother, I wish never came to this dance. He is going to be so mad at me. He is going to be so mad. He is going to be so mad. You don’t know how mad my dad gets”.
The three of us walk to my office. The security office calls his supervisor and asks for back up. I call the dad and he comes over immediately and somewhere in this short course of time, the township police now show up as well. There are now seven of us in my office.
Billy is seated when his dad arrives. The father charges in and doesn’t say hello to anyone. He makes his way right to Billy and pokes his finger on Billy’s forehead. “How many times do I have to tell you, ‘think, think, think.’ Is that too much to ask of you? Think before you act. What were thinking when you decided to bring that gun in here? Think,” he yells and then steps away and nods at all of us in the room.
Kids are staring in my windows so I draw the blinds. All of the sudden, Billy reaches in to a breast pocket and has hold of something hard.
“Billy, what do you have there?” I bark. I now panic because it didn’t occur to any of us to search him for any more weapons. Now this kid is curled up and trying to survive in all of this adult panic.
He leans in to something and announces, “CIA, CIA, come in. This is Billy. I have some bad vibes going on right now in here.” He is talking into a walkie-talkie. No one responses and one of the police officers grabs it from him. “It’s fake, it’s just a kid’s toy.”
“We are going to take him right now” a cop tells the dad.
“You hear that Billy, they are taking you to the jailhouse. Think. Think. You have to think before you act.”
Billy is handcuffed and he cries a little bit. He apologies to me and tells me that he understands why I had to call the police, “and there are no hard feelings”, he shouts as they put him in the police car. They take off and I never see Billy again.
I go back into my office and sit down. I pick up the fake walkie-talkie and think: right now I wish I had a walkie-talkie that linked me to the CIA because I felt some bad vibes too.
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Memoirs of an Ordinary Woman 