The school sat on a tree-lined block at the center of a bedroom community surrounded by split-levels inhabited by stay-at-home Moms who scheduled household chores around tennis lessons, mother’s-morning-out, and the carpool lane.
For as long as he could remember, Harold had lived across the street with his mother. Over thirty years ago, he had attended that school. That was before they knew.
He never made it through high school. His mother had finally weakened in front of a parade of teachers, and administrators, and psychologists who insisted there was something wrong. The doctors had suggested Harold be placed in an institution “where he could get the care he needed”. But Harold’s mother, who had never held doctors in very high esteem, smiled sweetly as she declined their offers of assistance while pocketing the prescriptions they were only too willing to write. Sometimes Harold actually took the pills.
One sunny spring morning, Harold picked up a hammer and left the house without a word to his mother. He walked fifty feet down the cement sidewalk to the yellow-lined crosswalk and looked both ways, before traversing the grid that led to the front doors of the school.
As he entered, the secretary raised her head just long enough to flash her perma-smile in his direction before reaching for the telephone. The hallway reminded him of a beehive he’d seen on “The Learning Channel”. He walked warily, among the students and teachers, to the end of the hall where Ms. Murphy’s class was just returning from recess. No one noticed the hammer he carried until had he imbedded it deep inside Lisa Gallagher’s head.
Today I entered the front door of the school, unimpeded, to a repeat performance of the smile that greeted Harold. I waited behind another mother as she gingerly applied the newly-required, generic, blue name badge to her tennis togs, and as I shifted a large, plastic tray of cupcakes from one hand to another I couldn’t help thinking, “Well, at least next time, we’ll know his name….”
Are We There Yet? 