A Bone to Pick with You

On the long drive home from my Mother’s house, scenes from my hometown stirred old memories. A glance at the street leading to Anniston High School prompted me to review days spent there … and to recall a run-in with the worst educator I ever knew.

Through the lens of memory, I recall Mr. Bone as a skinny, lanky, hairy man with small, tight lips and a beak of a nose — the sort of person who always seems to be teetering on the edge of exasperation. As the kid who put the “goody” in “Goody Two-Shoes,’ I had little to do with him or any other of the assistant principals.

You can imagine my surprise, then, when Mr. Bone collared me and said, “In my office. Now.” I wasn’t spooked by this — and had no reason to be. My worst offense in high school would be sneaking off campus for lunch with an older friend (oh, how heady and wild I was in those days!) … and that blatant defiance of school policy wouldn’t take place until my 10th grade year.

So there I was in Mr. Bone’s lair, sitting in the low chair between his desk and the door. Mr. Bone furled his unibrow at me, made a face, and asked, “So why do you keep doing it?”

I frowned. “I don’t follow.”

“See?” Mr. Bone said. “That’s what I mean. Most kids would just say ‘Doing what?’ But you have to be fancy. You have to say–” He paused, adjusting his voice to mimic mine. “‘I don’t follow!'”

I waited.

“You know why other kids think you’re strange? It’s because you say things like ‘I don’t follow.'”

“That’s fallacious.”

“And then, there’s that,” Mr. Bone said. “Words like fallacious. Don’t say fallacious. Just say something’s not true. People don’t like people who use big words.”

Even at the tender young age of 13, I sensed some kind of psychodrama was playing out here: I understood, dimly, that Mr. Bone’s speech had more to do with him than with me. Being more than a little precocious, I replied, “Sorry, but I’ve got an affinity for sesquipedalian words.”

Mr. Bone turned beet red. “That’s it then,” he said. He stood, indicating the end of our session. “Can’t help some people. Be a nerd.”

What could possibly have been going through that man’s head? What possesses a school administrator to pull a kid into his office and try to intimidate him into restricting his vocabulary?