Word: boyness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...swain puts his arm around her. But time has been ticking down. Just as he does it, defensive back Carl Whittaker intercepts and runs from his own 10 all the way down the field and scores as the clock runs out. Beth leaps up and screams, and the boy's arm slides off--for now. Webster wins 61-14. The crowd whoops, the cheerleaders kick, parents, including Bobby's, run out onto the field to grab their smelly kids and hug them...
...Whateverrrr." Marty Walter, eyebrows arched, is imitating one of her biology students who had the nerve to yell it at her in class. Recounting this to her colleagues at lunch is her way of venting. It took strength, when the boy talked to her afterward, not to throw "whatever" back in his face. Her fellow teachers hoot at the mere thought: Oh, how good it would feel--just once--to tell off the little suckers...
What keeps the place from feeling like North Korea, though, is the genuinely benevolent interest the school's adults take in the lives of their students--on and off campus. Teachers at Webster know a remarkable amount about which girl's parents are breaking up and which boy chafes at his big sister's accomplishments. And they get involved. Last year teachers noticed that one girl was suddenly doing poorly in school: she was often tardy, slept through class, didn't do her homework and dyed her hair wild colors. Counselors made a visit to the address listed...
Nurse Buss slips down to the cafeteria to haul back a bucket of ice. "My major cure," she notes. "When in doubt, put ice on it." She flushes an amorous couple from the girls' room in the back. "We were just talking," the boy protests. The kids are already lining up outside her office: one girl is there for iron pills to treat her anemia--a poor substitute, notes Buss, for what she really needs, which is a decent diet. Another has a bruised hand from a fight over the weekend; a boy wants Tylenol for a stomachache; she gives...
Senior Sarah Bradberry sits on the floor, reading The Whipping Boy for her children's literature class. She scribbles answers to questions printed on purple paper, homework she should have done over the weekend. The class, she says, is easy. All the students do is interpret books written at third-grade levels. "I need the English credit to graduate," she says. Just down the hall, you see another kid, copying answers from one purple sheet to another...