Not too many people know it, but when I was in junior high, I was a pretty tough kid and was the leader of a street gang. Well, OK, it was less a street gang than an Ecology Club. We were pretty intimidating, though, and had our own meeting room until we got run out of there by a bunch of thugs from the Poetry Society.
(We appealed to the principal, who agreed with us that it was wrong for the Poetry gangsters to take over our room and make us cry. So we got a different room and immediately made sure we’d never lose it by allying ourselves for protection with the Knitting Club.)
When I first took over the Ecology Club by winning a hard-fought election against strongman Dave “the Minnow” Minetti, I declared that our radical organization needed to get In the Face of The Man and Cause Revolution and Bring Down Society plus also Have a Bake Sale. The Minnow thought that the fact that we’d both gotten four votes in an election where “undecided” got five votes and the contest was then determined by coin toss somehow made him “co-president,” and he said that bake sales were bad for the environment, though he was OK with the rest of my suggestions.
I was disappointed because I knew that a couple of our members only joined the Ecology Club because the Baking Club had disbanded and that one of the dispossessed members cooked wonderful brownies. As the sole (not co-) president of the organization, I reasoned that some free brownies from the bake sale would be my due. But my ability to handle unforeseen setbacks was, I decided, why so many of the members of our organization thought that I would be almost as good a leader as undecided.
I called for suggestions on how we might bring about revolution and the end of society without a bake sale, letting the members see I was a fair-minded and democratic leader, completely unlike the Minnow, who was more like Joseph Stalin, albeit a Stalin who cried when he lost a coin toss.
The suggestions were:
1. Burn down a power plant.
This idea was pretty popular until someone pointed out that a fire would cause a lot of air pollution. Plus we were willing to do whatever was necessary to Bring Down Society, but not if it meant we’d get into trouble.
2. Have a sit-in, probably occupying the principal’s office or maybe the cafeteria.
We liked this idea, too, especially if we did the cafeteria on Pizza Day. But then the Minnow asked what would happen if the administration fought back by sending in the Poetry Society, which was a sobering idea. We were willing to completely Cause Revolution, but not if we were going to get yelled at in iambic pentameter. I said we could ask the Knitting Club to come and bring their needles, but the Minnow said they seemed less interested in bringing about world chaos and more in, well, knitting. Despite his name, the Minnow was obviously a coward who was afraid to go to battle behind a bunch of junior high girls.
3. Have our picture taken delivering our demands to the mayor.
This was a clear winner because it could make a huge difference to the planet plus we’d get our picture in the paper, which might make us popular. We drew up our list of demands, which included banning all polluting companies, banning trash and banning plaid shirts. (This last one was something the Minnow insisted on. I didn’t see what it had to do with ecology, but I needed his powerful voting block because otherwise the undecided vote would win and then our demands would wind up just being a list of things we couldn’t decide on.)
The mayor agreed to meet with us in his office, and we decided that when we had our photo taken we’d raise our fists in Defiance of The Man.
In the end, though, we chickened out, so we all just grinned at the camera. But at least we delivered some demands. I’d like to see the Poetry Society try that!
Contact W. Bruce Cameron at . For his previous columns visit .
