Wayward Youth

In eleventh grade, I experienced at first hand my first adult incidence of undeserved compassion and it changed my life. My parents perceived me as hanging with the wrong (long-haired, drug-taking) crowd, which mainly consisted of engaged members of the Student Council. We were a solidly middle class group—few of our mothers worked and our fathers were bankers, doctors, lawyers, college professors, business owners, and local bureaucrats. We attended pro-Black Panther and anti-Vietnam War protests, raised money for the less fortunate by walking twenty miles for the Marches on Hunger, and wore black armbands daily to broadcast our opposition to the War. My parents overlooked the fact that my friends were also among the most creative and intelligent (cohort members were SAT high scorers, National Merit Finalists, and many attended Ivy League colleges, or elite liberal arts colleges elsewhere). Nonetheless, Mother and Daddy were understandably deeply concerned about my future and unsure what to do about it. Parent-child conflict made our lives stressful and miserable. It didn’t help when I announced after Thanksgiving of my junior year that I planned to go to college the following fall.

Just what respectable college, you may wonder, had a post-Thanksgiving deadline and accepted students without high school diplomas? Not so many, as it turned out. Antioch, Hampshire, and Kirkland, a recently established women’s college that enjoyed a collaborative relationship with Hamilton College, numbered among the very few. I narrowed it down to one, Kirkland, a three-hour drive from home. Alternatively, I considered opening either a restaurant somewhere or a bed and breakfast in a rural village nestled in beautiful nature, and my grandmother, who paid for the college educations of three of her granddaughters (the fourth enrolled at Michigan State, took the money, and then dropped out to work in the family business, which she now owns. Grandmother never forgave her for not offering to return the money), offered to give me the same generous sum to start a business, if that was what I really wanted. I loved that she trusted me in a way my parents at that point did not, but never a big risk taker, I opted for an education.

So, I applied to Kirkland. The only obstacle was the requirement for a minimum grade of C for all courses on one’s high school transcript, and my math teacher, Mr. Klein, had given me a well-deserved D in my second quarter geometry class. Mr. Klein knew and liked my father since the time—more than a decade earlier—they taught together during my father’s brief stint as an English teacher. In my junior year, geometry class met directly after lunch, and I was often almost late. That year was the first that administrators, recognizing that fresh air and exercise at lunchtime was beneficial, permitted students to exit the school at lunchtime as long as they remained on school grounds; I don’t think they envisioned a majority of the Student Council smoking dope under a maple tree on the side lawn following an expeditiously devoured bag lunch.

By the time I got to geometry class, Mr. Klein stood within the door jamb, making it a challenge to squeeze past. He made audible sniffing sounds as I passed and sometimes growled and chuffed like a suspicious dog. He knew what I was up to. Although I’m not sure it adversely affected my math capabilities—it had always been the only subject in which I was not in the ‘honors’ class—my behavior was disrespectful. But I was sixteen, pleasure-driven, and rebellious, and that thought hadn’t crossed my mind. And now, I had to make a choice between waiting a year to escape the confines of my parental home and asking Mr. Klein to change my grade. I wasn’t sure if that were even possible.

But it was and he did. I will never forget that day. I didn’t smoke before class and lingered afterwards, mindful of the ten minutes I had until my next class. Mr. Klein was always nattily dressed in a sport jacket, button-down shirt, and a bow tie. He was a short, roundish, balding man with glasses, someone you can imagine as having a witty and acerbic sense of humor. I approached his desk and he looked up.

“Mr. Klein, I’d like to apply to college for fall admission but, while I don’t need to have graduated, I can’t have anything lower than a C- on my transcript. Is there any way you could change my grade?” While requesting undeserved grade changes, at least in college, seems to be a common occurrence, I imagine it an extraordinarily rare event in the early 1970s.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he replied dryly, returning his gaze to the papers on his desk.

Two days later, Mr. Klein took me aside after class and told me he was able to grant my request. He didn’t look happy about it. I’m not sure if friendship with my father was his motivation, or doing a mitzvah for a promising, if wayward student was. He had access to my I.Q. and S.A.T. scores and knew I was a National Merit Semi-Finalist, which likely provided some assurances regarding my potential, anyway, for future success.

I can’t imagine what path my life would have taken had Mr. Klein been unwilling or unable to grant my undeserving request, but it would certainly have been extremely different. I would  have chosen a different, more selective, college, although I was forbidden from applying to Yale, my father’s alma mater, which had only recently begun accepting women. Decrepit and dangerous New Haven was no place for his daughter! How might my life have taken shape had I not been such a determined and impulsive teenager?

Although I do wonder what life I may have led, what has stuck with me is Mr. Klein’s Great Decision. He must have gone so far as to admit a mistake he hadn’t made and convince school administrators to right my record. He lied to help me, and I didn’t deserve it. And I never thanked him later. I should have sent him a college progress report, visited at Christmastime, kept in sporadic touch, so he could see how that questionable decision made long ago was the right one. That his compassion was justified. But I didn’t. Or, maybe I did. His name might translate into English as ‘Mr. Small’, but in my life, he was unquestionably ‘Mr. Big’.