Basketball Diaries Part V- How I almost didn’t walk at high school graduation

(This is part of a long series that leads to the greatest story ever told. You can read the first few parts here.)

Spring came along with baseball season and we all forgot about the horrors of basketball season. As graduation approached we were all feeling good. Most of us got accepted to college and we all began to slack a little. One of the benefits of being a senior in my high school was that we were able to roam the halls and do whatever we pretty much wanted during our study halls. This freedom was cleverly titled, “Senior Study Hall.” (Most of the time we sat in one of the Math teacher’s rooms and fired pencils into the ceiling while sexually harassing our friend Jessica.)

The women’s basketball coach had an office off of a smaller gym in the high school; she gave us the ok to play basketball in the gym. For most of the spring semester we would go in there and hang out shooting the ball around and talking to whomever came by. In the last week of school my friend Marty dunked the ball and broke the rim, we all scattered and got out of that gym as fast as possible. (This is what their cheap asses get for not installing break away rims.)

With two days left in school, one by one we were called into the Vice Principal’s office and were asked about what happened in the gym. Marty came clean and said he would pay for it but it didn’t end there. The Athletic Director/Men’s Basketball Coach was pissed that we broke the rim and wanted us all to serve four hours of detention on our last day of school. He told the Vice Principal that we never had permission to be in the gym. We fired back saying that that Women’s Basketball Coach gave us permission and was in the gym over 90% of the time when we played. She was then promptly called into the meeting and denied ever giving us permission and said she had never seen us in there. That bitch was lying in order to appease her boss.

Then to pour salt in our wounds RJ, who was one of the star basketball players the coach liked, didn’t get detention even though he was in the gym at the time of the incident. The only people to get it were the guys that quit the team and the people that went to the game holding signs. An adult looking to get petty revenge was railroading us and we didn’t like the taste it was leaving in our mouths.

As a group we figured that we just wouldn’t go. What were they going to do we were graduating? Of course the administration thought of this and called all of our parents. They told them that if we didn’t serve detention we would not be able to walk across the stage at graduation. While some of us wanted to hold out on the principle of the whole thing, some our parents freaked and just told us to serve detention.

A day before we were to serve detention four of us went to the supermarket that we all worked at to grab our paychecks and something to drink. On the way out we saw the Athletic Director/Basketball Coach walking into the store. Marty quickly gave him the finger as we waved to us to a smarmy fashion. A look of shock came over his face and begin to bitch at us while stuttering (he was nicknamed “Stuttering Tom”) we kept walking. Marty’s parents got a call later saying that they were afraid there was going to be an incident at graduation and that the school felt he shouldn’t attend. His parents assured the school nothing was going to happen and he was allowed to go.

Sadly Bender wasn't in detention with us

In the end we learned a valuable lesson throughout the entire school year and this saga. Even if you were doing the right thing or if you played within the rules someone more powerful than you can pervert the rules and crush you.  We served the detention (and sadly we were not asked to write an essay telling them who we thought we were), we walked across the stage at graduation, but we would not let the events of our senior year go. We needed to enact revenge and revenge we would enact.

The basketball diaries now officially turn into crime and punishment.

Have you ever had someone abuse their power to spite you?

(Note: Bumper stickers will be shipped out either Saturday or Monday.)