Fast Times at Ridgemont High - A True Story

Charles Jefferson

Charles Jefferson’s car was in the shop for repairs, so he had taken the city bus to school that morning. Jefferson hated taking the city bus. The more the bus stopped, the more impatient he became. The more people who yanked on that little cord—ding—the angrier he got. All day long in classes Charles Jefferson was never far from the thought that he was going to have to take that lousy city bus back home again.

After school, Jefferson walked by football practice. He looked through the wire fence at the action on the field.

“I WANT YOUR BUTTS TO BOIL,” Coach Ramirez was yelling. He had split the varsity team into two squads, each practicing pass-and-receive patterns on the still-yellowed field. Ramirez bolted in and out of the plays with his megaphone, complete with its own portable amplification system that hung from a shoulder harness in one hand and a movie camera clutched in the other. Charles Jefferson did not care for the megaphone, the little amplifier, the movie camera, or for Coach Ramirez.

Ramirez had come to Jefferson during Running Techniques and laid a whole line on him—this was the twentieth anniversary of the school, you’re such a great player, bullshit bullshit bullshit. Jefferson knew Ramirez was just looking to save his own ass. Forget Ramirez, he thought, the man had been nice to him only after the first talent scout arrived last year. He stopped being nice when Jefferson stopped playing high school football. Now he was being nice again.

“GET IN FRONT OF HIM! WORK WITH ME WORK WITH ME WORK WITH ME! STICK TO HIM LIKE GLUE!!!”

Ramirez relished his job, anybody could see. When he spotted two small kids playing too close to the action on the sidelines, Ramirez simply stared at them with utter contempt and held the megaphone to his lips. He clicked it on to speak.

The kids scattered.

“NORTON! TAKE A LAP!”

Jefferson couldn’t take any more. Without anyone ever noticing him watching through the wire fence, he turned and went to wait for the L bus heading downtown. Once on board, Charles lasted seven stops. He pulled a jacket over his arm and got up to speak to the bus driver.

“Driver,” said Charles Jefferson, “take me home.”

“Where do you live?”

“Belmont.”

“We're getting closer. It’s another twelve stops or so, son.”

Charles Jefferson jabbed two jacket-draped fingers into the back of the bus driver’s neck. “I want to go home. Now. To my door.”

Charles Jefferson was driven to his door by the city bus, while a busload of amazed passengers looked on. As he was getting off the bus in front of his house, Jefferson turned to the driver.

“Now that wasn’t very far out of your way, was it?”

Charles had barely set his books down, of course, when he was visited by two members of the Ridgemont Police Department. Jefferson denied the entire incident, but charges were still filed by the city bus company. He was barred from every RTD service, but that was just fine with Jefferson anyway.

The next day an office worker appeared at the door of Jefferson’s English class with an office slip. When an office worker appeared at the door it could mean anything. It could mean a telephone call, it could mean an emergency, a referral, a rich uncle who died and left you a ton of money. It could mean anything, or it could mean you.

Of all office slips, the worst was a green slip. It meant that a student was headed directly to the front office, room 409, to see Vice-Principal Ray Connors. This was serious shit. A yellow slip meant Principal Gray wanted to see you—big deal, he was retiring at the end of year—and a blue slip was a phone message. It didn’t even get you out of class.

“Okay,” said Mrs. George, the English teacher. “Oh, my goodness, it’s a green slip. Charles Jefferson, you need to go to the front office to see Mr. Connors right now. Here, take this with you.”

Jefferson rose from his seat and calmly walked the quarter mile down the halls to room 409. The halls full of white kids definitely parted when they saw him coming. He liked that. Jefferson put his head down and studied the floor tiles along the way. Light green. Dark green. Light green. Dark green.

Charles was ushered into the office of Ray Connors.

“Charles,” Connors announced, “I give up on you. I know you too well. I throw my hands up. So what we’re going to do today is take you on a little walk to meet someone new. I believe you’ve heard we have a new dean of discipline . . .”

Jefferson nodded.

“I’d like to introduce you to him.”

He led Charles Jefferson down the halls to the office of Lt. Lawrence “Larry” Flowers.

“Lieutenant Flowers . . . this is Charles Jefferson.”

There were two posters on the office wall. One was of a waterfall, with white calligraphy: “You do your thing/And I do mine/And when we meet/it’s beautiful.” The other was of a cat hanging upside down from a steel baton. It said: “Hang in There, Baby.”

And in the middle was Flowers himself. He had mellowed a bit from his first days at the school. Flowers had at first ripped into Ridgemont like a hungry dog. He sealed up the hole in the fence behind the baseball field, even tried to seal off the Point. Kids had ripped the access hole right back open with wire cutters, but the fact still remained fresh in many minds—He tried to seal up the Point.

Worse yet, Flowers had reinstated a Ridgemont policy that had gone out of practice in the sixties, presumably when students still retaliated with Molotov cocktails. Flowers had brought back The Student Parking Ticket. Student parking tickets, while not a valid city ordinance, still cost a kid money.

If you came back to your secret parking spot and saw an S.P.T. flapping on your windshield, that was still two bucks you had to hand over to Ridgemont. Lieutenant Flowers gave out 75 parking tickets in his first month at the school.

Lieutenant Flowers sat there now in front of Charles Jefferson, wearing a brown paisley shirt, brown polyester pants, and a light yellow sweater. Pinned on the sweater was the everpresent gold badge.

“Hello, Charles,” said Lt. Flowers.

Charles Jefferson nodded.

“I want you to know, Charles that I am not a disciplinarian. I’m an independent man. I don’t call parents. I just like kids coming to me, opening up and sharing what’s going on. Letting me know how I can help them. I really don’t like being known as a disciplinarian.”

Flowers got up and closed his office door.

“I feel I can be open with you,” he said. “I know about drugs, Charles, and violence and the street. I know about being black. I worked at a junior high school in Chicago for seven years. I may look mean, but I am not a mean man.”

Charles Jefferson nodded.

“I feel the bottom line with any problem student—if I may be frank—is ‘I love you.’ We all want to feel love. Very few of us, Charles, are getting as much as we want. We’re all beggars, and our cups are empty, Charles. Maybe there’s only a few coins rattling around at the bottom . . . but that is it, baby”

Charles stared straight ahead.

“Baby, you are kissing that scholarship goodbye! And for what? To get a city bus to give you a ride home? Charles, we all have restrictions and taboos keeping us from getting what we want, and it’s the same thing. We’re all human beings, alive and magnificent . . . you are a magnificent student, and ball player . . . and baby, you’re about to kiss that scholarship goodbye! Now what do you have to say to that?”

“Fuck you,” said Charles Jefferson.