“You Want To Play It Hard…Let’s Play It Hard…”
Another learning experience by way of computers, authority figures, and intel
Again in High School C++
Shifty and Wilson are present, guys from the Graphics Mode Challenge, but the two students of importance this time are Erwin and Rude Boy. While Shifty and I were close (and still are), Wilson was a nice compatriot on the project team but not a friend. Erwin and Rude Boy definitely had an earned reputation of feeding off each other to be distracting chuckleheads. In the C++ class, Erwin was talented. Rude Boy was a moron with an attitude. Including me, that’s a total of five out of a full class of like 20.
While the Teacher stood giving his talks or helping hands-on with requests throughout the room — lots of other students mind you — me, Shifty, Erwin, Rude Boy, Wilson, and at least a couple others opened and used a built-in network utility: a primitive Chat Window. Pretty sure we were on Windows 98 then. Just a network ID and a terminal type text scroll. Basically there were no names, and once the Chat Window was closed, the session would end. No logs. More primitive than IRC or, ahem, Slack.
I screwed up and didn’t close out my Chat Window.
When the Teacher noticed the Chat Window wasn’t closed after class, he took his time to read through all the back and forth text. As you can imagine, he was especially focused on the ones by Rude Boy and Erwin making fun of him and swearing at him behind his back. He found this log on my terminal, so, what happened is I got called out of a class later that day, sat with the Vice Principal and the Teacher in a closed door session. I learned a lot about how power works.
Being Given an Ace Card
Months before the Chat Window Incident, I was the lucky recipient of a piece of very valuable intel. Shifty’s eyes were wide, coming up to me trying to whisper and tell the story without laughing so hard he’d fall over.
You’re not going to believe this — I just saw Mr. V looking at porn over at his desk. Seriously. First you see this lady run into frame, totally naked, jumps onto a bed, then a guy comes in and like jumps on her and they get going. He doesn’t know I saw him…
My relationship with Shifty was deep enough by then to know that he wouldn’t make up that kind of a story. We spent so much time in and out of the Computer Lab that it was entirely possible Mr. V blanked on recognizing Shifty could be in view of an otherwise private area.
Shifty didn’t want to bust him and I agreed. We had a pretty decent working relationship with the guy overall — as much as he was jealous we’d be leaving and he had to stay in that joint for the rest of his career and was kind of a dick about it. Still, the Lab Manager breaking Computer Lab Rule #1 was funny.
On TV Isn’t It Two Cops Vs. One Suspect?
It takes a moment before the Teacher and the Vice Principal make sense to me, but they do get to the point: The things said about the Teacher were unacceptable, and he’s rightly mad and offended. Because it was on my machine and I knew who those people were, I was to tell the Teacher and Vice Principal their names. They gave an ultimatum to tell the names or I would face the discipline actions for what was said about the Teacher.
Apparently everybody else had closed out their Chat Window, and the ID numbers on my readout didn’t do it for the Teacher, or if they did, they still wanted confirmation or something.
Basically they opened with the “We’ll call your parents and if we tell them we’re suspending you, it’s going to be even worse at home and we know it” tactic. I pushed back, saying that their move was pretty low, trying to squeeze me for the names because they could blame me for what they said. The Teacher threw up his hands. He laid it out:
I was going to help you and stand up for you, but if this is your attitude, no way! You can deal with the Vice Principal now.
Once he was finished, I distinctly remember catching my breath, taking in what he meant, then looking at the Teacher, seriously asking:
Really? Is this really the way you want to do this?
It was clear he was so mad about what those two idiots wrote that he would be willing to burn me just to make a point. I knew Rude Boy was destined to get expelled one day, and I had a sneaking feeling they wanted this as the spark to get that going. My gut also felt street wise word might get back to him I had something to do with it and he’d try to mess with me one way or another. The Teacher and Vice Principal didn’t give a shit about that.
You want to play it soft, I’ll play it soft.
You want to play it hard, let’s play it hard.
— Corben Dallas
Playing For Keeps — Education Edition
So if it’s not clear, I disliked Rude Boy back then, but also wouldn’t wet my pants at the first sign of getting called into chat with some authority figures. Let’s just call it a byproduct of practice. He was a dummy and they wanted the easy answer. My survival tactic was to make it a hard situation for them.
Note: The below quotes are recollections, easily over a dozen years old but held close so if they read a little over-the-top I apologize; it is probably recalling feeling sheer panic at trying to pull the biggest gamble of my life.
Okay, I know who those two names are, and let me be clear that I’m only telling you because of how you’re putting me in a bad position — it’s Erwin and Rude Boy. I also know Rude Boy has been suspended at least once this year and you’re probably trying to kick him out, and I don’t want this to be the thing that does it because I told you, and I think you’re going to understand why you’re not going to kick him out for this and not go too hard on Erwin either.
They did not take the tone well, because while they got their information, it was pretty clear I wasn’t finished talking and only paused to let it set in the payload would come next:
You see, Mr. V has been looking at pornography on his Lab Computer. I’m sure you’ll check into it and find out for yourselves after this. I know you’re not going to ruin Rude Boy and Erwin because there’s Housekeeping of your own that you should keep in mind.
Within seconds I knew they felt wasn’t a bluff. Maybe they already knew about Mr. V…I’m fuzzy on how the ending went other than a mutual silence of really not wanting to talk about the situation anymore. Once out of that room I got in touch with Shifty to level with him and clear the air.
As for Erwin and Rude Boy, they both got in trouble but pretty reasonable punishments in context for some made-up charges because they didn’t really have the transcripts to pin on them. Erwin got some Detention and Rude Boy got another couple days of Suspension. Rude Boy finally managed to get himself so unwelcome by the end of the year he was told not to come back.
The moral of the story? Everybody screws up. Getting really in a twist and taking things personally might not always end the way we want. Kind of like spending a bunch of time writing code, or a story, or a music piece, and then finally creating it only to see it flop. These days, Shifty and I like to have a laugh at recalling the Borland C++ Complier quitting when we screwed up:
Error 24: Too Many Errors.
