Saving Porn Boy

An educator’s work is never done. If one allows, an administrator can easily work around the clock. There are always schedules to tweak, students to discuss, parents to call, teachers with whom to collaborate, narratives and evaluations to script, reports to write. One of the inevitable duties of the school administrator is to handle discipline issues that are beyond the realm of the normal student-teacher relationship. Translated, this means that principals must handle the discipline situations that teachers are either unable, or unwilling, to handle. Dealing with such issues can make or break your day, and sometimes your entire week.

It’s February in London, the most heinous, sloppiest, wettest, dreariest months in the whole of the UK calendar. It’s the time of year where the shit, irrespective of school type or locale, always hits the fan. Aside from my birthday, there is nothing wholesome about February. Today, I am in my office, staring out onto forested hills, dripping wet from a morning drizzle that has stalled over London since the New Year began. The phone rings. It’s the librarian. She has just found a young, male student surfing porn in her library. This problem is obviously above her pay grade, and she needs me to come down to her library to deal with the problem.

I put down the phone, thinking, “I hope it’s not gay porn.” Having the porn-surfing conversation with anxious parents of a 6th grader is bad enough, but gay porn surfing will put me over the edge. I do not want to deal with this. I do not want to view the evidence. I do not want to have a gay porn conversation with a 6th grader, and I most certainly do not want to have a similar conversation with his parents. “Um, Mr. and Mrs. Jones, about your son…”

Then the “creepy factor” hits me. What kind of kid surfs porn in a school library? It’s so incredibly dorky and “EEEEW!” that it’s almost cool, but in a gross, disgusting way. Like Pee-Wee Herman, or the fart scene in “Blazing Saddles,” or something from Monty Python. I mean, getting caught porn-surfing in the school library! There is a certain purity here that I grudgingly admire. I shake this thought off. Thank God he didn’t get undressed.

A little later, I pop my head into the library, and I see the kid, sitting forlornly in the chair adjacent to the librarian’s desk. The library is packed with this kid’s classmates, who obviously all know what is about to transpire. As I step into the library, everything goes all slow-motion. Step… step… silence. The kid’s eyes widen and bulge. Step… step… silence. All of the other kids stop what they are doing, just waiting, waiting. Step… step.

And then the kid explodes, “I’M SORRY, I’M SORRY, I’M SOOOO SORRY!” He has gone from nervous to wildly hysterical in just under one second; impressive by any standard. Now he is standing and pulling his own hair. I can literally see tears shaking free from his face. It’s bad enough that he has been caught surfing porn in front of his peers. Now this? I really do not want to deal with this.

The librarian and I rush to the kid as the classroom teacher in the library tries to get the rest of her class refocused. The kid is sobbing, and snorting. In between the sobs and the snorts, he is blubbering, “DO MY PARENTS HAVE TO KNOW?! I DON”T WANT THEM TO SEE WHAT I WAS LOOKING AT!” The rest of the kids in class have by now, written the period off, and so has their teacher. Pathos such as this is simply too irresistible, too good to pass up. I am now center ring with a hysterical, porn-surfer and a hapless librarian who clearly cannot wait to get the hell off of the stage.

After a huge production number, I am finally able to get the kid back to my office. I get him settled down to a certain point. I examine the evidence, relieved that the evidence does not, in fact, involve homosexual pornography. It’s not even all that graphic. This kid, even at age 11, is beginning to cultivate discerning pornographic tastes. Good for him. I call the parents and I deal with the situation. We all agree to keep him out of school for a couple of days, both as a punishment and a measure of humanity. I want to let his classmates have some time to forget the spectacle in the library. I am hopeful that after a couple of days and a weekend, things will die down.

Educators are sometimes wrong, and this time, I am sadly mistaken. The father calls me a week later, extremely concerned that other kids are teasing his son, calling him names like “pervert” and “porn boy”. Dad wants this to stop. I am quietly amused. “Porn-Boy,” I am thinking, “is a fantastic nickname. Maybe “top-ten.” Give this fucking kid a couple of more years and he will be proud to have a nickname like this; legendary stuff!” But not now. Now this kid is only eleven years old, and his parents want the teasing to stop. Porn-Boy will have to wait to grow into his nickname in a few years or so. I tell the Dad that I’ll look into the situation and put a stop to the teasing.

It is Tuesday afternoon and the sky is pissing rain, just like it has been for two solid months now. I hate London weather when it gets like this. I have discovered that Porn-Boy is being teased by a group of older boys as he is getting on the bus to return home from school. So I am in the parking lot on this bloody awful afternoon, soaking wet, patrolling the legion of waiting buses out by the front of the school. Much to my dismay, there is a hole in one of my shoes. I feel like I am walking through cold mud, my frozen toes squishing in muck. I really do not want to deal with this. As the kids scamper out of the school and onto the buses, I realize that I am having a moment. It is a moment of doubt intermingled with self-pity. What am I doing here? Is this worth it? Of all the things I could be doing with my life right now, why this? I worked hard to earn a degree, and this is what I get? Is this the sum of all of my experiences? God help me.

And then it comes; a smile, and a great self-fulfilling knowledge. A blinding flash of purpose and self actualization. “Dude,” I think to myself, “you are here, saving Porn-Boy.” It is all worth it! I am saving Porn-Boy! It is heroic, no, it is super-heroic. I have purpose, and I have meaning. And that’s it! At this moment, I am a super-hero, and I am saving Porn-Boy. I stride towards the group of boys that has gathered around Porn-Boy, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I am wondering what my cape would look like.