Real
Talk
Tuesday, February 8, 2005
bnapoli.com Interact Article
Online Submission By: Joe Antonio
It all started April 29th, 2004. A day that I would see my entire
life get flipped upside down. Not only was it my father's birthday,
but it was the day I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life.
Details aren't really necessary, probably because Middlebury and Southbury
are small towns just like my hometown of Wolcott, which means people
talk. People spread rumors, and people will twist the truth around
even if they know the facts. In my week that I spent in a Waterbury
prison cell, waiting for my parents to finally forgive me and come
down with a bondsman to bail me out of a $10,000 jam I got myself
into, I had too much time on my hands to think about what I could
do to explain what had happened. Even I myself to this day do not
know what went through my mind that day. My mind state was not altered
by any drugs or alcohol, I wasn't even as angry as I should of been
the day this person walked onto my property looking for a fight. My
mind was running off pure adrenaline and a deep hate to what this
person had said about me, and my now ex-girlfriend. When court was
all said and done, I ended up getting 3 years of probation, with a
5 year suspended sentence, meaning that If I get arrested within the
next 3 years, I go to jail for 5 years. My life at this point belonged
to the system, that same system that had locked up 2 of my close friends
from Wolcott trying to make bloody money. In those 30 days after my
sentence was issued, I was on a home monitoring system, in other words,
I had a digital anklet attached to my leg at all times, while I showered,
at work, even while I slept. This system was attached to me for 2
months, and in that time, I had a court mandated 10:00 PM curfew that
had to be abided. I remember coming home one night at 10:05, with
my parents crying as they opened my front door with the sound of my
monitoring system blaring in the backround; the cops had called my
house 3 times within those 5 minutes that I wasn't in the door. After
60 days of having to be home early and knowing that the cops knew
where I was at all hours, I was free, and it never felt so good being
able to breathe again. As the fall drew near and my house in Middlebury
had finally been completed, I said my last goodbyes October 14th to
the friends I had known since I was in diapers, the people who knew
me for being a loyal person, a person who could make you laugh even
if you were having the worst day of your life, and a person who got
caught up in something that was out of my power to control, and anybody
who was anybody that attended Wolcott High School with me knew why
I was leaving. I had the pleasure of attending Pomperaug on a contract
abiding basis. This basically stated that if at any time I committed
a suspendable or expellable offense, I were to be removed from the
school without any questions asked. I agreed, and signed my name on
the bottom of a contract that seemed more like a liability. I moved
into my new house on October 15th, and don't let anybody fool you,
it's very difficult to move somewhere where you don't know anybody,
especially during my senior year, the time of my life where I am supposed
to have fun. My first week of school was better than I thought it
would have been. I had the opportunity of meeting alot of good kids
that first week; everybody welcomed me as if I had been there since
September. I didn't get any bad vibes from anybody, and it was pretty
astonishing coming from a town like Wolcott where people will actually
fight you for a reputation. As the holidays came around, I had finally
gotten myself situated in a place I thought was going to let me walk
across their stage and accept my diploma, unlike Wolcott High School,
who expelled me for something that happened off school grounds. You
might be saying to yourself, well if this happened at your house then
how did I get expelled from school? The week after my incident had
happened and I finally was bailed out of prison, I entered Wolcott
High School with mixed reactions. The seniors and my junior class
were proud of what I had done, nagging me for details and asking me
what jail was like. The rest of the school was dead silent as I walked
by, almost as if I was still carrying a weapon as I walked through
the underclassmen's hallway. That same day I got back into school,
I was called down to the office, only to open the door to a room filled
with over 20 administrators, and two Wolcott police officers, once
of them being the school's resource officer. As the resource officer
read the article in the Republican-American out loud, I continued
to notice all of the misguiding and untruthful information that they
had printed up about me, even mentioning that the weapon I used was
sought by the police, when in fact, the weapon was tied to a piece
of cement and thrown into a lake in Waterbury by my best friend almost
an hour after the incident occurred. As I faced my old teachers, principals,
and a corrupt police squad, the resource officer finished reading
the article out loud, called me a "threat to the school and the faculty,"
and made me empty my locker out that same day.
What really burned me up inside was that Wolcott has a notorious drug
problem, and kids were getting caught with drugs in school on a daily
basis. Walking into a bathroom at lunch time in Wolcott High School
was like walking into a scene from Scarface, noses sniffled and people
sometimes would walk out of the bathroom as pail as a ghost with powder
still on the tips of their nostrils. The school had become a haven
for drug addicts alike, with cocaine, morphine, xanax, and even heroin
making its way into our school. One person dehydrated in the middle
of class while on ecstasy, while others preferred coming into school
tripping on over the counter Coricidin, taking oxy-cotton, and tainting
themselves up with prescription medications, including Adderal, Hydrocodones
and Oxycodines, all lethal if taken in high dosages. People were also
making their own form of powdered DXM, or powdered dextromethorphan,
which is a more lethal alternative than swallowing a bottle of Robotussin,
this was pure dextromethorphan, no additives, and people were selling
it in school as if it was candy, with drug transactions even being
made through our own student-run convenience store.
But the question isn't how the drugs got into my old high school,
the question most students and parents were asking school officials
was, "where is the resource officer that we are paying
taxes to have in our school while all this drug activity is going
on?" The same resource officer that had kicked me
out of school on a charge that wasn't even filed on school property.
The same resource officer that claimed the school
didn't have a drug problem at an assembly my junior year, only to
see one of my close friends that same day overdose and puke on his
desk from powered DXM. To make things more blatant, Pomperaug to me
is considered harmless, every school has their share of junkies and
stoners, and I'm not going to sit here and say that Pomperaug is a
drug free school, because now even middle school kids are bringing
drugs into school and drinking before classes. The point that I am
trying to get across is that even though the Republican-American and
the faculty at Region 15 are claiming the kids are getting into drugs
and fighting for reputation, this is normal behavior from any high
school, drugs are more accessible now than they were back when our
parents attended school, and fighting is a common everyday solution
that teenagers make amongst themselves. Nobody is trying to have a
reputation for being the biggest drug dealer, or the kid who punched
somebody he didn't like for eyeballing his girlfriend; these are everyday
problems that a society should be used to. Go ahead and put your resource
officer in Pomperaug, because when all the smoke clears, kids are
still going to bring drugs to school, and kids are still going to
fight. We are teenagers, we learn by living off experience and by
our morals. A resource officer at Pomperaug seems like the best decision
now, but when all of these so-called problems continue to occur regardless
of the presence of an officer, I hope everyone reads my essay and
smiles while the board of education continues to kick themselves trying
to find a solution to a problem that will keep on happening as long
as we are alive, and our children are alive for that matter. Why?
Because we are teenagers, and regardless of the intimidation a school
resource officer will bring, kids will still be kids, and one person
won't be able to stop a problem that has spread from the cities into
the suburbs. Nobody can stop this but us, and as long as my feet are
planted on this earth, I don't think we'll ever see a solution to
this problem. And that's real talk coming from someone who's seen
it all, and been through it all. |
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