The Terrorist of Orange, Texas

by The Abstruse One

Hello.  My name is Darryl, and I'm a terrorist.

At least that's what my high school thought.  I'm now 19-years-old and a college freshman living on campus a nice distance from home.

Now I will admit I have done some things in the past where I actually deserved the punishment I received.  I was caught with four copies of The Anarchist's Cookbook on school grounds.  I know I was wrong to do it but I just wanted to give the hacking information on the disks to some friends of mine.  It just so happened there was information on how to make a variety of bombs on the disks as well.  I learned my lesson and figured the school would forgive me.

About eight months later, I was about 1/3 finished with a novel I was writing and decided to give a copy to a friend of mine who asked about it.  I warned her several times before I gave it to her that it contained violent and sexual content, but she took it anyway.  Her parents found it and called the school board, who in turn called the principal.  I ended up being suspended for another week.  I personally didn't and still don't think I deserved the punishment they gave me, but I never protested at all.  I just took it and went on with my life, very careful never to bring anything at all to school again.  I just took to sleeping through my classes instead of writing.

However, I learned too late that if they want to get you, they can get you even if you do nothing.  The school attempted to get rid of me again my senior year.  I was called into the office after returning from a week in Tennessee because of the death of a relative.  I had no clue what the hell was going on.

Someone started spreading a rumor while I was gone that I was planning on either bringing a bomb to graduation and killing everyone or sniping off the top 10 percent of my class.  "What the f*ck?" I thought.  "I got called out of my computer class for this?"  I was interrogated (there was no other word for it) and tape recorded (I found this out much later and I was never informed of the fact by the police or the school personnel) and asked things like "Are you ever depressed?"  Of course you moron, everyone is at one time or another.  "Do you own a gun?"  I'm 18, I can't buy a gun yet.  "What are your religious beliefs?"  What the f*ck business is it of yours?  I got pissed off as all hell.

I was getting pulled out of my classes two and three times a week and getting spot interrogations, just in case my attitude changed.  Hell, my friends and even people that I barely knew were getting pulled out of class in case they were co-conspirators.  I felt like killing them all just to get them to leave me alone.  As if the frequent office visits weren't enough, I was semi-strip searched at our commencement ceremony, which, by the way, had three armed police officers with weapons drawn and pointed at me and two of my friends.  I dropped my program halfway through and decided it wasn't worth it to bend over to pick it up.  Finally, I got my high school diploma and got the hell out of there.

"Finally they're out of my life!" I thought.  A few days after the school shooting incident in Jonesboro, Arkansas, I was called by the school again at my parents' home (I happened to be home at the time for some odd reason).  I was asked things like if I planned to visit anyone from school, if I was going to come back on campus.  What the f*ck????  I saw red.

What the f*ck right do they have to bother me a year after I've graduated and moved away?  I told them so too.  I told them that if I even got the idea in my head that they were planning to violate my rights in any way I would retain an attorney and sue the school, the school district, the school board members, and the school administration staff themselves and then promptly hung up on them.  I have yet to receive another call but I have learned from a reliable source that they have a "list" of potential assassins and yours truly was on the top of said list.

I just hope that no one else has to go through anything similar to this.  It's stressful as all hell and there is no call for any of it.  I was pushed to the breaking point and I was able to avoid snapping, but who knows what would happen if someone else had to go through this ordeal?  What is going through the minds of these people?  "This student alienates him/herself from other students and expresses opinions different from the norm.  They must be plotting something so let's alienate them even more!"  And they're the ones teaching the children of this nation.  Scary, huh?