Tonight is my 30th High School Reunion. I thought about going. I'm not.

While I feel less animosity than I did for the 10th or the 20th, the invite—and the social media blitz from the class Instagram account—opened a trauma wound that hadn't fully healed.

It was a May weekend in 1994. The Rangers had just beaten the Devils in triple overtime to stay alive in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. There was a gathering at a popular guy's house because his parents were away. It was the recipe for the dark side of youthful hijinks.

I was sad. I was always a sad sack back then... crushing on some girl who "saw me as a friend." Everyone was getting drunk because that's what suburban white kids do to feel like they're alive, I suppose. They were making "tequila slammers"—this involved a ton of tequila, Sprite, and a Dunkin' Donuts mug with a top. You slammed it down and chugged before it bubbled over.

I was down before I knew what hit me.

I don't remember much. What I do remember is that at some point, I became a liability. My sloppy alcohol poisoning was harshing their good time, so they tossed me outside into some bushes where I was left for dead. At some point, I remember coming to because I felt something warm trickling against me. I looked up and saw the demonic laughing and grinning of some male classmates while one of them was literally urinating on me.

Next thing I know, I'm in my bathtub, my father on the throne. "Have a nice night, son?" "Where the hell am I? Why am I in the bathtub..." [Silence]

Enter my big sister. She spent the night making sure I didn't die. Turns out my "cousin"—the grandson of my father's foster family, a regular Dudley Do-Right—decided to be a hero and get me to safety because he saw I was left for dead. While we drifted apart, I will always appreciate that. He was the only one who didn't go completely Lord of The Flies on me.

One kid. One kid had the wherewithal and the integrity to pick me up and get me home.

Interestingly, this very same community would make the news years later when a similar party devolved into drunken mayhem and a freak fight led to a head injury. The kids, too interested in self-preservation, saw the injured kid as a liability and ended up killing him through selfish neglect and coverup. That could have been me. (Interesting aside... Trump sycophant Jeannine Pirro was the Westchester County DA at the time who swept the entire affair under the carpet to protect some wealthy neighbors/donors).

When we returned to school the following week, I was horrified. Mortified. I was a joke. Even teachers laughed at me. That was Harrison, NY. Still is in a lot of ways. I only return to visit my parents. The trauma remains.

So I vacillate between "should I let go of this bitterness?" and "this needs to see the daylight." I want the Class of '95 to know that when they toast the good times, many of the organizers were part of a power structure that actively traumatized many of us.

This leads me to today. Today, I am the teacher I wish I had. The caring mentor I wish was there for me. Even my favorite Chemistry teacher laughed at me back then. That's how thoroughly alone I was. I don't know how I survived.

As a teacher in the Bronx today, in a public school with a fraction of the privilege and status I grew up in, I endeavor to put dignity above ALL ELSE. The dignity of the student is paramount. Do I fail at times? Does my humanity leak out? Of course. As Leonard Cohen famously said, there is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.

I clash with colleagues who came up the "right way"... who followed the rules, went to the private schools, good colleges, straight to teaching, only to end up in the same place I'm in now. I have an insight that they lack. This doesn't mean I'm better, but I have a much different perspective.

You see, I know what it's like to fuck up. I know what it's like to feel completely and utterly outcast (through fate, fortune, and the fickle obstinance of the neurodivergent super-sensing the injustice of it all). I know the power of grace. Of multiple chances for humans whose executive function at times seems like an adversary. I know the value of people who are called flaky, lazy, flighty, weird, queer, different, off.... these are the latent superheroes being held back by the bewildered herd.

When I extend that grace to my students, when I eschew the dogmatic adherence to structures that maintain the status quo—conservative structures that all but ensure that there are the elect and the preterite—I am breaking a spell. That is my job. That is my superpower.

It has taken me 30 years... hell, it's taken me 48 years to reach this place.

THE LIGHTHOUSE PROTOCOL

I've developed what I'm calling the Lighthouse Protocol. I know it's not a terribly original idea, but it's basically this: When you tend your own light—when you fully and lovingly tend your own light—you create a beacon for others. Lighting the way for others becomes seemingly effortless. It is based on the premise that hurt people hurt people, and healthy people heal others simply by being. By shining brightly.

Lighthouses are a totem that shows up in my awareness. My late father-in-law loved them. I've written about it before... and when my wife and I see them, we know it's a sign.

I am the lighthouse. You are the lighthouse. Together: we are the lighthouse.
(Even the misguided young man who thought he could cement his social status by urinating downward onto an outcast....)

Shine