Pee In The Trash Can


 There was a rather rambunctious and precocious Hispanic kid in my drafting class who was not one to get too overly hung up on social niceties. He was only fifteen which was old for ninth-grade but still young for driving a truck to school which he would do on occasion. Once you can drive a truck on a whim taking no for an answer is simply not an option anymore. One day when he was being particularly disruptive and coincidentally, funny, he had already pushed the teacher to the limit when he discovered that he needed to pee and asked permission to do so. Based on his previous behavior his request was ceremoniously denied and he was told sit down and shut up. That is not what a underage truck driving kid was going to do and like a bizzaro world Rosa Parks he refused to sit where he was told. He complained loudly and then took matters into his own hands, literally. He walked over to a floor garbage can and he roughly kicked it into place to receive his golden stream of civil disobedience and commenced protesting. Even though he could see what was going on the same as all of us the teacher asked incredulously if the young rebel was, in actual fact, urinating in the garbage can. The boy flippantly claimed responsibility with a rather testy justification that placed the blame on the teacher's refusal of permission. That didn't go over too well with the teacher and he had the boy collared and quickly but had more trouble controlling and extricating him. Once they were out in the hall the boy broke out and ran for the outside doors and was gone. I only had one class with the boy so when he never came back I didn't know if he was kicked out of that class specifically or school entirely. I heard later that he had dropped out and was working in an auto shop. It is sad but sometime that is the price once courageous soul must pay to resist tyranny.