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.
