Page 167 - WhyAsInY

sons (anD Mostly DauGHters) of tHe Blue anD WHite
future and learns that the world had been destroyed when Albert Shanker got hold of a nuclear warhead.) Some teachers at Midwood struck, among them Mr. Kostman, a social studies teacher whom I had come to admire. Mr. Sayer, the head of that department, and one of the oldest and most revered teachers on the faculty, did not strike but, almost more impressively to me, refused to cross the picket line. In my regular column in the Midwood Argus, “The Mayor Speaks,” I wrote a piece in support of the union and argued that New York’s Condon-Wadlin Act, which forbade strikes by public workers, was unjust. My parents’ friend Charlie Hirsch, who was, to me, a blustering bully of a lawyer, learned of my views and told me in front of my folks and in no uncertain terms how wrong, naive, and stupid I was. I believe that I gave as well as I took, but, unlike him, although I was seething, I refrained from making ad hominem arguments (a phrase that I didn’t know at the time). Whether or not I was right, it was sometime around then that I learned that it was possible to be smarter than some adults, even some adults who were lawyers.
• In another one of my columns in the Argus, I took the somewhat blasphemous position that, although many bemoaned the absence or insufficiency of school spirit, merely arguing for great school spirit was unavailing and wrong. Rather, I said, greater school spirit would come about when it was earned—for instance, when the foot- ball team would start winning—and not until then. To my surprise, an unsolicited letter from the editor-in-chief of the Polygon, Poly Prep’s school newspaper, which was written in support of the col- umn, was published in the next Argus. It was signed by Michael Rebell. (Remember him?) School spirit was very much in evidence when Midwood finally got its own football field and did have a win- ning team. The stands were packed when I had the honor of joining the cheerleaders in leading a rousing rendition of Midwood’s spir- ited (and no longer politically correct) fight song:
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