A Thorn in My Pocket: Temple Grandin's Mother Tells the Family Story by Cutler Eustacia

Author:Cutler, Eustacia [Cutler, Eustacia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781935274384
Publisher: Future Horizons
Published: 2011-12-01T07:00:00+00:00

Thus far I’ve only visited schools and institutions for children between eight and twelve. Because Massachusetts also sponsors educational programs to help delinquent teenagers, I’m scheduled today to visit a boys’ high school on Deer Island, an island sitting in the middle of Boston Harbor. Perhaps deer once roamed it, though from the mainland dock where I’m waiting to be picked up, it looks too small for deer. Alongside of me sits a pile of provisions, also waiting to be picked up. Pretty soon, the school motor boat appears, and I climb aboard. A man stows the provisions; we cross the harbor, tying up at the Deer Island dock. I hear a halloo and see the school headmaster coming down the hill to greet me. A burly, friendly Yankee, he gives me a hand up out of the boat and orders two of his boys to unload the provisions. The boys banter with him, and I get the message right away that they like him. Better yet, they respect him. I tell the headmaster so, and he grins.

“I wasn’t a top Sargent in the Marines for nothing.” The headmaster’s accent, with its strong, flat “r,” is unmistakably New England. As he walks me up to the school, I ask how he came to be doing this job.

“I was the principal of a high school in Marblehead.” Again the flat “r.” “I told the parents who were sending their kids off to fancy prep schools that, if they’d contribute half that prep school tuition to their local high school, I’d use that money to raise their high school to a level competing with the best prep school. They wouldn’t do it, so I figured Marblehead didn’t need me. I’d go where I was needed and make my contribution there.”

I ask if I can talk to the boys. He nods and introduces me to the gangly blond boy who opens the door for us.

“This is Buddy. Buddy, show her around. Hey, if she wants you to talk, you can tell her anything you feel like.”

As we tour the school, Buddy admits openly that he’s there because he stole a car. I think of the Fire Setter and the psychiatrist’s prediction that at sixteen he’d steal a car.

“My parole officer said he’d get me off if I’d agree to come to school out here,” Buddy tells me. “He said he stole a car once. It wasn’t the end of the world.” Buddy likes his parole officer, has a dim realization that he’s been rescued, and thinks he’d like to be a parole officer himself. He worships the headmaster.

“He gives us all a fair shake. He tells me I have to make good in a job this summer, and I don’t want to let him down.”

Buddy talks about his old man who beats him. “When he comes home, he says ‘I’m the breadwinner, I bring home the bread.’ Then he acts like he’s king or something, and he beats me. I don’t mind it when he beats me, but I hate it when he beats my mom.

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