Tommy was a sixth grader in 1991. The school district bused him from his neighborhood in Las Vegas several miles to a North Las Vegas sixth grade center as part of their effort to integrate the schools further. To Tommy it promised to be an adventure, but, as he learned, adventures are often adventures because the protagonists face danger, abuse, and hardship. This was exactly the sort of adventure Tommy would endure in the sixth grade.
He never had ridden a bus to school before and it was an experience. The driver was a twenty-something year old who played rap music over the bus speakers. It was the year Will Smith’s “You Saw my Blinker B!tch” came out and it was played over and over again.
It was the first time Tommy had ever heard music with foul language. He sat in the back of the bus where the bad kids sat. He was harassed daily by kids who liked to express themselves with spit, brag about having sex, and tell “your momma” jokes (In Living Color was a popular TV comedy show at the time).
Tommy had difficulty interacting with the kids at school. He did not enjoy playing sports with them because they always wanted to fight. Often they threatened to get their older gangbanging cousins to whoop him at the school bus stop if he said something wrong, or missed a toss into the basketball hoop. The threats were not idle. A couple of months into the school year, a gang-related shooting across from the school playground caused a school lockdown.
So, Tommy took to spending time alone at recess and at lunch. Amazed at the skill of a yo-yo artist he had seen in a fifth-grade school assembly, he decided to use his alone time to learn these skills. He stood out in the grass by himself and swung the toy around, doing stunts like Walk-the-Dog and Around-the-World. An adult recess monitor saw him, confiscated the yo-yo, and dragged him to the Principal’s office to explain why he brought a dangerous weapon onto school property. The principal called Tommy’s parents and threatened to expel him.
The next morning, Tommy’s parents went to the principal’s office. The Principal made them wait twenty minutes. When they went in, the wall-mounted TV blared with children’s cartoons, but he had been alone in there for the prior twenty minutes. Apparently, the principal did not want to miss his favorite cartoon for a silly parent conference. The principal returned the toy and told them, “Tommy best not bring weapons to school no more. After all, yo-yos were used for huntin’ small animals and someone could get serious hurt.”
The principal was temporarily distracted when an anvil flattened Wile E. Coyote.
“If he gots a toy might get him in trouble, he should come see me in the mornin’ and ask whether he can bring it to school.”
The principal showed them to the door, two minutes after they entered the office. Another cartoon was starting, and he did not want to miss a second. Tommy’s parents would be late to work this day.
Tommy’s dad later opined, “I think he just took the yo-yo because he wanted to play with himself.”
