Gasping for Air
Content Warning: Violence
In 1989, I participated in Future Problem Solving as part of my schools Gifted and Talented program. The problem we had to “solve” was acid rain (Wikipedia tells me that Problem I was Energy Sources, so that fits with the scenario we were given). There were two teams from my school participating and I was on the team of first-timers–the other team had competed the year before.
This was pre-world wide web and definitely pre-Wikipedia, so our research resources were confined to the school library and the small public library. I really don’t remember a whole lot about the research process, but it was probably after school or during the class period where we all had GATE. I don’t remember who was on my team apart from one person. But that person’s actions are why I’m writing this.
On the day of the competition, we were put in a spare room in the junior high–a small conference room, it was in the south-east corner of the school, near the guidance counselors. There were no adults present. I think we were supposed to combine the research we’d done into the larger issue and come up with a solution for our specific scenario. I can’t remember exactly.
But one of the things I read had said that carbon emissions were a contributing factor to acid rain in North America, so I came up with the idea of putting a giant charcoal filter on the smokestacks, to filter out the carbon. I later learned that’s essentially was scrubbers do, so I do feel pretty smug about my idea.
But the person I remember, his name wasn’t Mark Dullard but I’m calling him that here. It’s close enough to his real name that people who went to school with me can figure it out.
When I floated my solution, Mark completely flipped out because he’d been about to say the same thing. He accused me of stealing his idea (by telepathy? I don’t know!) and what happened next is burned in my memory forever.
On the center of the table was a corded telephone with a stretched out funky cord. He grabbed the headset, slammed me against the wall face first (I had been standing), and wrapped the telephone cord around my neck and started tightening it as quickly as he could.
I remember scrabbling with my hands against the cord, trying to get any sort of purchase, and when I did, I then had to fight him off of me. No one tried to help me. Once I fought Mark off and placated him by apologizing for “stealing” his idea, we continued to write up our answer like nothing had happened.
I never told anyone. Because why would I? It would be my word against his–even though there were witnesses. And Mark lived in my neighborhood and was part of the crowd of kids. I walked home from school with every day. And were were in several classes together, so I was going to have to deal with him anyways.
The best solution I came up with was to keep it to myself and never, ever tell anyone. No one at the school was going to give a shit about me and my mother would have told me either that he was picking on me because he liked me or, more likely in this case, that I was probably being too much and it was my fault. I have always been a lot and I don’t hide it, which has lead to a lot of people cutting me down to size over the years.
That’s the thing. In my generation, girls were told by their parents, by their teachers, by all the adults, the reason why the boys were doing mean things to you was because they liked you. Which is bullshit. It was a demonstration of the physical power they wielded over us and it was to keep us in our place.
By the time you were a teenager and going through puberty, it became natural to laugh off having your behind or breasts grabbed in the hallway between classes, being constantly belittled for how you spoke, and being adamant about one’s name (there is a reason I’m uptight about names).
The question had already been settled by your parents: physical violence and verbal abuse were how boys and men showed they liked you and it was on you to deal with it. And that isn’t just bad for girls, it’s bad for boys and everyone else across the gender spectrum. It normalized toxic masculinity and boxed people in to certain patterns of behavior.
And as for Future Problem Solving, we beat the other team from our school, but didn’t score wll enough to move on. Which was fine. The so-called captain of the other time had a huge meltdown over it because it wasn’t fair that my team won because his team was more experienced and, I guess, better. I don’t know.
So that’s the fucked up story about how Mike Dullard tried to strangle me with a phone cord.