There are a number of events which stick out in my mind from my High School days. I remember leaving Karen Sutton an “anonymous” valentine’s card in Year 8 that she very quickly figured it was from me (probably because I, y’know, gave it to her myself). I remember my friend Jason tackling me against a fence because I’d moved his bag from somewhere it could’ve been kicked during a lunchtime game of soccer to somewhere it wouldn’t get kicked… by kicking it against a fence. I vaguely recall someone hitting me over the head with a chair, and I vividly recall hitting someone else over the head with a science lab stool.
Don’t worry, I’m not a violent person anymore. My Parole Officer said so.
One thing from my High School days that has been fluttering back to the surface area of my brain, besides the fact that I still have a crush on Karen Sutton, is a debate exercise from my GCSE English class. Our class was divided into groups of between six and eight students, and we were given a hypothetical question – a ship is sinking. There’s one lifeboat left with a finite capacity, and too many people to fit on the boat. I forget the exact figures here, so for the sake of discussion we’ll say that there are eight survivors but only room for four on the boat.
We were given rough backgrounds for each of the characters. There were a smattering of pretty generic characters all with their own strengths and weaknesses but the one character I latched onto, the one character I was adamant had to be saved, was a former criminal. He was involved with organised crime up until he was arrested, tried and sentenced. He served his time and was released from prison where he went straight and tried to forge a new life for himself. Now circumstances had led this fictional character to this fictional situation where he may wind up dying. Well, I wasn’t going to have that.
I argued this man’s case for the entirety of our alloted time. Yes, he had a criminal past. But he’d served his time and he’d gone straight – surely he deserved a second chance?
Nobody else agreed with me. In fact one girl in our group tried to argue that “going straight” didn’t mean he’d given up a life of crime but that instead he’d turned to drugs. This was a Bad Man, everybody else agreed, and he deserved to die.
Once the time was over our group was supposed to present our final decision to the teacher, the Mr Duffy – a brilliant man with a very wry sense of humour and deadpan delivery, like if Jack Dee were a Vulcan. Only we didn’t actually get to give him our final responses – we sat down in the library, which is where he was seeing each of the groups away from the classroom, and proceeded to continue our debate about whether or not My Friend The Convict deserved to sail off into the imaginary sunset.
I believe that we collectively failed that particular exercise (I received an overall C grade for GCSE English, with a B for “English Speaking & Listening”), but the discussion continues to rattle on in my head. I was contemplating the scenario only earlier today, deciding briefly that the ex-con should have to decide for himself and then remembering that, in this hypothetical scenario, it probably wouldn’t be some vague, overseeing third-party but instead it would be the group of eight deciding amongst themselves. It’d be tough as Hell for them to be even remotely rational about the entire thing, depending on their own character and ability to cope in stressful circumstances. Most likely most or all of them would have their decision process tarred by fear, or anger, or anxiety. They could try to decide who among them deserves to live under these circumstances and, if my experience with my former classmates has taught me anything, it’s that people do not think a former conman deserves a second chance. He’d likely die.
Still, in reality I imagine they’d all drown trying to rush the lifeboat so it balances out, really.