At my high school, we didn’t have detention, we had trash pick-up.
You walked around at lunch with a plastic bucket and a claw grabber. The goal was to have us sheepishly collect litter in the bushes, banished from our peers, but the custom was to go up to groups of kids and hold out the bucket for them to dump their leftovers in. Kids on frequent trash pick-up would also ask for change while they were at it, the bolder ones would even flirt, their confidence unshaken by their janitor garb.
Not such a punishment for the extroverted among us, but a big downer for shy kids like me.
Saturday School Was Where You Got to Meet the Real Baddies.
Three trash pick-ups meant Saturday school, which was the closest I got to a traditional detention experience.
Memories of Saturday school was the real reason I was on board with a detention-themed book club with my old college friends Dan and Ashar: because I would bring my most avant-garde books in the hopes of arousing the curiosity of the “bad” kids who went to Saturday School, the bored-looking kids in all black.
I was there for being late to class or absent without a note, they were there for… smoking in the bathroom?… cussing at a teacher? I don’t know, but they were definitely there for cooler reasons than I was, and then as now, I was hoping to connect by flashing them a book cover. They all slept through detention or drew on their arms. No one ever tapped my shoulder to ask what I was reading.
But in Detention Book Club, we do care what you’re reading!
And we don’t have to whisper, we’ll talk about everything. Or just drop by to listen: you can still put your head down and draw on your arms. You don’t have to have read the book, but you do have to show up to Detention.
(and we won’t even make you pick up trash!)
Detention Book Club runs in three Month Cycles.
Monday January 13th we will be meeting virtually to discuss Doppelganger by Naomi Klein. For those of you who like facebook invites here’s a link. For everyone else sign up here.
