Sometimes I stood guard at the toilets. Older boys smoked cigarettes there and I had to sign when a priest or teacher arrived. Here too there were those dirty books, full of naked women.
During playtime, one of the older boys came up to me.
“Would you like to take a puff too?” he asked.
“I don't smoke,” I said. “I think that's gross.”
“Not those puffs,” he whispered softly.
“W-,” before I could even open my mouth properly to answer, he pushed me in one toilet stall.
“What do -”,
I started, but the boy blocked me against the wall and started undoing my belt. I didn't know what happened - I fought my way free and stormed out of the bathroom.
“Eddy!” I shouted.
Eddy always helped me. Whenever things were difficult, he helped me.
“What happened?” he asked.
I told and - he charged at the older boy.
They fought. They beat each other until the priests and teachers came to pull them apart.
They were both punished, because neither of them wanted to tell why they fought. Eddy didn't tell mom or dad at home either.
______
I found most lessons so boring. At home, in a newspaper, I came across an article by the ABVV youth. They were looking for monitors and volunteers for the socialist union's youth work. I went to a meeting evening in Hasselt and was immediately sold. It felt like coming home. This was so interesting! I was about 16 years old and wow, we were really talking about cool and important things here. This was fun!
“You are a left-wing rioter!” the school director shouted at me.
I had done something he didn't like. I had taken students out of class to come and demonstrate with me – this was actually truant, but I thought it was for a good cause. In Brussels there were almost daily demonstrations or protests for solidarity and workers' rights. Sometimes something was also set up locally. I convinced the other students to come and demonstrate with me – and the school board didn't really think that was possible. We were punished. We had to hand in our food receipts for hot meals and our school trip was canceled. That was a very severe punishment.
“If we don't get a school trip, we'll organize one ourselves,” I said to a comrade.
And we did. I enlisted Father Johan's help. He knew Mechelen very well and organized youth trips anyway: I thought he was the perfect man. We went out with a number of buses. We visited a Catholic publishing house in the city of Mechelen and ended the trip on the way back at the youth club in Aarschot. The same day, around midnight, we were back at the school.
Throughout the day, the school had called all parents to ask where their children were, but the parents thought their offspring were just being good at school.
It wasn't our best day when we got back to school. Some parents were furious, others were just worried, but the school board, they hated me raw. I had to go back to management and was severely scolded.
Outside, the other students were clapping for me – they were very happy with the trip!
Ofcourse I expected all these scoldings. The only really difficult thing for me was Father Johan's disappointment... We had concealed from him the fact that both the parents and the school board knew nothing about the school trip.
“Luc, luckily nothing went wrong,” I can still hear him say.
“Yes, Father Johan, that is true,” I had answered him.
Hearing the disappointment in his voice was very difficult.
______
After the argument and school trip incidents, I was not allowed to re-enroll at my previous school. That director had had enough. At the next school, they called me on the mat as a preventive measure.
“Luc Schrijvers, if you even mention the word 'demonstration' out of loud, I will kick you back to Peer," said the director of the next school, in Leopoldsburg.
“Wow, that's far,” I said.
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