Tim McDevitt's Story

I was the last of my siblings to attend MLC. There was a long waiting list for my age group, so for a year and a half I listened to the stories my brothers and sisters brought home. I found them difficult to believe. It sounded like chaos, bedlam, pandemonium. How could learning occur in such a place? And I was an odd kid who enjoyed learning. In the school I attended, students perpetually ranted about how much they hated school, and there I swiftly learned to conceal my love of learning. But the day finally came, and the initial step was for me to visit for a day: a first date, and a blind one.

That fateful day began with the carpool, to which I could easily devote a thousand words, but the salient aspect was that everyone was eagerly looking forward to school. From my pre-MLC point of view, something was wrong. I walked through those doors and into a buzzing swarm of long-haired, tie-dyed maniacs, playing guitars, flying exotic paper airplanes, and amiably disputing pre-Socratic versus Aristotelian world views. Two older guys walked past me conversing in dits and dahs, practicing Morse code for their radio operator licenses.

My sister Susie shoved me into the office and introduced me to the school secretary, Mary, whom everyone called Mary. Several years after graduation I telephoned MLC regarding my school records. Mary’s familiar voice said, “MLC,” and I barely got out “hello” when she said, “Hi, Tim. It’s Mary.”

In Ehrick’s homeroom, Ehrick introduced himself as Ehrick. I knew hardly any teachers’ surnames until weeks had gone by. A bell rang and I followed the main current to Emil’s creative writing class. Emil welcomed me and asked how many more McDevitts were yet to come. I told him I was the last one. He seemed relieved. Then he placed a large photograph before me and told me to write something about it. “Something?” I asked, confused. “Sorry,” he said. “I meant, anything.”

Swept away to the gym where I was introduced to Soak’m, a variant of prison-ball. We couldn’t play prison-ball, as there were no prisoners at MLC. A ruthless game nevertheless. Kids of both genders could throw those balls hard enough to knock me off my feet. And gleefully did so. I was given some pointers on trajectory, which left me wondering what trajectory meant. Jeffrey, maybe eight at the time, explained that trajectory was a contraction of the Latin prefix, trans: across, and jacere: throw. I was failing to generate sufficient velocity, allowing the ball to assume a parabolic course, which was anathema to the game. Chris overheard this and remonstrated that it was not so much anathema as antithetical. They both got hit while debating it.

Next stop history, where you could catch your breath and sweat in the dark while Abe screened a film of a man in lederhosen standing atop an immense pile of dead Jews, playing a concertina and singing a German folk song. This moving image was juxtaposed with a still of an American playing a fiddle atop a heap of dead Native Americans. Vociferous discussion on why one is a holocaust and the other manifest destiny. On to literature. Ehrick and a dozen kids reading Romeo and Juliet. Even here there was no escaping Shakespeare. But now Juliet was wantonly plying her wares from the balcony, whilst Romeo sounded more like the Marquis de Sade warming up for a vigorous intermezzo. Ehrick protested but the wheels were off, sparks flying. By the time class was over, the tragic star-crossed lovers deserved everything they got.

Unfortunately, lunch was the industrial public school lunch. Fortunately, I didn’t have to eat it. There was a course on mooching and their classroom was the cafeteria. The student who taught the course, Lee, mooched me out of everything but half a banana and a carrot stick to which I desperately clung. Yes, students taught courses. I took an introduction to biology from Pete Lowry that, when I got to college, turned out to have been an AP course; and John Lynch valiantly tried to teach me to use a computer. “The problem,” he maintained, “is not with the computer.”

After lunch came a field trip. A planetarium and a pickle factory, where we each left with a complimentary pickle the size of a football. Wound up at Andy & Bax Surplus where everyone, for fifty cents a pair, came back wearing jungle fatigues, with hand-darned bullet holes and pockets galore. Back at MLC, in home economics, the mountaineering club was making their own packs and harnesses on the sewing machines while a vegan cuisine class was in session across the room. On the summit of Mt. St. Helens, my numb fingers would one morning scribble in the climbers’ register, “1973 Metropolitan Learning Center Expedition.” Back at base camp. Ravenous. Nothing but zucchini. Do not mix mountaineering and vegan cuisine.

On that very first day, however, after solid geometry with Bill Rotecki and the Soma cubes; after learning to play Baroque chess, with its immobilizers, coordinators and chameleons; after witnessing, though I had not thought it possible, a cutthroat game of four-square, I faced my final assignment: back to the office to meet the Principal.

I was ushered into his private office. He rose to shake my hand, the first person ever to do so. I looked up, way up, and couldn’t believe my eyes. This lunatic asylum was run by Cary Grant. I racked up the requisite credits and successfully petitioned for early graduation. I saw how Amasa frequently found himself surrounded by outraged students, a situation he relished, and handled with aplomb. He became a kind of hero to me.

I know, and knew then, that I would have benefited from another year at MLC. But principals were being rotated, and there was no way on God’s then-green Earth that I was not going to have Amasa Gilman’s signature on my diploma. And when I arrived home, I was gratified to report that my brothers and sisters had not been exaggerating. They had, as it turned out, been uncharacteristically reserved.

(Tim McDevitt, 2018)

THIS 2018 PIECE by alumnus Tim McDevitt not only perfectly captures the joy and astonishment with which "regular school" kids first encountered MLC's early freedoms, but is also a supremely good piece of writing.

Tim's story first appeared in the 50th Anniversary Magazine, published for MLC's big celebration in September 2018. It is one of several favorites to be republished here on its own, in the Stories section, to highlight the quality of writings there, in the magazine—and to encourage readers to visit and read them all, and perhaps submit your own !!! MLC's history is in its stories.

Thumbnail: installing an amateur radio antenna on the Couch School roof, circa 1970