Recollection on High School Part I
King's Preparatory High School
Safe In The Library
I spent three of my four years (freshman to junior / 9th - 11th grades) in high school at King’s Preparatory High School, an innovative Catholic school with a philosophy of inquisitiveness rather than memorization.
The place where I always felt freest to think and feel was the school library under the watchful care of Joseph Weber, B.A. Librarian.
I attribute this feeling of freedom, not to the place, but to the man.
The very first day that I stepped through the doors of King’s Prep, I was 13 years old. Very few people think that becoming a teen-ager is easy. Those that do think so must have special karma.
I would be surprised if anyone went through the clumsiness of speech, growing awkwardness of a changing body, the clash of young boy goofiness and hormonal changes screaming for social acceptability without coming out the other side full of regrets for all the things that got screwed up. What matters is having a place to celebrate the things that go right.
That is what the library at King’s Prep meant to me.
Mr Weber had his office in the back of the library. I usually found him there, ready for conversation about something going on in school … or sometimes about life. His voice was quiet and steady. He spoke authoritatively without being authoritarian. Something about the way he carried himself carried self-respect. He was cool, calm and collected. Being a teenage male, I just felt like I could say stuff to him.
The more difficult the day of calculating hyperbolic equations and plotting the data on graph paper, the more important it became to head to Mr Weber’s library during study hall and read of heroes triumphing over adversity.
The more awkwardness that I displayed in Phys Ed not dunking baskets on the basketball court, not kicking goals on the soccer field, not serving aces in tennis, or pathetically getting pinned in record times on the wrestling mat, the more I needed the tranquility of the shelves-and-shelves of booksin Weber’s library where all the stressors of a high school teenager faded. In his books, the bad guy was defeated and the good guy was victorious.
In the afternoon after school let out, there were two buses that departed about an hour apart. Having a second bus meant that I could meet in the library for a game of chess with my friends or just to hang out. Rather than jump on the 3:30 bus to head home, many a day I bee-lined for the library for another hour with or without my friends. The 4:30 bus was good enough.
Unfortunately for all KP’ers, the school only lasted for three years, meaning at the end of my Junior (11th grade) year, I was a transferee to Bishop Kearney High School.
The last words that I remember of sage advice from Mr Weber were towards the end of my Junior year, shortly after the notice of closure. I was angry, mad, furious, upset, disappointed, frustrated, etc. I did not want to leave KP. I did not want to go to Bishop Kearney.
Venting with my friends at the table outside Mr Weber’s office, he came out and walked over to us. Laconic as always, I never saw him agitated. He talked to us about how sometimes life requires a person to move on and accept the “unacceptable”. He was right, of course … not that I understood at the time.
I can’t be sure, because strong emotions cloud the judgment, but I think that my ability nowadays to sometimes accept what I can not change is because of Mr Weber’s advice for me at the end of my time at King’s Prep.
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