All this happened back in 1965 when the Vietnam War was raging, and my high school pals and I were reading MAD Magazine and The Catcher in the Rye and rebelling against authority figures like our parents and teachers—especially our teachers. And one in particular, our chemistry teacher named Murray McSwain. Behind his back, everyone called him “Mary McSwine” because he was a classic momma’s boy, complete with round shoulders, spare tire around the middle, and no girlfriend or wife. He was also kind of a personal slob who wore cheap suits with ridiculous looking ties that had food stains on them—not to mention the fact that he often had crumbs on his lips after lunch and a bad case of dandruff that stood out on the shoulders of his navy-blue sport jacket like a fresh snowfall on a black tarmac.
Unfortunately, his dorky and unkempt appearance did not prevent him from being a real task master in class and an all-around prick when it came to giving impossible tests that no one could pass—except for the smart kids who really cared about their grades and who actually paid attention to him and studied.
I wasn’t one of those kids. Neither were my pals Tommy A. and Howie T., who sat next to me in chemistry class. We weren’t dumb—I don’t want to give you that impression. In fact, we were all kind of smart in our own ways, but we were just more interested in telling jokes and making each other laugh than listening to McSwine drone on about chemical formulas or the scientific importance of heating liquids on Bunsen burners.
The problem was, all three of us were flunking chemistry and the only way we could salvage our grades was by doing really well on the upcoming midterm, which we knew was impossible, even with crib notes. So, we had to figure something out, some way to do well on the test without actually studying for it. The time for that had long passed and the test was only two days away. What’s more, all three of us were on the academic track and our parents were forever pressuring us to get good grades so that we could get into college. Our high school was this small suburban school outside Philadelphia that had a good reputation for academic rigor, but it was pretty clear none of us was going to Harvard or Yale; we were just hoping to do well enough to get admitted to Temple or Penn State.
I think it was Tommy A. who came up with the idea of stealing the test. Tommy A. was a very popular and enterprising guy who knew practically everybody. He was even friends with the school janitor who he would hang out with sometimes in the stock room, and they would do favors for each other. This is how Tommy A. knew the janitor was in possession of the keys to all the locks on the doors and cabinets in the classrooms, and he knew McSwine made up the tests in advance and locked them in a file cabinet that sat behind his desk next to the blackboard. The plan was to wait until everyone had left school for the day; Tommy A. would borrow the keys from the janitor, unlock McSwine’s classroom door and file cabinet and remove one of the tests while Howie T. and I stood guard at the ends of the hallways. McSwine used the same test for several different classes, and he always made extras, so we figured he wouldn’t notice one missing test.
The next day we put our plan into action, and it worked like a charm. And as soon as Tommy A. returned the keys to the janitor, we left school and went to Tommy A.’s house to look up the correct answers to the test. Even with the three of us pouring over our textbooks and notes, it took us a couple of hours to come up with all the right answers. Then we wrote down all the correct answers on small sheets of paper we called “cheat sheets,’ and we were all set.
“You know it’s going to look a little suspicious if everyone else in the class blows this test and the three of us get A’s,” I told the boys when we had finalized our cheat sheets.
“Yeah,” Howie T. agreed. “McSwine’s dumb, but he’s not that dumb. He’ll know something’s up. And if we get caught, my parents’ll kill me!” Poor Howie T. His parents were always going to kill him for something.
“Maybe we should just give the answers to everyone,” I offered. “If everyone does well our high scores won’t stand out.”
A sly smile suddenly swept over Tommy A.’s face. “I got a better idea—we’ll sell the cheat sheets. That’ll kill two birds with one stone. Our high test scores won’t look suspicious, and we’ll make some money for our effort."
We all agreed it was a great plan. And since we were the ones who came up with the idea and took all the risks, why shouldn’t we profit from it?
This was the question I posed to Peggy D., the girl I was going out with at the time. I went to her house after I had left the boys and filled her in on our little caper. When I finished explaining it, she rolled her eyes and said, “Oh, brother! This is the dumbest idea I ever heard.”
“C’mon, it’s a good idea,” I said. “And don’t worry; I’ll give you a cheat sheet for free.”
“I don’t want your stupid cheat sheet! I can get a good grade on my own.”
She was right. She was one of the smart kids in our class who actually paid attention to McSwine and got straight A’s on all his tests. In fact, she got straight A’s in all her subjects, even Latin and geometry, two subjects I had zero interest in.
“This isn’t going to work, you know,” she continued to caution me. “You guys are going to get caught.”
“How? How are we going to get caught?”
“I don’t know, but you will. Besides, it’s unethical.”
“Is it ethical for McSwine to make his tests so hard that hardly anyone can pass them? He gets a kick out of it too, the bastard. I’ve seen him smirk when he hands out our bad grades.”
She just shook her head.
It made me more than a little uneasy that she took such a dim view of our caper, because she was usually right about this kind of thing. But it was too late to turn back now. The funny thing was, despite being so bright in school, she was actually kind of dumb when it came to guys. She always let guys have their way with her, which was unusual for smart girls when I was in high school. In those days, smart girls tended to be fairly strait-laced and moral, especially when it came to sex. But not Peggy D. She put out for every guy she dated. That’s why I was going out with her in the first place. That and the fact that she had the biggest knockers in our class.
Unfortunately, she was also kind of on the chubby side, which is why I think she was so promiscuous. Chubby girls, it seemed, felt the need to want to please guys more and they used sex as a way to do it. You take the great looking cheer leader types-- they’re more selective about who they’ll sleep with. I realize I’m oversimplifying this because there are other psychological factors involved—like a girl hating her father, for example. And I know for a fact that Peggy D. hated her old man because he was a hot-tempered tyrannical bastard who thought he was right about everything. He wasn’t too fond of me either and had made that clear on more than one occasion.
Of course, he was a veteran of World War II and a lot of the men from that era were like that, including my own father, who had been a captain in the army and had won a bronze star for valor. But that experience sure didn’t help him with his parenting skills, and my family life was the furthest thing from the happy and well-adjusted family life portrayed on popular TV shows like Leave It to Beaver. And get this-- one time my father, in a fit of rage, yelled at me: “I created you; I can destroy you!” I don’t think he meant it literally, but it was a pretty shitty thing to say. Old Ward Cleaver, the Beaver’s father, certainly would have never said something like that. Of course, my pals and I were a pretty cynical bunch, the antithesis, in fact, of a Beaver or Wally Cleaver. What’s more, we were smart enough to figure out that the picture-perfect suburban family as depicted on television was just a con, a bourgeois ideal promoted by corporate America to sell their products to the masses—in essence, the epitome of “phoniness,” as our idol Holden Caulfield would say.
The day before the test, Tommy A., Howie T., and I started selling the cheat sheets. Word spread like wildfire at our school and before long each of us had sold dozens of them, not only to the students in our class but in other classes as well. We charged a buck a piece for each cheat sheet, and by the end of the day we had amassed a tidy sum. As an added precaution we told everyone not to bring the cheat sheets to class and use them as crib notes, but to memorize all the answers. That way no one could get caught cheating on the test and implicate us.
“You know I was thinking. Maybe we should do this for all the tests,” Tommy A. suggested as the three of us walked down the hallway and headed for chemistry class the day of the midterm.
“We could do it for tests in other subjects, too,” Howie T. added. “We’ll make a fortune.”
We walked into McSwine’s class and took our seats. McSwine opened his filing cabinet with a key and removed a bundle of tests. Everything seemed completely normal. As McSwine passed out the tests, Tommy A., brimming with confidence, said to him, “I want you to know that I really studied hard for this midterm, Mr. McSwain. I mean I really studied.”
Jesus Christ, I thought. Leave it to Tommy A. to lay it on so thick.
“I certainly hope so, my boy,” McSwine said to Tommy A with a sneer, “because so far you’re flunking this course—with a capital F.”
The other students who had bought our cheat sheets looked our way and chortled. McSwine was such a moron he thought they were responding to his clever ad lib.
As we started taking the midterm, I scanned the class and didn’t see anyone using crib notes, so I breathed a sigh of relief. Once again everything went according to plan, and by the time the test was over, we realized we had put one over on old Mary McSwine.
Everyone was in a celebratory mood at lunch time. It was pizza day at school and each of us bought an extra slice of pizza in the lunchroom. We could certainly afford it. As we chomped away on the pizza and congratulated ourselves for a job well done, Peggy D. walked up to our table and whispered in my ear: “You’ve got a problem. McSwine caught a student in another class with one of your cheat sheets.”
“What?!!” I nearly gagged on my pizza. “But we told everyone not to bring them to class.”
“Well, apparently someone did.”
“Who was it?”
“I don’t know,” she replied and walked away nonchalantly. She didn’t say “I told you so,” but she may as well have. The implication was writ pretty goddamn large.
I looked at Tommy A. and Howie T. Both of them were staring at me with their mouths agape and their pizza slices drooping in their hands like limp dicks. All I could say was: “We’re screwed.”
Later we found out who got caught with the cheat sheet. It was this idiot kid in another class named Mickey O. Tommy A. had sold him the cheat sheet and distinctly told him not to bring it to class, but the dumb ass was too lazy to memorize the answers so he brought it with him anyway and got clumsy. He actually dropped the cheat sheet on the floor during the test and McSwine saw it. When McSwine retrieved the cheat sheet and observed that all the correct answers to the test were written on it, he was dumbfounded and immediately asked Mickey O. where he got the cheat sheet. Fortunately, Mickey O. played dumb and didn’t snitch on us. He told McSwine he had found it in the hallway. McSwine didn’t believe him and gave him a tongue lashing, then let him go.
The next day the boys and I dreaded walking into chemistry class, but we had to do it. If we hadn’t shown up it would have looked suspicious. Word was out about what had happened, and everyone was unusually quiet and apprehensive. McSwine stood in front of the class and remained silent for several seconds after all the students took their seats, milking everyone’s trepidation like he was a detective in a bad murder mystery. Then he finally spoke.
“As some of you probably have heard, yesterday I found the answers to the midterm written on a sheet of paper that was in possession of one of your fellow students. These weren’t just crib notes, mind you; they were the exact answers to all the questions. This means that someone must have gotten hold of the test beforehand.”
Then he looked in our direction. “And I think I have a pretty good idea of who it was.” He paused and stared directly at Tommy A. and then at me and Howie T. All three of us just sat there stone-faced and didn’t move a muscle for what seemed like minutes, although it was probably just seconds. Finally, McSwine made an about face and walked behind his desk. You could have heard a pin drop in the classroom. Then he gave the three of us another penetrating stare, hoping one of us would crack, but we continued to sit there like Mount Rushmore.
“Yes, I have a pretty good idea all right,” he repeated slowly and deliberately, “but I just can’t figure out how they did it.” McSwine suddenly picked up a ruler from his desktop and slapped it on the open palm of his hand. “In any case, because of what has transpired, the midterm will be invalidated for everyone, and I will make up another test in the next few days. And I can tell you this—it will be harder, much harder. So those of you who took the test honestly can thank the culprits for creating more work for you.” Then he let it drop and started his daily lesson.
After school I walked Peggy D. home and asked her if she would help me study for the retest. She agreed and was nice enough not to revisit the conversation we had regarding her warning about the probable failure of our little caper. Instead, we just hit the books and studied our asses off. When the retest came up later in the week, Peggy got an A on it, of course, and I was able to eke out a C. But after that, my relationship with Peggy D. changed. I wasn’t sure whether the chemistry test heist had anything to do with it or whether our relationship had just run its course, but soon after, Peggy D. and I began to drift apart. And then she started dating some other guy. I was a little jealous at first, but I didn’t exactly lose any sleep over it because I was never really serious about her from the beginning. I mean I never expected to go steady with her or marry her or anything, and I guess she knew that.
Ironically, after we all graduated from high school, Tommy A., Howie T., and I went on to college whereas Peggy D. got knocked up, got married, and never continued her education, even though she had a few scholarships. It seemed like a total waste; she was such a bright girl. But the truth is, just because you’re smart in school doesn’t necessarily mean you make smart decisions in life. And you know another thing—life isn’t very fair. I can tell you that.
John F. Miglio is a freelance writer and the author of the dystopian thriller, Sunshine Assassins. His articles have been published in a variety of periodicals, including Los Angeles Magazine and LA Weekly. His most recent articles have been featured in Wand'rly, Op/Ed News, Hippocampus Magazine, Truthout, the Democratic Underground, Counterpunch, and Cynic. He has also appeared on Air America Radio and Radio Power Network. His novel, Sunshine Assassins, has been called “a bone-chilling political morality fable,” “wickedly entertaining,” and “unforgettable.”
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