Requiem for a Cool Hand

Paul Newman just passed away at the age of 83. Nearly every headline announcing the death of the great man makes references to his legendary role in Cool Hand Luke. The death of Paul Newman hits me particularly hard mainly because of this role. There are few characters in fiction, film or history for that matter that I've been able to relate to more than that of Cool Hand Luke. Cool Hand Luke is authority averse, and impulse driven. He's polite, friendly, generally optimistic, and has a tremendous will power...when he wants to. In the film he's sent to prison on a very minor charge...for messing with parking meters in a drunken stupor one night. The rest of the movie is the story of an impulsive free spirit struggling for his literal survival against the ever tightening noose of a structured world. Here's the thing. I struggle at times with the notion of whether or not I'm crazy. I do a lot of things that don't make sense. I leave what many consider to be the security of good jobs on a whim, I move around a lot, I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve at most times and I frequently duck responsibilities in favor of fun. I cast aside concerns over the future for pleasure in the moment without a second thought usually, and also without regret in most circumstances. Fortunately I have a spouse that understands this. She knows that I do in fact wrestle with this demon of impulsiveness. She's seen me go to doctors to get medication, hit the gym religiously, pray for help to stay with something, read book after book on gaining control of my moods and impulses, anything that I can do to make my relationship to 'the system' run a little smoother. We've come to the conclusion that I'm a feral human. My parents were old when they had me, and for the most part I was left without any sort of rule or structure in my life other than that I received in school. As I continued to grow older my wilder nature became more difficult to control, and I wound up being kicked out of one high school after another for the most ridiculous of transgressions...attendance at one, being a disruptive influence at another. And here's my first very own personal Cool Hand Luke moment. By about the second or third high school I attended, the various administrations would only accept me under the terms of 'a contract'. Any teen that ever went to war with the administration knows all about contracts. Essentially they demand that the student exemplify absolute perfection or they'll be expelled. Well some of these administrators could really bust your balls if you were under contract. There was a vice principal named Beebe that refused to let up on me. If I was late for class I was called to the office. If I missed a class I was called to the office. If I had incomplete homework I was called to the office. I began to feel that he was feeding off of my apologies and my dignity. Students often say a teacher picked on them, well this one truly did. It was personal for him. I think he'd probably been picked on by guys like me when he was in school, probably still picked on by guys like me in his social life. He took it out on me. I was and continue to be a pretty perceptive guy, and despite the fact that I was popular with my teachers and receiving high marks, this guy kept the screws to me. It started to piss me off. He was deriving personal satisfaction from using his power and authority to make my life a living hell. One night I met his 14 year old son at a party. I had a 26 oz bottle of Southern Comfort with me. I fed it to the kid happily, repeating over and over again that all he had to do for me was tell his Dad where he got it. The war was ON, and it confirmed for me everything that I'd always believed. I was in the office without reason, just to check up on my progress, and every session was an interrogation. It always wound up with me having to ask him for some kind of permission...permission to continue attending school, permission to sit with my friends at break. He picked on my friends to pick on me. It got so that I would meet my friends at the Vice Principal's office after school every day, because it was 95% likely that if I wasn't being grilled one of them was. Finally I couldn't take it anymore. It had been going on for 7 months, daily visits to the office to ask for mercy and absolution from whatever crime he chose for the day. He brought me in over something like being late for a class, and he essentially wanted me to beg to stay in school. He said something like, "All you have to do is say you want to stay in school, and you won't be expelled." I told him I want to be in school. "It doesn't sound like you do." he said. "Well I do." I said. "Say it like you mean it." he said. My stomach turned to lead. I started shaking. There was no way in Hell I was going to give him the satisfaction. "I already did say it. I'm not saying it again." I said. He repeated how he didn't think I'd meant it, and I repeated that I did, and I was done talking about it and he could do whatever the hell he wanted, but I wasn't going to say it again. And he expelled me. I went home that night and he'd called my parents. They told me that he had called, and said he'd asked if I wanted to stay in school and I didn't seem to care so he'd expelled me. He'd said if I came back and really demonstrated that I wanted to be there he'd let me back in. I told my parents he could go fuck himself, and they told me if I didn't go back to leave the house because I couldn't live there if I wasn't going to school. So I went back the next morning, went in to his office, and told him very emotionally that I wanted to be there, but I also told him that I thought that I felt he was feeding his own ego by making me do it, and that he had no goal other than to take away my pride. I think I shocked him because he very quietly agreed to let me back in. So every day after that I would pass him in the halls and he'd have this infuriating benevolent fucking grin on his face, as though he felt bad that he'd had to go that far, and yet the benevolence was completely false. It was a look of sarcastic pity, a smug arrogant grin of victory. I hated him, and to this day there is no single human being in existence that has ever aroused in me the hatred that this man did. I hated myself for having submitted to it. I couldn't sleep, I decided that living without dignity was too much to bear. I started stealing the light switches from the hallways. Then I started stealing the covers off of the plug ins. I dismantled the hinges on doorways, took apart exit signs, liberated light bulbs. And I kept all of it in my locker. There were some other small incidents not worth mentioning. I don't think I could have stopped myself. Nor would I. After 3 days I was hauled into the office again. Beebe had a policeman there, and in front of them the pile of hardware from my locker. The first thing they asked about was the bomb threat earlier that week, to which I avowed complete ignorance. "Why did you do this?" Beebe asked, gesturing at the pile on the table. "For fun." I smiled. I didn't stop smiling. In fact the angrier he got, the more I smiled. I couldn't help it. I could actually feel my dignity and self worth returning with every rise in octave and impotent rage. Having the opportunity to sit in front of this asshole and let him know that "This time I did it solely to aggravate you, and it worked, and I'm me again, and you are less you now, and your brilliant plan to break me failed." And to this day people, I am proud to say that I am still unbroken. And the cop sat and smiled too, and we both knew that I wasn't getting charged with anything, and that I wouldn't be going back to school. So it's with great sadness that I think of Paul Newman's passing, and of the consolation I found watching Cool Hand Luke, knowing that somewhere out there, there was director, a writer, a cast of actors that know exactly where I was coming from when I stole all of those light switches. He spoke to us, the lost, the feral, the wild, the doomed. He let us know that there were others like us, and that while definitely rare, we are certainly not alone. He taught me that this part of me that I fight and struggle with so much is often a curse, but it's also a blessing. He showed me the beauty in me. He showed me that you can break, but you can redeem yourself as well. So, to Paul Newman's spirit, wherever it may be tonight. Don't rest in peace, Rebel with enthusiasm.