Winged lions and #2 pencils
Before I dropped out of high school, I took a lot of AP classes.
I wasn't dropping out because of school. Like most people, I had to drop out because of life. I was working nights, washing dishes, trying to figure out how to conceive of myself and survive. That was incompatible with senior year.
But as a junior, I filled out the waiver to not pay the fee for any AP tests and showed up with my #2 pencils. To the AP Art History test, I also showed up with my textbook.
The text for that class was a five-pound behemoth called Jansen's; equally hated and beloved, worn as a backbreaking badge of pride among the nerds who wanted to be instructed about something more beautiful than boring. Our teacher used 'reading their Jansen's' as a euphemism for any group of two or more people who were obviously copulating in a work of art. It's the kind of thing you remember even twenty years later, like him pointing to a nipple on a 'Titty-an' painting, or the 'flying T&A' that characterized a Reubens.
Sitting outside the classroom where our test would be proctored, most of us were reading our Jansen's in the literal sense, flipping through the images, trying to remember who did what and where and in which medium. That same instructor had warned us that the essay this year would almost certainly be about a non-Western piece of art, and drilled us accordingly.
California classrooms are not well-insulated. Instead, they maximize light and air in a way that feels foreign to folks from any colder state. Our hallways are almost entirely outdoors, and called 'breezeways.' From the breezeway, we could see the upper half of the projector screen in the classroom, through the high and wide windows that allowed sunlight to pour into the space.
As they set the test, our proctors pulled the slide that would be projected to the front of the room for the final essay question. We knew it would be presented without hint or preamble, and it would be our job to identify, classify, and discuss it in about a thousand words. Looking up and through the window, I could see the slide.
I had about ten seconds to decide. I could keep this information to myself, or I could nudge the person next to me and let the dominoes fall. I thought about it, in that eternity of an internal second. I could be a million different versions of myself: helpful, caring, selfish, cagey. Anyone I wanted to be as I emerged from that moment was waiting on the line as I looked up.
But the good grades of others would have no effect on my score.
But this was cheating, and I wasn't about to sell myself out for it by announcing the problem.
But this was cheating, and the only way to make it fair was to bring everyone along with me.
I knew who I wanted to be.
I nudged the person next to me, a tall guy I almost knew. He followed my eyeline, savvy at once, and flinched at the sight. For once, honor students showed some common sense. Without a word, without a sound, the idea passed from hand to hand, eye to eye. We flipped open every copy of the text we had with us. We made space for everyone to crowd around and take it in.
A stele carved in stone. An Assyrion lion, winged and with the bearded head of a man. Nine, eight, or seven centuries before the beginning of the common era, and coming from Iraq, a country we should know from the news and could competently say something about.
We went in together, knowing that we had all had an unfair advantage, fairly shared. We went in to face the lion with wings with our #2 pencils and our self-concepts in hand.
