D R A M A_ Q U E E N

Drama Queen Finalists
The worst toys ever.

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T A B L E_ T A L K

Are faith healer parents guilty of criminal neglect? Talk about parental values and kids' rights in Table Talk's Mothers area

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R E C E N T L Y

Time for One Thing: Marked-down memories
By Grayson Hurst Daughters
Trolling for thrift store bargains is one way to salvage the musty scent of youth
(01/13/99)

What I learned from my breakdown
By Faulkner Fox
How a week at a yoga retreat saved me from the perfect parenting frenzy
(01/12/99)

Drama Queen: The worst toys ever
This month's finalists battle the most nefarious play-pretties that ever tots have touched
(01/11/99)

Sleeping in
By Anne Lamott
No one tells you that the profound tiredness you feel in your child's first year of life doesn't go away with the 2 a.m. feedings
(01/07/99)

One mother's gain
By Maurine Zarlengo Christ
After adopting three children, a mom says it's love, not blood, that makes parents
(01/06/99)

BROWSE THE SECOND THOUGHTS ARCHIVES

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Salon Columnists

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

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TWELVE YEARS AFTER HE GRADUATED, MICHAEL BACKMAN LIED HIS WAY BACK INTO HIGH SCHOOL BECAUSE HE WANTED TO TRY AGAIN -- NOT AT SCHOOL, BUT AT EVERYTHING WRONG THAT FOLLOWED.

BY SALLIE TISDALE | He was a good student in a big high school, one of more than 2,000 students. He was neat, courteous, well-dressed and was getting ready to sing a solo in the school's a cappella choir. People liked Deandre Deangelo. A senior who had transferred to Grant High School in Portland, Ore., from Beverly Hills, Calif., Deangelo struggled with his math classes but did well enough in government, Spanish and global studies to keep up a 3.8 GPA. He could look forward to graduation and a world of opportunity; he was hoping for a chance at a good college.

There was only one problem. Deangelo was 31 years old. His real name was Michael Backman and he'd already graduated from Grant 12 years before.

I'll be teaching at Grant again this spring, and so I've been thinking about how much I like teenagers and the florid stew of high school corridors. I like teenagers' casual self-absorption and naive certainties, the rocket-fuel of free-floating hormones, the unpredictable despair and exultation, the sincerity of struggle to become ... something.

I always remember, when I start preparing a syllabus, how bad high school is, how stupidly designed and difficult it is, how hard it is. I love it now as a visitor, as a person on the other side of 40 who does not long to be younger. I can enjoy it now partly because I hated it so much then. I dropped out of high school at 16 in the angry fatigue of years of boredom, left charged with the drive to get on with life, to find and climb obstacles.

I enjoy going back in part because I can't imagine ever going back to stay.

I know that my experience is not the only one. High school is hard for many kids; the best years of their lives for others. Many of the people who were my classmates hated to leave as much as I hated to stay. High school was their success story, a busy, unpredictable but structured time of ever-unfolding change, relationships, experiences, accomplishments not matched by anything that followed.

I was at Grant, meeting with the teachers with whom I'll be working, the day Backman was arrested. The big lawn was covered with milling groups of chattering kids, and out front were the television cameras and a reporter interviewing the beleaguered school district spokesman. All anyone knew was that an adult had been masquerading as a student. A measure of pop culture's power is that the first thought most of us had was that he must have been an undercover journalist or screenwriter, doing a bit of "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" research.

The truth is sadder. Michael Backman went back to high school at Grant, from which he had graduated in 1986, because he wanted to try again -- not at school, but at everything that followed. Backman was a convicted thief and forger, and he was arrested on warrants from three states, for theft, forgery and parole violation.

N E X T+P A G E: Maybe Backman had the right idea