The First Episode: “Would you like to go to the Principal’s Office?”

The First Episode: “Would you like to go to the Principal’s Office?”

I know when my first real depression happened. Before diagnosis I remembered the summer before high school as a singularly weird experience, not realizing it was only the first of many depressive periods I would have for the rest of my life. Since diagnosis I had always assumed that my first depression was the beginning of the cycles, but I recently realized that I must have had a manic episode before that, while I was still attending eighth grade. Before diagnosis I told this story as “The Day I Realized I Didn’t Have to Do What They Told Me.” That was how it felt at the time. This is how I remember it.

I had always been a relatively well-behaved, polite and studious boy until the spring of 8^th grade. I was absent-minded, obsessive and self-conscious but I was a good kid who stayed out of trouble. One day I was sitting at my desk in Mrs. Hodgkins’ English class, feeling restless and wondering if there really was such a thing as “spring fever.’ My thoughts were probably racing, but before diagnosis I didn’t know I had racing thoughts. I wanted to walk, to go outside. I wanted to talk but the class was engaged in silent reading. I wondered, what was the least I could do to get sent to the Principal’s Office? I got up without asking permission and walked to the big dictionary on the podium at the back of the classroom. I turned a few pages as if looking for a word, read for a while, and then decided to turn the page and keep reading the dictionary until Mrs. Hodgkins said something.

“Take your seat once you have looked up your word.”

I held up the appropriate finger to quietly signal that I needed another minute. Mrs. Hodgkins frowned but gently said, “That’s a long definition.”  I continued to read for a minute and then turned the page again. By now some of the other students were looking back at me. They seemed curious, perhaps because I had never “acted up” in class before. “Take your seat Mr. Davis.”

“This book is so well written!”

“Sit down please.”

I started to pick up the dictionary, which was very heavy, as if to take it with me to my seat. At that point Mrs. Hodgkins sternly commanded me to “put down the dictionary.”

      “I can’t put it down! It’s a real page-turner.”

A few of the students chuckled, and Theresa with the bright green eyes looked right at me, smiling. That’s how I remember it. Mrs. Hodgkins said “Would you like to go to the Principal’s Office?”

“Yes! I have always wanted to.  I’ve never been.” I said out loud.

Looking puzzled and at the end of her cool, Mrs. Hodgkins pointed to the door and said, “Go!” The other students laughed and I ran out the door and walked briskly to the office.

When I approached the desk of the woman I called “The Secretary” she wearily asked me what I wanted.

“I got in trouble” I said, smiling. “Mrs. Hodgkins sent me here because I was disrupting class. I’ve never been to the Principal’s Office before.”

“What did you do?” asked the Secretary from behind a chest high partition.

“I was reading the dictionary for too long.” She looked at me askance and pointed to a row of chairs where three other kids were sitting, also waiting to see the principal, I assumed.  Two of the kids looked as if they had been in a fight. A third kid sat between them. Within minutes all three were asked into a room to talk with someone, I think it was the Vice Principle. I sat thinking about the word “Vice” and wondering what the sullen boys had done, until the bell rang for the next period. The Secretary pointed at me and said, “First offender, get to class.”

I was surprised. “Don’t I get to see the Principal?”

“Don’t get smart or you will.” She said and went back to dealing with the chaos of a big public Junior High School.

            The next day I decided to do something that would make sure I got in to see the Principal or at least his Vice. The classroom we were in had a water fountain and sink in the back. I asked Mrs. Hodgkins if I could get a drink.  She said, “Yes” with a sigh, as if anticipating the need for patience. The water fountain was on the sink in the back of the room. I got up and walked back to the sink, dragging my knuckles in my best impression of an ape. I was interested in apes and had just read several Tarzan books, (I was 13) otherwise I don’t know why I chose to do this.  Normally I would have been embarrassed to do such a thing in front of everyone, at least outside of a Drama class.  I tried to drink like an ape from the fountain and when I made a bit of a mess and everyone was watching me and laughing, Mrs. Hodgkins pointed to the door and said, “Go to the office. I’ll call it in this time.”

“I can go?” I asked, dropping the ape impression.

“Please do. I’ll call it in this time.” She looked a little worried about me, I thought, as I skipped out of the room.

Here is another clue that I was having a manic (technically hypomanic) episode. When not manic I would have noticed Mrs. Hodgkins’ expression of disappointment with me. But my memory of it was all fun and games.  So it was the mania that made me suddenly confident and mischievous, not that “I realized I didn’t have to do what they told me.” The laughs I got in the classroom were probably nervous chuckles, but my subjective memory tells me that I was “killing.” I didn’t question why I was so obsessed with seeing the principal and kept trying. All the manic symptoms were there, including the poor judgement that made me ask Mrs. Hodgkins, upon entering her class the next day, “Can I go to the office? I’m going to disrupt class again.”

             I remember that spring as bright and green and happy, so the hypomania must have lasted a couple of months. This takes me up to the summer before entering high school and my first depression, which before diagnosis I thought of as my early existential angst. I was only 14 and had to wait until I read Camus and Sartre to find a description of what I had experienced.  I only told myself this story, which I used to call, to myself, “Something’s Wrong.”