"White Boy"

After thinking about it yesterday, I retract my previous post. Instead of probing the subtle racism in the 21st century, I just should have pondered what it was like to be in high school and insecure as hell. The last time I roamed a high school hall was 20 years ago for me --- and that isn't nearly long enough to forget all the dumb stuff that went on. Everybody was super self conscious as hell, nobody more than me. In a school full of Wally Cleavers, I was a lesser player in a Leave it to Beaver cast of characters. I was Whitey Whitney --- literally three shades whiter than all of my fellow classmates. To put it mildly, I was the biggest slice of Wonderbread at J.J. Pearce High School. And I was bothered by that. So if the yearbook photo of whatever remedial club I belonged to labeled me as "white boy" I probably would have not been happy, especially if the action news station showed up outside the high school wanting an interview with me. Of course, I'd think all of that would be hilarious now.

I looked up a website that details what happened to all of the Leave it to Beaver cast members. The careers of the lesser members are the most interesting, and often sad. The guy who played Whitey Whitney --- who urged the Beav to jump into the billboard sign with the steaming bowl of soup to see what was inside --- turned into a junkie as a teenager and eventually died of hepatitis C. The guy who played Gilbert Bates --- who was one of Beav's blonde-haired buddies who appeared in 30 episodes --- went onto to be a left wing radical and big college campus protestor. Before he'd lead a demonstration, somebody would invariably hang up a poster with his picture and a caption that said "Strike? Gee Beav, I don't know." The actor, Stephen Talbot, wrote a piece about that on Salon.com --- the site his brother edits. He's now a documentary film maker.