^{Mike Schwartz, 1913 - 2003}

My father and I were never very close. That’s why I was surprised to learn recently, six years after his death, that Dad prevented Mom from turning my teacher over to the authorities for statutory rape. Dad was a quiet, ex-communist college professor who would sometimes forget to zip his fly before he returned to class. His idea of fun was to sit around with a friend, talk politics and knock back a fifth of Scotch. I lived for Rock and Roll, girls, motorcycles and my art, though not necessarily in that order. I wasn’t sure Dad understood me. 

My high school friends and I would check into home room for attendance purposes and cut the rest of the day to shoot pool, smoke, go fishing or just ride the trolley to the end of the line. I maintained good grades and nobody complained. Dad didn’t seem to pay much attention. He did notice when I showed up at home one day with my English teacher’s moped, but only because he couldn’t understand why anybody would want to travel that way. Mom was a bit more curious about my newfound wheels and somehow discovered that teacher and I were ‘an item’ as she put it, though she didn’t tell me she knew until a few weeks ago. 

I won’t belabor the details of the affair here. (For 49 cents, you can buy the slightly-fictionalized version at Amazon.com.) The gist of it is, my twenty-two year-old teacher and I carried on throughout senior year and scandalized the prom. As a barely-experienced seventeen year-old, I viewed our relationship as a gift from heaven. She didn’t know much more about sex than I did so we were a fair match and for that I remain grateful to this day. Unfortunately, the vice-principal wasn’t so favorably inclined. She threatened to inform every college I’d been accepted to of my inappropriate behavior and also reinforced my teacher’s decision to leave town for graduate school.   

These days, the outcome would be far different. School staff members are required to report teacher-student sexual contact to the police. In most cases like this, the teacher would go to jail for at least a year and the student would be in counseling for who knows how long. I was lucky the VP didn’t call the police. The only reason my Mom didn’t was my Dad. 

Mom said that when she told Dad about teacher and me, she assumed he would agree that the affair should be stopped immediately and reported. Dad’s viewpoint was just the opposite. He felt that I was old enough to make my own decisions about who I’d sleep with, and that was that. Maybe he saw how happy I was and didn’t perceive any harm. Reluctantly, Mom went along with Dad and never said a thing about it for over forty years. Dad never said a word, either. I wish he had. I owe him a hug.