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Interesting story and it reminds me of my own reverse image experience.
I found myself attend the Hebrew Theological College (HTC) in Skokie, IL as a high school sophomore in 1971. The dean of the dormitory was an odd and ornery old man with a penchant for quinine water and also a concentration camp survivor. He was known as being tenacious and somewhat unpredictable.
I had become a “trouble maker” and he assumed I was the ringleader of the new cohort of trouble makers, I wasn’t. In fact I was quite independent and had an uneasy peace with the new cohort, but it seems I may have inspired them. The dean decided to enlist me as a “spy” offering me various special privileges to turn on my mates. I refused, and I remember one day hearing him call out on our intercom with his distinctive German accent “Rice, you’re trying to kill me!” I hid under the bed until the threat passed and spent the rest of the year trying to avoid him.
The next year I found myself in public school.
But the distinction between myself and the character Judy Randall is clear here: I had no honor, there was no valor in what I was doing, it was simply juvenile self indulgence. Yet to brittle martinet-type authorities our behaviors would likely be indistinguishable.
This sounds like an incredibly complicated novel. It’s always difficult in the best of circumstances to distinguish real from imagined conspiracies, and to do so while coming of age must be terrible indeed.
And let’s put another spin on by going from imagined to real.