Dear Mr. Deprado,

In Eighth Grade, all we really cared about was getting to school early enough to look cool on the outside patio of our homerooms—It was the beginning of what would become the perpetual "fashion show of our lives." Groups formed left and right and were most identifiable by their chosen outfits; our attempts at originality were conveniently purchased at the nearest trendy mercantile. The "Skaters" were grinding their wheels along the tops of the bike racks, hi-top Vans laced securely up over their ankles, ripped Tony Hawk t-shirts, the sides of their heads shaved tightly and their hair mushrooming out at the top. The "Rockers" were by the basketball courts sneaking cigarettes. They held rank by the location of the rip in their jeans. The beginners had rips in their knees, the intermediates ripped their thighs into shreds, but the coolest ones tore holes in their butts.

Even cooler were the ones who grew up just a little too early. Rick Lazlo arrived in the middle of our Eighth Grade year—Rick had a full mustache and beard—in Eighth Grade! The "Rocker Girls" loved him and we would see him making out and with a different girl everyday before school. Rick and whichever girl, always side by side, with their hands in each other’ back pocket of their tight jeans. We thought he was a mutant, some kind of High School reject pervert who was preying on innocent girls who were only just learning the true skill necessary for proper hair-feathering. I think a part of us wished we could grow some facial hair, too.

Along the benches in the central quad were the "Mods"—in trench coats and hats, parading morosely around in their baggy jeans. And us—sitting there—the "In Betweens"—we didn’t know what we were: parachute pants with zippers that zipped and unzipped without any purpose; sleeveless—hooded—two-toned sweatshirt material shirts; Converse All Stars. What style was that? Still, it worked for us. We, at least, thought we were cool.

Mr. Deprado, I don’t know if you remember but you actually addressed us about this once in Home Room. Do you remember? It was winter, and I am not sure why, maybe the planets were aligned, or there had been some kind of subliminal video stream sent through our television sets the night before, or maybe there was a memo drafted that everyone received, but for some reason everyone in the class—all except for two—were wearing long, second-hand-store trench coats. I remember the dull silence in the room when we all finally settled down. All of us wearing the same thing, like some uncanny uniform. The dark grays and blacks like apparitions of "trenchcoatocity" all around the room. Our uniqueness suddenly homogenized into a startling norm. Our coats draped over our chairs. Our sleeves rolled up. We stared at one another, not yet mature enough to just laugh about it and place it as one of those eerie phenomena that happens when too much culture evaporates into our bloodstreams, and we come to school hoping to be different, but we all end up looking the same. We were like the grunion suddenly washed up on some foreign shore—flipping around in the uncommon sand, breathing quietly.

I don’t actually think we even really noticed until you just stared at us for a whole minute, a lifetime to an Eighth Grader, and prepared your comment.

In that minute I think my world completely shifted. There was Kevin Brewer, his mushroom hair flowing back and forth like a rooster head, nervously rolling up his sleeves. Jonas Schuster pretending to fix his collar—turning it down—turning it up again, and Me with my hand in the long pockets of my coat, fingering the gum I had put there, wishing I could open it up and chew it. Anna Berman, her coat pulled below her shoulders so that she could reveal her tight pink shirt that brilliantly displayed her new Eighth Grade cleavage. She might even have been using the folds of the coat to push her breasts up and out. Diane Pompeii, slunk down in her chair, the collar of the coat giving her a half face and shifty eyes.

What did we look like, sitting there struggling with our failed plots to be unique, suddenly raw and exposed? Mr. D, you looked down at us, your body seemed to rise up and up actually get taller and taller. You waited for the long dramatic pause to sink in. Your face, under-animated in an absolute contemplation of this unearthly, synchronous phenomenon. I remember how you walked slowly to the back and back to the front. I remember wishing you would just hurry up and read the news headlines, or ask us some question about politics or government, or yell at us even though we had done nothing wrong. But the silence, the silence was killing me, killing us, and it is weird how an unexpected silence rattled us, humbled us, bonded us together—Skaters—Mods—In-Betweeners—whatever—because there we all were waiting for our teacher to say something. Anything...

But I do know, Mr. Deprado, that to this day I am still deciphering what you told us. In your lowest, calmest voice, you folded your hands across the podium and looked through us, your words were slower than usual.

You said, "Listen to me now—even if you have never listened to me before—because what I am going to tell you will change your life! Socrates said that there is a simple and obvious truism: if there is no natural law and the only law is the law of the state—and the people are the state—then the individual or the group is never right in rebelling or changing it. If the right is created by the state, then can it ever be right to oppose the state?"

We looked at each other, easily confessing that we had no idea what the heck he was saying, feeling defenseless as pre-highschoolers feel. You looked at us, "Let’s apply this..."

"Why do you wear those coats?"

"To rebel?" someone muttered.

"Against what? You are in the right," you said.

"We don’t want to be right. We are rebelling against what they say we have to think and do and wear!" The mutterer advocated more clearly this time.

"But you are the state? You ARE they!"

"Huh?"

"Then you are right," you pleaded.

"Huh?" Back to muttering in its purest form.

"You make the law. And because of this you are not a rebel, but instead the status quo! You are then the norm."

Kevin Brewer shouted from the back. "But it is a democracy and we are not always the norm!" I actually found myself agreeing with him for the first time.

"Actually then†" Mr. Deprado, you started back in (with compassion) "with that argument, the majority creates the right! And it can never be right to oppose the elected majority, and so because of this, because of free will, there is no such thing as a noble rebel!"

"Huh?"

I don’t remember you ever looking so defeated. None of us could have known that trench coats would make such a mark on our lives. Since then, I have found some useful information about trench coats.

You see, trench coats are useful because they look smart. Trench coats, whether or not they are black, are also astonishingly practical items. They provide excellent protection against almost any kind of weather, being impenetrable by both wind and water.

A trench coat may also serve as a sheet when sleeping in the cold, or, more generally, as a proper substitute for a towel—in some situations. A trench coat, however, is not a towel and cannot properly substitute for a towel in most situations, which again demonstrates how important it is to know where your towel is—even if you know where your trench coat is.

There are other uses for a trench coat. You can wear it when swimming in cold water, for instance. You can look like a rock singer, although I don’t understand the connection between wearing trench coats and listening to depressing song lyrics from bands like the Smiths or Depeche Mode.

But where did trench coats even come from? One rumor states that they are named that because soldiers in the trenches of "World War I" wore them. This is, however, a quite improbable theory. Maybe the trench coat is named after its inventor, William Frederick Trench.

William Frederick Trench was a very happy guy living in the early 20th century somewhere near Bournemouth, England. He liked swimming in the sea very much, but found that the sea water was too cold for him most of the year. He did several experiments. He tried putting on two bathing suits, one over the other, but it did not work. He tried putting on one of the heavy woolen overcoats in use at the times, but it did not work either. The overcoat was too heavy. So he went to a local tailor to have a light, waterproof overcoat made. This overcoat served its purpose very well, and Mr. Trench did not only wear it when swimming in the sea, but also on other occasions. He wore it to work, to tea, for afternoon walks, and even to the pub. Many people liked it so much that they had such an overcoat made (though they did not intend to use it for swimming). Thus, the trenchcoat was born.

Mr. Deprado, you looked closely at the class—still in your overly dramatic pausing nature—and I remember the feeling of cold in the room...

But after all of this, it wasn’t even the trenchcoats that were amazing, it was Clinton Clark and Megan Callahan, who sat at opposite ends of the room. They were the Unnoticed—the less than noticed of the middle school world—the ones who hadn’t yet made that transition to fashion—they were still in the elementary school state of mind. They didn’t care about what they wore, and they weren’t especially insecure, or scared, or doubtful or bitter. They didn’t wish to be like all of us in our fancy clothing. They were just there. Waiting behind their books, their sandwich-bagged PB & J’, their Holly Hobbie and Star Wars lunchboxes, their after school cartoons, their comic collections and doll collections, and the overly strict rules of their parents trying to shape the way their children would grow up.

I can’t help but think Mr. Deprado, how you must have savored this trench coat moment the way that I savor it in my memory. This was a third chance— Clinton’s chance—sitting there in his blue gingham shirt and tight Lee jeans, and gray New Balance tennis shoes—the same style pair he had worn since 4th grade. Clinton—addicted to Chapstick—so much so that he carried around a toothpick to dig out the last little flecks of jelly. And Megan—quiet, orange colored Megan, always silent and pretty in her church dresses, always smiling and lending paper, always getting every question right in class—completely unaware of criticism. Mr.Deprado just looked at them that day—as if a grand point had been made, and it had. I mean here we all were claiming that we were progressive, ahead, rebellious, angry, and changing the world. But the truth seems to be that we were only answering to a power (by Socrates’s Logic) that WE invented. So, even when we are rebelling against it—we are IT—so it isn’t really rebellion. It was these two, Clinton and Megan, who decided that they would answer to an even higher power than the "state." For them it might have been comfort, or ease, or even the natural laws of good and evil. It all depends on what you believe, but regardless, it was clear that they—sitting quietly and unobtrusively—were the true rebels, even as Clinton smeared the last little bit of Chapstick onto his lips.

I remember too how nobody wore trench coats anymore after that day. I imagine there is some giant trench coat graveyard in Marin. I bet it’s still there somewhere. Five football fields worth of fabric stretched out against the morning. My friend Todd and I took our trench coats to the Day Labor Center one morning on our way to school. We put them in a giant box that looked like a hippo head marked "please feed me your old clothes." A few weeks later we saw a man we called Yukon Jack walking along the bike path wearing my trench coat. We didn’t call him Yukon Jack because he was from the Yukon, and it’s a pretty safe bet that he was also using Todd’s trench coat as bedding or shelter, or maybe he traded it for shoes or other clothes, but the truth is it looked far better on him than it ever did on me. I wonder, too if by putting on that trench coat he felt cool or rebellious or anything more than just warm? I wonder if he was concerned with the common moralities or the morality of the state? I wonder if he believed in the natural moral law that binds humanity together? I wonder if he thought about Socrates, or maybe if he knew what kind of statement he was making as he walked by us that day? I wonder if he could ever know the kind of statement he makes now—walking along the bike path of my memory.

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