It was a scene so strange to me I felt disoriented, confused. I was sitting at a table in Sue Silverstein’s class at the Bishop Maginn High School this morning, and Mike Tolan and Issachar, a refugee junior from Pakistan (a senior now, I guess) was sitting with us.

Here I was chatting happily and comfortably with a school principal for the first time in my life. I never  had a principal like this. I never even knew one existed. I never imagined liking one enough to want to be a friend.

It was a curious scene for me.

Mike was wearing shorts and clean New Balance sneakers and he and Issachar were talking about Stan Lee and Marvel Comics. Mike grew up on Marvel comics, just like me and started comparing notes.

I grew up in Providence, R.I., but  spent two years of high school in Atlantic City, where I returned later to start my reporting career. I only have one memory of a principal when I was in elementary school. It was Miss McCarthy, a woman I thought to be ancient and nasty.

One snowy day, I hid in a snow bank and toss a snowball at her as she came out of the school to walk to her car. It was a bitter cold day, snowing heavily, and I thought I would be a mile away before she even noticed the snowball hurtling towards here. It was a lucky shot, I hit her on the shoulder and ran.

To my complete astonishment, Miss McCarthy ran like a rabbit, raced right up the hill,  caught up to me in seconds and hauled me back to school where I spent the first of many hours writing on a chalkboard that I would never throw snowballs at anyone again. And I didn’t.

The ghost of Miss McCarthy haunted me all of my life, whenever I was about to do something stupid or wrong. I don’t remember ever speaking to a principal again, which would have been too soon for me.

I never sat at a table with a school principal, never talked to one about my life, surely not my comic books, traded stories about our lives. Mike knows every student in the school, he knows their life stories, their strengths and their problems. He cares about all of them. He talks to all of them. There is great trust between Mike and these kids, and the refugees in particular have good reasons to mistrust authority.

Mike and I work comfortably and easily (and honestly) with one another, there is not a hint of the difficulties I’ve had trying to find the right refugee program for me to work with. We talk about wish lists, donations, the school’s many needs, computers, microscopes, school supplies.

Bishop Maginn is the place I have been looking for, Mike Tolan is a major reason I found it. He is open and will do anything legal and moral to help his school and his students, he does not ever put his ego first.

We talked about Bruce Springsteen and Asbury Park (I went to Atlantic City High School for two years), we talked about Batman and Stan Lee, we talked about Hunter Thompson and Rolling Stone (where I worked), we talked about New Jersey and the many subcultures that thrive there.

And we talk a lot about tuition. Mike doesn’t turn anybody away from the school over money, but his superiors ask that everyone pay something so that the school can continue. As a result, it has become a haven and godsend to the new refugee families in the area, they worship the idea of education but have no money to  pay for private schools. Thirty or forty of them attend Joseph Maginn.

The Army Of Good is fund-raising for some tuition payments, we will also help provide some school supplies for the Fall, half of the school’s students have none.

Mike and I have a lot to talk about, both in terms of the school and our own lives. We both used to go to the hobby store on Wednesdays to pick up our latest, carefully packaged Marvel comic, it was our calendar and culture. We worshipped Bruce Springsteen and all of his music (Mike is younger than me but we have a lot of shared interests.)

(Mike and I are working closely on the Bishop Maginn Amazon Wish List, we hope to get enough laptops for a computer room, the first one in the school’s history. We only need eight more microscopes. There are also inexpensive gift cards. Twenty $10 gift cards buys a computer, nine $20 gift cards buys  a microscope.

I told Issachar and Mike about the Batman Dark Knight series, so wonderfully written it helped push me towards being a writer, I read it before either of them was alive.

Issachar was practically drooling when I told him I would bring a Dark Knight book to him next week. I got him “Dark Knight: Master Race.”

Wow, I thought, this guy is the real deal, honest, direct compassionate and also very much in charge. “You never show any emotion,” observed Issachar to Mike, an observation I would never have dared to make to Miss McCarthy.

“I’m a principal,” said Mike smiling, “I’m not allowed to show any emotion.”

Mike is also a great fan of Thomas Merton, he read my Merton book “Running To The Mountain” more than a decade ago.

We’re having lunch next week or so, and Mike and Sue Silverstein are planning a trip to Bedlam Farm, they are bringing the Silverstein Art Brigade.

I am especially grateful to Mike for getting who I am and letting me in to do my work. He understands the importance of photographing this work and documenting it for people. He understands what being accountable means.

It is working out for all of us, and better than I would have imagined.

And the unthinkable might be happening, I must just be friends with a school principal.

I always liked Marvel comic people.