No Hall Pass

Maybe it’s the cartoons, rife with dancing animals and French accented candelabras. Or maybe it’s their diet of candy, marshmallows, and marshmallow flavored candy. It might even be their habit of sticking things up their noses, and later eating their crayon tinted boogers. Regardless of how it’s occurred, though, one thing is clear: nine-year olds are sneaky, conniving bastards.

With that said, my first day back in third grade didn’t start all that bad. I was called to fill in for a reading specialist. Tasked with helping students with the long and short of vowels: I came prepared: for the morning groups, I thought A Clockwork Orange, while the ones later in the day would kick it off with Kafka before we delved into Dostoyevsky. Of course, I was disappointed when I learned that the reading material was already provided. Instead of ultraviolence and existentialism, the kids were set to read about Thanksgiving and the misgivings of elementary school. With all due respect to their authors, these books sucked.

Still, I need to admit that I did learn some things. For instance, did you know that Thanksgiving is a holiday in which people frequently eat turkey, cranberries, and corn? Now, you do! And, were you aware that, until Bridget came along, Mrs. Rumford almost ruined third grade for Liza? Third Grade is Terrible, a book whose foreboding title served as a portent for things to come, gave me that gem. But, I digress. Never mind Liza and Mrs. Rumford, I was soon to learn just how terrible third grade could be.

I found myself settled in my quite comfortably after a morning of this. With just my lunch break and two more classes to go, I was lulled into a serene, and false, sense of security. Lunch bag in tow, I left my room and headed towards the teacher’s lounge. Before I got anywhere, though, I felt a slight pull at the back of my shirt.

“Are you in for Mrs. Green?”, the cutest nine-year old you’ve ever seen said. With her hair pulled loosely into pigtails and her pink shirt festooned with unicorns, she was so sweet that just looking at her gave me cavities. I later learned her name was Juanita, a name so full of vowels that I didn’t see a reason for her to be in the reading group.

“Yup,” I answered, confident that this young girl, the very archetype of precociousness, would be the icing on this cake day.

She paused, and looked me up and down. For a second, I felt like meat—Wait. That doesn’t make sense. Nine year olds don’t appraise meat. Instead, I felt like a giant plush stuffed animal. Maybe a bear, or a giraffe. Yeah, I think Juanita would like giraffes, with their cute eyes, goofy smiles, and large, easily stabbed jugular veins. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

“You’ll do,” Juanita said, before skipping away. I went to lunch slightly confused, like a beagle at a symphony stocked solely with dog whistle players. Still, I had nothing to worry about. Or so I thought.

Upon my return from the teacher’s lounge, I was introduced to the game that I was to play with my last two classes. Called Clods, the game involved flipping over differently colored blocks in order to spell out simple words. The students in my first class, a fine group of sugar-addled booger eaters, loved the game. The eventual winner, Becky, shows really promise. Given her ability to construct monosyllabic words, her chances of winning the Republican Presidential ticket in 2012 are strong.

I waved the little tykes off and took a second to properly congratulate myself on a day well taught. I even closed my eyes briefly, pausing to imagine the parades that would one day be held to celebrate my moxie.

“Click. “

My eyes popped opening to see Juanita locking the classroom door as her three classmates walked in.

“Oh, you don’t need to lock the door,” I said.

She laughed, and shrugged. I laughed too, but quickly stopped when she gave me the sort of look that makes me stop whatever they’re doing so they can make sure their wills are in order.

I tried to recover my composure by pulling out the attendance sheet.

“All right,” I said,” it looks like we have Marc, Jake W., Jake V., and Juanita. Why doesn’t everyone take a seat?”.

“Oh, seats won’t be what will be taking,” Juanita said casually. I looked at her quizzically, though I made sure to avoid eye contact.

“Well, Mrs. Green has us scheduled to play Clods today,” I said. I set up the pieces. “Who wants to go first?”.

Jake W., Jake V., and Marc looked in unison towards Juanita.

“I’m going first,” she said.

“Are you sure—“, I said, before being cut off.

“I said that I’m going first,” Juanita said. I was just about to chastise her, but she flashed the sort of smile that keeps grandmothers’ hearts beating. By the way, tell your grandmother she can toss out her Pacemaker; a little girl with pigtails and a few missing teeth is all she needs besides Golden Girls.

Disarmed, I let Juanita go first. My eyes looked around the room lazily as Juanita took her turn. Look at that, I thought to myself, Jake W. likes the Jets. A future sadist, for sure.

“I’m done,” Juanita said. I smiled and looked down to see what words Juanita was able to randomly form.

GIVE US YOUR WALLET

My eyes bulged as I took in what I was reading. I tried to shake it off with a laugh.

“Well, that was strange,” I said, eliciting a sigh from Juanita. “Your turn Marc”.

Before I was able to finish, he had already begun flipping over blocks. I looked down to his arrangement.

IT WAS NOT A COINCIDENCE, YOU IDIOT

I jumped out of my seat in horror.

“How the hell did you spell coincidence?”, I screamed. “What’s going on?”.

“I thought you were a teacher. Can’t you read?”, Juanita asked.

I nodded.

“Then give us your wallet,” Marc said. Though he was only pushing four feet, he had the girth, demeanor, and voice of Barry White. Even if I could repel him physically, his soulful voice would surely be the end of me. I knew I couldn’t resist its charms.

“I…I don’t even have cash on me,” I stammered. The four were now closing in on me.

“That’s okay,” Juanita sniggered,” I take credit”.

“Jake V., it’s your turn!”, I screeched. My voice cracked, betraying me at the time I needed it most. I made a mental note to have a stern talk with it later, when my life wasn’t at risk.

Moving closer still, Jake flipped over a few blocks on the table.

STAY QUITE AND YOU WILL NOT GET HURT

“Stay quite? What does that mean”, I said, before getting hit in the side of the head by a copy of the all too true Third Grade is Terrible.

“Which one of you threw that at me?”, I asked. Instead of a reply, another book, thrown by Jake V., lofted over my head.

“You throw as poorly as you spell,” I yelled, as the four of them began their onslaught. Pencils, rulers, and markers all flew my way. I felt like I was caught in a tornado during a stationary store convention. I backed myself into a corner, trying to doge as much as I could. Having exhausted their supply of school supplies, a shoe whizzed by my left ear. The next, thrown more carefully, caught me squarely in the nose.

“Oh, it smells! It smells so much that it burns!”, I screamed, mortified at the body odor a nine year old could possess.

“The worst is yet to come,” Juanita said. I picked my head up from my bruising nose. The reality of my quickly disappearing mortality dawned on me.

In each of their puny, chubby hands was a library-bound dictionary. I faced a gauntlet of easily three thousand pages of nouns, verbs, and prepositions. I faced getting hit in the head with the word “concussion” eight times. My life, once so promising, appeared to be ending with Webster, at the hands of Juanita and her three henchmen.

I’m not the praying type. Even when the cards are against me, when all hope seems lost, I think that a person has to hold himself accountable, has to count on himself, and not hope for rescue from above.

No, I’m not sort of person who prays; I beg.

“Just put those books down, and I’ll buy you all bikes, but no bike helmets. I’ll let watch R rated movies that scar your psyche for years. I’ll take you to the zoo and I won’t yell at you when you try to kick pigeons even though I think you’re barbaric. I’ll…”, I stopped, as I noticed something strange: all four of the children seemed to be getting woozy. The four sets of legs were becoming wobbly, and within just a few seconds, Marc, the Jakes, and Juanita, the nine-year old Capone, all collapsed to the floor. The dictionaries fell too, though that wasn’t what caught my eye.

Flittering to the ground as the four thugs went down were thousands of wrappers. From licorice to candy bars, gummy worms to caramel coated fruit snacks, each kid seemed to have enough candy to last him through two viewings of Roots. And then it dawned on me.

They crashed. These future diabetics, who indulged on sugar like toilet paper at a buffet, were undone by their closest friend.

“Serves you right,” I said as I leaned down. Tying their shoelaces together might not teach them a lesson about right and wrong, but it would be funny. And, in the end, the real lesson they were set to learn was just how terrible third grade could be. Bastards.

There she was: a musician, an artist, maybe even a hero; alone in the world but for her guitar. She had transcended the realm of mere high school music teacher and was now, surely, a legend.

The image was only slightly diminished by her Peanuts sweater, stained liberally either by Ketchup or blood.

And the fact that she was standing outside of the cafeteria, staring coldly at the mass of teenagers.

Oh, and she was playing “Deck The Halls”, on that trusty guitar as if the song had been implicated in the brutal murder of her grandmother. She strummed not so much to play the song, but to exact certain revenge on each and every one of the notes.

But, other than those minor, trifling things, she was very much a muse.

It was only with a morsel of hesitation that I tried to amble past her in the hallway, hoping to go undetected. It wasn’t that I was left unmoved by her artistry, or that I hadn’t awe for her presence.

Instead, I was scared for my life.

Even from a few feet away, I could see small pools of saliva forming at the corners of her mouth. Her hair was in shambles. Her eyes, perhaps once blue like the sky of a calm and pacific day, were now red with the rage of one thousand Hells. Scratch marks crisscrossed her body, turning her skin an inhuman crimson. As I tried to tip-toe past her, I could smell the undeniable odors of human sweat and gasoline permeating in my direction.

Though I was quiet, as quiet as one can be when their young, promising life is on the line, she still heard me. Her fingers stopped strumming. To be honest, this was mostly a relief. For the past few seconds of playing, sparks were coming off of the fret, and the music itself began to sound uncannily like the sort of thing you’d hear when two mechanical reapers fornicate. Still, I had no desire to interrupt her: I was too young to die. After all, I still hadn’t seen the Mark Wahlberg remake of Planet of the Apes.

“Hello, Mrs. McFarland,” I stammered, the words hanging in my throat, as I felt lynched with dread.

She turned slowly. Everything negative I said about her from a distance was instantly multiplied tenfold. Gone was a mild-mannered middle-aged multi-talented music teacher. In her place was a succubus.

“Your sweater is looking awfully…,”, I hesitated, unsure if any lie could possibly save my suddenly damned soul.

“…war-torn, “I said, unable to stop my true feelings from being heard. I quickly chastised myself. Of all things to do, I insulted this she-demon. Of course, I was only being honest: Linus and Charlie looked like they had been set upon by advancing militia intent on robbing the former of his blanket and the latter of his vital organs.

Still, I could have lied. I could have complimented on how her shoes, even without shoelaces and even though they were scarred by vicious bite marks, looked absolutely fetching. With only a bit of facetiousness, I could have convinced her of how classically beautiful her toothy snarl was. I could have told her how she might be perfect for a remake of Mommie Dearest. Instead, I went and told the truth. I could see my handsome life flashing before my eyes.

She opened her mouth, and I was surprised to hear her speak. I doubted, at this point, she had the faculty to do much more than tear out people’s hearts for devouring.

“Do you know what it’s like?”, she asked. The words were gravelly, and seemed to lurch up her throat and out her mouth.

“No. Uh, what…what’s like?”, I managed to spit out.

“Every day, “ she said, now not even looking at me. Instead, her eyes were glazed, and her neck craned upward. “Hundreds of rotten kids walk through my door. Hundreds of kids signed up to learn how to play guitar.”

“What’s wrong with that,” I asked, though I was unsure if in her state she could hear me.

“But none of them want to learn Segovia, Clapton, or even Jimmy Page, that bastard, “ she went on, but then quickly stopped. Her eyes dropped down again, penetrating into mine. For a split second, I could have sworn she was boring into my soul,.

“Do you know what they want to learn?, “ she questioned.

“Carlos Santana?”, I offered, hoping she had a thing for Latin men.

“Lady Gaga! Lil Wayne! Miley Cyrus!”, she screamed.

At that very moment, one million infants started crying inconsolably. Corpses didn’t just roll over; they did the Electric Slide. Her voice was that piercing.

“Yeah, they are pretty awful, “ I said. “But…”, I started, before she interrupted.

“Pretty awful? Lady Gaga sounds like the lovechild of two deaf parakeets. Lil Wayne hasn’t been able to hit a high note since he lost them all in his nappy dreadlocks. And Miley Cyrus,” she fumed.

This time it was my turn to interrupt.

“You have to admit, though,” I said,”Pokerface is a really catchy song”.

Her head quickly spun around, giving me little doubt as to whether or not she still had a spine. I could faintly detect smoke pulsing from her nostrils.

“What did you say?”, she demanded of me.

“Well, it’s just that…you know, Lady Gaga made a really catchy pop song”, I finished, breathing what I was sure was my last breath.

“AHHH!”, she screamed. Windows blew out all across the tri-state area.

She quickly ripped the guitar strap off of her neck. Grabbing it with both hands like a battle axe she swung it, smashing it against the wall. Not content with having her instrument in a few pieces, she began jumping up and down on the splinters, only pausing to tear out strands of her mussed-up hair.

More than a few students in the cafeteria dropped their hamburgers mid-mouth, spoiling their lunch. Later, I heard that one defecated himself not once, but four dozen times, only stopping after the doctors induced his coma.

Seeing that I had little add to the situation, I slinked away. I hardly realized it, but I actually began humming, and even singing, as I made my way down the hallway.

“You can’t see, can’t see my poker face…”.