Sample From “Fear and Loathing in My Head” In my first years as a junior high school teacher I was afraid of the students, afraid that they would realize they had me outnumbered and join forces to hang me out the window. And after I was more experienced, I was less afraid of them and more afraid of the administrators who might burst into my classroom at any moment and realize that I didn’t know the Romantic poets or the subjunctive mood, or, for that matter, what I was doing up there in front of the room. But I soon learned that most of the administrators were too busy hiding the fact that they didn’t know what they were doing to bother with me. There were many other school fears: the fear of standing up in front of the class and teaching Romeo and Juliet with my fly open, of accidentally passing a loud and/or smelly fart, or getting an erection, a double fear if my fly was open. But my biggest fear was a scenario that I played over and over in my head, a nightmare that haunted my dreams all those years I was a teacher. It went like this: Taking advantage of the five minutes between classes, I rush off to the faculty men’s toilet to pee. And while I am standing there trying to rush nature so I can be back in time before the late bell, I get chest pains that I dismiss as too much teacher cafeteria dining. But the pains can’t be ignored and I have a massive coronary that causes me to clutch my chest and pitch forward onto the floor tiles where I bang my head, which ends up partially immersed in the full-length urinal. Of course no one notices that I am not at my post until well into the next period. The kids in my class, grateful for their unexpected freedom, don’t care that I’m not there. In fact, my absence is a cause for their growing celebration, and eventually the disturbance gets so noisy that it can’t be ignored. The math teacher in room T-17 next to mine, a sour woman who wears a bad wig and never liked me very much because my hair was too long and I didn’t wear suit jackets, tries to use the house phone to call the main office. But those phones never work, except when some administrator calls in and disrupts a particularly good lesson. So reluctantly she has to send one of her trustworthy students, always a girl and never a boy, with a note she has penned in her precise penmanship on the teacher stationery she keeps in her drawer, informing them that there is a riot going on in room T-16. However, the messenger girl, who turns out to be not that trustworthy, takes her time getting to the office because she first stops off in the cafeteria to visit her girlfriends who are at lunch, where she shares some gossip and French fries. And then she makes her way down the shop hall to see her boyfriend making footstools in woodshop class. Eventually she arrives in the main office and hands the sealed note to a secretary, who, in turn, passes it on to the only assistant principal she can find. He complains about missing his lunch or being late for a meeting before he treks all the way down to the T-Wing, which is at the furthest end of the school. Once there, the annoyed AP quickly determines that I am not where I am supposed to be, a fact already surmised by the math teacher when she sent the note. Unable to alert the office by house phone in this day before cell phones, he sends off one of the boys, a big mistake, with a hastily printed note in block letters, “SEND HELP!” that never reaches the main office. Instead of delivering the message, the boy springs two of his comrades out of their classes and the three of them run out an unguarded side door and head to the local pizza place for a couple of slices before lunch. Toward the end of the period I am finally discovered with my head still in the urinal by one of the phys ed teachers, the one who early vacated his post guarding the side door that the errant messenger boy and his two friends used to escape, so he could slip into the faculty men’s room to sneak a smoke. Assessing the situation, he first finishes his cigarette and then heads to the office and lets them know that I am down and out on the bathroom tiles in the faculty men’s room on the first floor near the T-Wing. When the EMTs finally arrive, they take their time putting on rubber gloves and kneepads before reluctantly starting CPR. Then they load me with my urine-soaked hair pasted against my face onto a gurney with one broken wheel flap-flap-flapping as they push me through the cafeteria in full view of all the lunching students who are standing on chairs and tables in clear violation of the posted cafeteria rules, cheering the passing of one of their teachers! Fortunately I was able to dodge that particular bullet when I retired after thirty-three years without incident. © 2009 Joseph E. Scalia from Scalia vs The Universe (Back)

Sample

From “Fear and Loathing in My Head”

In my first years as a junior high school teacher I was afraid of the students, afraid that they would realize they had me outnumbered and join forces to hang me out the window. And after I was more experienced, I was less afraid of them and more afraid of the administrators who might burst into my classroom at any moment and realize that I didn’t know the Romantic poets or the subjunctive mood, or, for that matter, what I was doing up there in front of the room. But I soon learned that most of the administrators were too busy hiding the fact that they didn’t know what they were doing to bother with me.

There were many other school fears: the fear of standing up in front of the class and teaching Romeo and Juliet with my fly open, of accidentally passing a loud and/or smelly fart, or getting an erection, a double fear if my fly was open. But my biggest fear was a scenario that I played over and over in my head, a nightmare that haunted my dreams all those years I was a teacher. It went like this:

Taking advantage of the five minutes between classes, I rush off to the faculty men’s toilet to pee. And while I am standing there trying to rush nature so I can be back in time before the late bell, I get chest pains that I dismiss as too much teacher cafeteria dining. But the pains can’t be ignored and I have a massive coronary that causes me to clutch my chest and pitch forward onto the floor tiles where I bang my head, which ends up partially immersed in the full-length urinal. Of course no one notices that I am not at my post until well into the next period. The kids in my class, grateful for their unexpected freedom, don’t care that I’m not there. In fact, my absence is a cause for their growing celebration, and eventually the disturbance gets so noisy that it can’t be ignored. The math teacher in room T-17 next to mine, a sour woman who wears a bad wig and never liked me very much because my hair was too long and I didn’t wear suit jackets, tries to use the house phone to call the main office. But those phones never work, except when some administrator calls in and disrupts a particularly good lesson. So reluctantly she has to send one of her trustworthy students, always a girl and never a boy, with a note she has penned in her precise penmanship on the teacher stationery she keeps in her drawer, informing them that there is a riot going on in room T-16. However, the messenger girl, who turns out to be not that trustworthy, takes her time getting to the office because she first stops off in the cafeteria to visit her girlfriends who are at lunch, where she shares some gossip and French fries. And then she makes her way down the shop hall to see her boyfriend making footstools in woodshop class. Eventually she arrives in the main office and hands the sealed note to a secretary, who, in turn, passes it on to the only assistant principal she can find. He complains about missing his lunch or being late for a meeting before he treks all the way down to the T-Wing, which is at the furthest end of the school. Once there, the annoyed AP quickly determines that I am not where I am supposed to be, a fact already surmised by the math teacher when she sent the note. Unable to alert the office by house phone in this day before cell phones, he sends off one of the boys, a big mistake, with a hastily printed note in block letters, “SEND HELP!” that never reaches the main office. Instead of delivering the message, the boy springs two of his comrades out of their classes and the three of them run out an unguarded side door and head to the local pizza place for a couple of slices before lunch.

Toward the end of the period I am finally discovered with my head still in the urinal by one of the phys ed teachers, the one who early vacated his post guarding the side door that the errant messenger boy and his two friends used to escape, so he could slip into the faculty men’s room to sneak a smoke. Assessing the situation, he first finishes his cigarette and then heads to the office and lets them know that I am down and out on the bathroom tiles in the faculty men’s room on the first floor near the T-Wing.

When the EMTs finally arrive, they take their time putting on rubber gloves and kneepads before reluctantly starting CPR. Then they load me with my urine-soaked hair pasted against my face onto a gurney with one broken wheel flap-flap-flapping as they push me through the cafeteria in full view of all the lunching students who are standing on chairs and tables in clear violation of the posted cafeteria rules, cheering the passing of one of their teachers!

Fortunately I was able to dodge that particular bullet when I retired after thirty-three years without incident.

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Scalia vs The Universe