UFSD 71 Sample

UFSD 71

182

It was a good summer, but not a great summer.

“Nothing’s the same!” Jesse’s grandfather had told him earlier that morning during one of the old man’s more lucid moments. “Summers too hot. Winters too cold. Foods don’t taste the same. Ever since the Russians landed men on the Moon.”

“We landed them on the Moon, not the Russians. The Russians sent up Sputnik,” Jesse had replied.

But the old man wasn’t listening or not remembering what he’d said. “What?”

“Never mind. Please get out of the bathroom, Pop. I’m going to be late for my first day of school.”

“You’re too old for school,” the old man said. “You should get a job.”

“I got a job–at a school. I’m a teacher.”

The summer had been exceptionally hot, but with entirely too much rain and Labor Day came early. On a scale of one to ten, as summers went, this one, Jesse’s last summer, was a seven… at best a seven and a half… but certainly not an eight. If he were still using the “Helen of Troy–Face That Launched a Thousand Ships” scale he developed after reading Homer in Ancient Greek Literature, it would have been about a 750-ship-launch summer. But a thousand was too unwieldy, so he reduced everything in his life–food, movies, girls, summers–to a number somewhere in that simplified one-to-ten range and now life could be reduced to its lowest terms.

Two hours later Jesse’s old Mercury wheezed and farted to a stop at the curb in front of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Memorial High School. He looked across the newly mowed lawn and his entire brief life flashed in front of his eyes like a drowning man’s. All twenty-one years four months ran through in one quick montage of silent single frames.

He clicked off the ignition and just like that it was behind him, college, the “best years of his life” and this seven-and-a-half summer, his final summer. Ahead of him loomed the building that would be his workplace, his home away from home, his prison for the next one hundred and eighty-two school days, adulthood and the specter of death.

He didn’t feel like an adult. He felt uncomfortable straddling two worlds, and even more uncomfortable in the suit pants that his mother bought for him the week before. They were too tight, but not at all in a good way like the jeans that were his second skin, his uniform in the old life. His face burned from scraping clean the beard he had cultivated while he was away at college. He had shaved the night before and let his father cut his hair because Jesse knew that a beard and long hair would make a bad first impression. He certainly didn’t want anyone to think he was a hippie, one of the great unwashed of the Woodstock Generation, now that he was a teacher. His feet already hurt in the unforgiving stiff leather shoes that cut across his instep and pinched his toes.

Inside the car Jesse shook from nervousness and he wiped the sweat from his forehead. He stared through the dirty windshield and the building shivered in waves of the early morning heat. It was going to be a scorcher. He could feel the mounting hysteria gathering just below the surface into a sour ball in his stomach, threatening to explode onto the dashboard in the form of partially digested scrambled eggs and buttered toast that his mother had insisted he eat for breakfast. “You can’t begin the first day of your teaching career on an empty stomach. Eat,” she said, spooning more runny eggs onto his plate.

Ever since kindergarten, the first day of school had been difficult for him. It meant a week of lost sleep, fits of crying, stomach cramps and diarrhea. And now, after all those years of first days from kindergarten through college, nothing had changed. His insides rumbled and percolated and Jesse felt like he was going to explode.

“You're too intense,” his father said the night before. “You have to learn how to relax.”

“That’s easy for you to say.” He rushed around his grandfather who was blocking his path to the bathroom. The old man’s dementia was worse and he spent much of his time wandering back and forth between the trenches in France and the single bathroom in their Brooklyn house.

“It’s a job,” his father tried to assure him. “Do your best. That’s all you can do. They can’t expect more than that.”

“It’s more than just a job, it’s a profession. It’s a career,” Jesse called from behind the closed door. “A responsibility. Why, probably for the rest of my life–” His words were garbled by the flushing toilet. The door opened and Jesse, his face drawn and pale, looked sheepishly at his father. There was perspiration on his forehead and his eyes were red and watery from lack of sleep.

“What?”

“I said, in ten years what if one of those kids can’t get a job because of some mistake I make? Because of some failure on my part? Because they don’t know their personal pronouns?”

His father smiled and shook his head. “Life isn’t like that. You went to school, studied, learned and became a teacher. What are you worried about? I never went to college. I didn’t even graduate high school, but I know that things have a way of working out. Life has a way of happening when you aren’t paying attention, and it doesn’t rise or fall on personal pronouns whatever they are. You're too intense. You have to learn how to relax.”

Jesse turned away abruptly and walked, head down, into his bedroom. His father followed. “You see these,” Jesse pointed to the books lining the shelves along the wall. “I read every one of them in the last sixteen years. I have a B.A. in English. I graduated cum laude, but I don’t know anything.”

His father put his hand on Jesse’s shoulder. “I remember when you thought you knew it all. I remember when I thought I knew it all.” But his attempt at humor was lost on his son.

“Now I don’t know the difference between Romanticism and the writers of the twentieth century. I don’t remember the name of one Naturalist writer. What if somebody asks me something and I don’t know the answer? What then?”

His father looked at him with love and smiled. “You tell them you don’t know and you’ll look it up.”

“You just don’t understand. This isn’t being a barber. I’m a teacher,” he said. It was an unkind cut his father didn’t deserve and he regretted it as soon as he said it.

“Well, by tomorrow at this time one day will be over and you’ll feel better. Come on, it’s supper time.”

“I can’t eat. I feel sick.” The smell of his mother’s pot roast filled the house. She made it because it was his favorite. The condemned man’s final request. “Tell Mom I can’t eat.” He took a book from the shelf, Comparative Literature, Romanticism to the 20th Century. He chased his grandfather out of the bathroom again and locked the door behind him.

“You're too intense. You have to learn to relax,” Jesse said to himself. His new gray sharkskin suit jacket was limp and wrinkled after the forty-two-mile ride on the Southern State Parkway. He pulled it on and buttoned the collar of his sweaty shirt; his perspiration had wilted the starch and the collar ends curled up under his chin. He slipped up the tie knot and had one last look around his old car, his old life. He pushed open the car door and his childhood, his adolescence were over as simply as that.

Thoughts ricocheted around his brain like bullets in a flowing stream of consciousness, a disjointed soliloquy like Molly Bloom’s in James Joyce’s Ulysses. Ugh! The thought of the novel that had made his life hell for a semester caused an additional stab in his stomach. But gladly, he thought, would he trade this new hell for old Molly Bloom.

One hundred eighty-two school days only six months laid back to back no Saturdays Sundays or holidays twenty-year retirement Do teachers retire after twenty years maybe forty years and I’ll be sixty-two God forty years times one hundred eighty-two days makes only seven thousand two hundred eighty days until retirement no Saturdays, Sundays or holidays. He turned up the cement walk that led to the center doors of the school and felt inside his jacket to be sure he had remembered a pen.

The mark of a good teacher is always be prepared like the Marines or is it the Boy Scouts and never lose control control Thorndike page fifty-six in the upper right hand corner control begins with the establishment of a logical and consistent system in the classroom from the first day’s lesson plans The eight parts of speech punctuation including the apostrophe on the first two days leaves only one hundred and eighty more days to fill Shit. The sound of his leather heels on the walk reverberated off the building, broadcasting across the lawn a warning of his approach to some seagulls feeding on bits of garbage in the grass. They complained and scattered, wheeling suddenly into the air in noisy flight that startled him.

Discipline establish control from the first day the first second stay in your seat desks in straight rows no papers on the floor no talking no calling out raise your hand before you speak. The segment of a recurring nightmare exploded into his consciousness. Three times in the last week the same dark dream had shaken him awake in a cold sweat. Thirty kids flying paper airplanes, standing on their desks calling out answers without raising their hands, throwing garbage on the floor. Backed into a corner by their savage smiling faces like a scene from the novel The Lord of the Flies, he was bombarded with balled-up aluminum foil, lunch bags, pieces of stale bread, smelly tuna fish sandwiches, chalk erasers, rocks, stones, desks and chairs. A bang, a flash, a silver bullet in slow motion getting bigger and closer until he could read his name written across it–JESSE TIETJEN! That was always when he woke up. He shivered involuntarily and groaned audibly. He was sweating tiny rivulets that ran down his back and under the waistband of the new underwear his mother had also bought him, down his legs and into his new socks.

The best schools have the least kids in the hall Keep them in their seats in the room for fuck’s sake What if I fuck up Can’t say fuck Can’t think fuck Erase fuck from my mind No more fucks FUCK.

“Fuck!” he said out loud and recoiled when he heard it reverberate off the facade of the building. He thought about cutting across the grass, but stayed instead on the winding cement path that first curved away from the entrance before it turned back.

Keep off the grass Keep off Don’t don’t don’t. He mopped his face with his damp handkerchief and glanced at the clock tower above the center of the school. The black hands indicated it was seventeen minutes after nine. Seventeen after nine Christ I’m late on the first goddamned day the first goddamned day impossible Fuck!

He was such an over-preparer he had left a whole forty-five minutes extra for travel, even set his watch ahead ten minutes so he'd have extra extra time. He looked at his wristwatch, the new Benrus, a graduation gift from his parents. Eight thirty-two. He checked the second hand and listened for the tick. “Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Benrus takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’!” he said out loud. Or is that Timex even after the most grueling test of all strapped to the wrist of a suburban high school teacher for one hundred and eighty-two days no Saturdays Sundays or holidays. He felt foolish and looked around to see if anyone had overheard him. No jokes Teaching is a serious job a serious business a serious profession the world’s oldest profession or is that prostitution Then what’s the world’s second oldest profession. He reached the main entrance. It was ugly and drab. The cramps in his lower tract told him in no uncertain terms that he had to find a bathroom immediately.

The word is defecate no shits no fucks no errors no jokes Christ I wish I was back in college Were back in college subjunctive mood I never understood subjunctive but I can’t say I was absent the day they taught it Note to me Look up subjunctive as soon as I get home Can’t mess up the kids eager yearning faces ready to suck up knowledge like thirsty sponges kids expecting the very best deserving what they expect. He climbed the steps and except for the rumble in his stomach he felt that he was almost in control. No matter what I can do it I will do it I’ll be the best teacher in the school teacher of the year the decade the century best in the whole country in the world dedicated hard working sincere honest human the best not just an eight or a nine but a perfect ten.

He put his hand on the doorknob. Something written on the wall near the door caught his eye. It was scrawled in small block letters, crudely printed in black paint or marker. He leaned closer to read the five cryptic words that might be an omen, an inspiration, like a good luck message in a Chinese fortune cookie.

“THIS SCHOOL SUKS BIG DICK.”

Jesse made another note that he would have to review spelling with his classes.