Schoolville: Chapter Three
“Mr. America, walk on by
your schools that do not teach.”
– Frank Zappa
Chapter Three
I opened my classroom door and entered the blackened room. Since it was a room on the inside of the building, there were no windows, just four walls somewhere in the dark. The light from the door penetrated a few feet into the room, starkly projecting my shadow onto the floor in front of me. The rest of the room lay in darkness, reminiscent of a Tolkien fantasy about caves and trolls. Adding to this dungeon-like impression was a stench; actually, it was an eye-watering reek.
Choking and coughing, I immediately stepped backward, fumbling along the wall for a light switch while still holding my box. I was afraid to put it down because the room smelled as if I was standing on the edge of a vast pool of urine, unseen in the dark.
My God! Did the toilets spend the whole summer backing up into this room or something? I choked as my throat began burning and my eyes burned.
I flipped on the light switch. About half of the fluorescent lights slowly blinked on, dimly. The other half showed no signs of working. There wasn’t a pool of urine, much to my relief. That was the good news. The bad news was that this was the smell of my classroom.
“Now you know why the classrooms around here are assigned based on seniority!” B.D. snorted in disgust. “This foul-smelling shithole’s a place that no one else would want if they knew about it!”
My days of summer training with the district came raging back to mind. As I stood in the door of that dim urinal, I recalled listening to the pep talk from the district superintendent, Dr. Nedermeyer. “Mr. Kyle, you are here because you are the best.
B.D. had had a field day with that comment. “You haven’t taught one single day yet! How would he know you’re the best? That HAS to be bullshit!”
Dr. Nedermeyer blathered on blissfully unaware that someone wasn’t buying his load of crap. “We take great pride in our schools. We expect you to take pride in being a ‘Lion’ too.”
The school mascot was a lion. I had been unable to make the connection between Woodrow Wilson and lions, but frankly, I didn’t care because it was just another addition to the growing list of public school mysteries for which I could find no clues. Regardless, I chose to feel flattered that day when Dr. Nedermeyer had called me “the best”. Now I realized that what Dr. Nedermeyer had really meant was that I was the best idiot they could find who was stupid enough to sign on to teach in a room they hadn’t been shown, and accept them at their word that it was a good room. Assuming that I even had a room and didn’t float, which I didn’t even know to ask about at the time.
“But remember…you’re lucky,” B.D’s laughter intruded. “You don’t have to float!”
“Kiss butt, B.D!” I replied. I wasn’t ready for this discussion as I looked around my room.
Silently measuring, I could see that it was tiny, probably less than 90 by 90 feet. Into this hole, I had been instructed to find a place for my desk, teaching areas, an overhead projector on a rolling stand, bookshelves for text books, file cabinets, a teacher’s computer on a stand, and storage cabinets for supplies; oh, and of course I also had to find room for thirty desks. The district had promised me that class sizes never exceeded 30 students. This was also a lie.
A dusty gray film covered everything. Against one wall, taking up precious space, was a sofa that had likely been apartment furniture in the 70s. It was similar in color to those lockers in the hallway. I could easily imagine this room with shag carpet under that shocking sofa when it was new.
Coughing, I put my cardboard box down on my desk and walked across the room to the storage cabinet. Something was odd about it. The orange and yellow doors were dingy, as though covered by a film of dust, but I had never seen dust settle on a vertical surface before, and I was intrigued as to how the law of gravity seemed not to apply in my dungeon. Running a finger over the door of the cabinet, the dust didn’t come off. Looking more closely, I realized that it wasn’t dust; a thin coat of gray mold covered the entire surface. Quickly looking around at the rest of the pathetic room, I suddenly realized that everything was covered with a perfectly even coat of the same gray stuff.
“Now we know why is smells!” B.D. sneered.
At least I have my lesson plans written out! I sighed.
Musing over the flotsam in my dungeon, and trying to sort out the jetsam of my thoughts, a blast of cold air suddenly jerked me out of my grim trance. Glancing up I realized that I was standing under the vent. A scrap of paper floated up and down across the floor, slid to the wall, and settled there. The air conditioning in the library building had finally been turned on, and apparently it worked very well.
“At least the mold won’t continue to grow.” B.D. observed.
Meandering around the room, I inspected the wreckage. The computer wouldn’t boot up. The printer had no cartridges in it. There were only two electrical sockets in the entire room, and both of them were in the same corner.
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“I guess you know where your desk is gonna be.” B.D. smiled.
The teacher’s desk had only three legs; the fourth had been jerry-rigged from a piece of an old student desk. Consequently, it wasn’t level, and rocked violently. The drawers wouldn’t completely close either. Magnanimously, the school had provided a cheap five-foot particleboard table, which if positioned at right angles to the desk could actually be of use.
There was a television mounted on the wall. I wondered if it worked. Much to my surprise, it did; it received three channels of static. Well, the students’ desks are what’s really important. At least I have those!
I walked around the room and found the same gray mold on all the walls. Under the mold was that dark wood veneer from the 1960s, which used to be so popular before someone discovered wallboard and paint.
I ran my hand over the chalkboard. It was as rough and grainy as a cinder block.
Silly me, and I thought these were supposed to be smooth.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I suppose I expected the principal to walk in, wave a magic wand and make this room acceptable. Maybe I was expecting the custodians to show up to help me. I damned well knew one thing. This couldn’t be what Dr. Nedermeyer expected my room to look like in five days, when school started.
“Hmmm, I’m not so sure about that. Maybe this is exactly what they have in mind.” B.D. mused.
Taking a deep breath, I made a conscious effort to relax.
B.D. cleared his throat. “Ummm Hmmm!”
“Not now B.D. I don’t want to hear it.” I snapped.
“You can’t fool me; I know what you’re thinking.” B.D. quietly laughed.
“You’ve got that right! I would never have taken this job if I had seen my real classroom last spring!”
“…and that’s exactly why you didn’t see it!” B.D. chortled as he sat on the desk and began to rock it back and forth annoyingly.
“Say…” B.D. suddenly chortled…”Maybe they went out and found damaged linoleum to glue down here in keeping with the ghetto motif!” Many of the linoleum squares were partially gone, revealing the concrete below.
Maybe things aren’t as bad as they seem, I thought to myself. Maybe I am being too negative.
“That’s the right attitude,” Horton, another of my inner voices, smugly spoke up for the first time all day.
B.D. and I glanced over at her. “Oh look who finally showed up?” B.D. sneered.
For years, I had noticed that my conscience (B.D. called her ‘My naive coping mechanism and nothing more’) had the voice of my third grade teacher, Mrs. Horton, who constantly nagged me to “do the right thing.” By the sixth grade, I had dropped the “Mrs.” and simply called her “Horton”. I used to try very hard to please Horton. I killed myself for years attempting to live up to her expectations. However, during my four years on active duty in the military, I realized that Horton was an idiot whose naïveté only served to make me look like an idiot as well.
Horton lived by a very simple code, which never worked when life rose above the complexity of third grade. Horton had a formulaic answer for every question. Even though I kept hoping she had something to offer — not that I could get rid of her anyway — I am generally much happier and successful when I don’t bother to listen to her.
Horton had been quietly absent all day. Now that a complication was developing, Horton was going to make sure that I did “the right thing”. She didn’t see the irony.
“That is what a professional teacher would do,” she continued with her careful instruction. “If this is the famous Wilson High, you can do just as well as your colleagues.”
B.D, who utterly despised Horton, angrily jumped her ass with a sneer. “Famous? Wilson High is famous for football, not academics!”
Walking past the sofa again, I discovered that the urine smell was rolling off it like a bank of fog. The effect was rather like tear gas. My eyes watered, and breathing was suddenly quite difficult. I backed away.
This sofa’s gotta go! Holding my breath, I walked around to the end and pushed it to the door, out into the hallway, and against the far wall. Then I went looking for some Clorox, a bucket, and a sponge.
