Brontosaurus and Other Stories

Hang in There Mr. Z.

The room was scary quiet. Kavin's five periods of U.S. History were hands down the loudest collection of teenagers ever assembled into a single location. Each subsequent class shattered the volume record set by the previous, and the current lack of noise in the room felt like a foreboding absence. Kavin should have been correcting papers or planning lessons or something, but lacked motivation, despite the collection of cheesy motivational posters on the classroom wall. The dictionary is the only place success comes before work, coupled with a man standing on the summit of a presumably dangerous, unclimbable peak. His beard was covered in ice as if he had burrowed through a glacier, and he grimaced like he had just stabbed himself with a crampon. That poster sucked the motivation right out of a person, and every time Kavin looked at it he just wanted to curl up by a fire and take a nap. He would have taken the posters down long ago but the room wasn't really his to redecorate. They did make him wonder about Mr. Atkinson though.

Just as Kavin was about to check his Facebook again, an office aide appeared in the classroom with a green appointment slip from the office. "There must be some mistake," Kavin said. "I don't have any students right now. It's my prep."

"I know," the girl said. She handed him the green slip anyway, and then slid away so discreetly he wondered if she'd even been there.

The green slip indeed had his name in the name spot, scribed in perfect, loopy cursive. The Principal box was checked, along with the Immediately box. Even with the written evidence in his hand it still felt like a mistake. Since when did a teacher get called to the principal's office? Granted, Kavin was a substitute, but he was long term. A contract was signed. It was official for six to eight weeks, not to mention only fourteen units, a reading lab, and a student teaching gig separated him from being a fully credentialed educator.

But despite all that, Kavin still had absolutely no idea what he was doing. He worried that he had broken some law or union code, or that some tightly wound parent had lodged a formal complaint concerning his ineptitude. Perhaps he swore in front of a class again and somebody told. Maybe they knew about his compulsive Facebook checking. He had no idea why he was being summoned to the principal's office, but was certain, beyond any doubt, that he had landed in some serious doo-doo.

Even though the green slip clearly indicated immediately, he still had to wait when he got to the office. Principals always made you wait. Kavin spent a lot of time in the principal's office growing up and had to wait each and every time. The last time he got called to a principal's office he waited, way back in tenth grade, and waiting there at the office door with that little green appointment slip brought it all back.

In tenth grade, Kavin was one of many students suspected of pulling a prank which eventually led to a school-wide evacuation. An infamous pair of gym shorts were set afire and stuffed into the P.E. equipment cart, and the resulting conflagration damaged not only the main stage and the MPR but also part of the school kitchen. Those shorts had been on display in the boy's locker room for weeks and were super gross. The anonymous hero that perpetrated the act did the school a favor, even if everyone had to go a couple months without pizza or garlic bread or those delicious cheese zombies. Nobody cared that the drama class had to perform their production of Death of a Salesman on the football field in front of an audience of thirteen people. Nobody cared that Biff Loman's soliloquy went unheard due to the poor acoustics and shoddy sound equipment. Mostly people were upset about the cheese zombies, and even then it was worth it because those disgusting shitty shorts were finally gone.

They grilled Kavin that day in the principal's office, but he never cracked. He may have lied a little when he said he wasn't involved, and lied a lot when he said he didn't know who did it. Everyone knew, everyone except for the grownups trying to figure it out. Kavin remembered thinking that grownups were so clueless, and promised himself that he would never be that clueless if he managed to grow up. Coincidentally, after that moment in the principal's office in the tenth grade, Kavin never got in trouble again, not during school hours at least. It wasn't because he stopped making bad decisions, but because he finally figured out how to avoid getting caught by clueless grownups. And then people started calling him mister and he was suddenly a grownup himself. Still waiting to see how that turns out.