Escape From the Second Grade

Escape From the Second Grade

The rain trickled into my daydream. It was barely noticeable at first, and then the rivulets swelled into engorged rivers splashing down on the dancing panda and drowning the bagpipe playing midgets. The exploding thunder of a nearby lightning strike slammed me back into reality. I choked noisily on a chunk of air and slurped the spaghetti stream of drool back into my mouth. Twenty three third graders spun their heads in my direction and glared at me for a two second eternity. I slid the back of my wrist across my face trying to mop up any stray saliva. My heart pounded loud enough to mute the world into a muffled roar. I began to panic under the deafening silence, then someone snorted a chuckle and the whole class erupted into laughter.
Mrs. Evans stopped scratching at the blackboard with her tiny piece of chalk and turned to the class. Twenty three years of teaching elementary school had honed her eyes into precision equipment and she zeroed in on the cause of the disturbance. Her robotic teacher’s mind analyzed the sounds from her peripheral and replayed the surveillance tape recorded by the eyes in the back of her head. She processed all the info in a fraction of a second.
“Welcome back to our world Mr. Ferguson.” She growled. Her voice was gravel coated from three decades of sucking on menthol cigarettes, her hatred of youth sharpened by a thousand lonely nights snuggling up to a bottle of Jim Beam. Her stubby teeth looked like nibblets of frozen corn, haphazardly stuck into her brown gums by a blind man. Her drab copper hair spun around her head in a stringy oily mess, cropped short with self inflicted hair cuts. She barely straightened out from her hunch to reach five feet but she stretched out her polyester pant suits to the point of structural failure. She was more round than tall, sort of like an angry beach ball that nobody wants to play with. She even smelled bad. I don’t mean B.O. bad, I mean she smelled horrid. She just gave off this odor of pickled clams packed in mothballs.
Oh yeah, she was mean as hell too.
She was just plain nasty. Junk yard dog nasty. The kind of nasty that dissolves anything nice around it and putrefies everyone that it touches.
She had fifty years of hate and despair churning around inside of her, boiling up uncontrollably until it fulminated like acid over the world that she could control, the young lives she was supposed to be enriching. Instead, she suffocated them in the bile of her own self-pity and twisted their days into nightmares.
The six chalk dusted hours I spent in her hellish universe everyday were pure torture. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. Up to that point, school was my refuge, my sanctuary. It was my reprieve from the chaotic alcohol induced torment I had to tiptoe through at home. Now school was worse than home. At least at home I sometimes knew when my dad was itching to make someone as miserable as he was and I could make myself invisible. I had the best hiding places, places where he wouldn’t think a person could be. I squeeze my body into the tightest of spaces and held my breath until the angry footsteps stopped and he passed out, snoring out the all clear.
In Mrs. Evans class, I was trapped, a prisoner with no chance for parole or hope of escape.
She always kept the shades down. The one door was locked shut and the small square window in it was smeared with red paint. All glances from outside eyes were blocked. This was her world. She wanted no interference disrupting her total control. I remember only one time that another adult entered the classroom. A timid knock barely made it’s through the door. It was scarcely audible, but the sheer shock of it stunned us all and we all sat up straight in our desk in silence. Mrs. Evans quickly shifted into fake mode and cracked open the door filling the gap with her corn nibblet smile. It was just Ms. Falco and she wanted to borrow some paper. Mrs. Evans pushed the door open and retreated behind her desk. Ms. Falco took a couple of steps in then stood there nervously. We just sat quietly, staring straight ahead. Nobody turned to look at the intruder. I’m sure some of the kids rotated their eyes as far as they could twist them, trying to catch a crossed eyed glimpse. Everyone held their breath until the door closed and sealed us back in. We waited for the reprisal that was coming. The air went squalid and congealed around us in a putrid haze. Dozens of half grown feet shuffled nervously under their desks and sparked our fears into life with static electricity. A collective whimper rolled around the room.
Mrs. Egan spread her lips and flashed her rancid chicklet smile. Fumes of anger spewed from her nostrils and fire spouted out from her mouth as she screamed at the top of her lungs. The sheer volume of her tirade shattered her words into meaningless gibberish as they slammed against our eardrums. I watched the girl in front of me explode pink with fear. Kent Chesney cried loudly in the desk next to me and I smelled his pants filling with urine.
I just stared at blackboard until the white scratches of chalk swirled into a kaleidoscope. I knew where to go when grownups made the world too scary. I made myself as small as I could and squeezed myself into the tiny parcel of my mind where the real world couldn’t find me and I hid behind a daydream.
There was no more yelling.
I wasn’t small and scared anymore.
I was far away from all that.