Glitter and MarkersA Poem by Ranger KesselThe windows of the classroom were always dripping with water. In the morning. That happened around the change of seasons. Something to do with low pressure systems. The room always had a different feel to it. The water in the fountain sounded different. A different splash. The chalk boards cleaner. Words were almost in three dimensions. Popping off the board. With chalk that hadn’t been worn to a nub. The seats were shiny and the floor had a layer of wax. The smell still lingered in the air. Like lava soap. Maybe chlorine. The janitor had put his work in over the weekend. The teacher’s breasts were always perkier. Like the n*****s just wanted to peel themselves from the body and start dancing around on their own. The teacher was humming. They always did that when things were in order. After attendance was taken, lunch money collected, and we broke down into little groups to do busy work. I seem to remember Susan B Anthony. I always wondered why we spent so much time learning about the first type of person to do something. We’re all just people.Busy work. The ponytail girls would go up to the desk. They weren’t called up there, but the cues told them what to do. The room. They would go up and discuss what to do with teacher quietly. The teacher would glance up once in a while like she gave a s**t whether we were talking about Susan B or the way her n*****s were readying to exit her blouse. She didn’t. They would gather at the back of the room. There was a table next to the drinking fountain. Where they did projects and put your mittens when you left them on the playground. I could hear that big scissor thing snapping through paper. I always imagined the teacher saying, “Off with her head!” as she slammed the blade down repeatedly. But apparently that was too much to ask for. Never happened. The smell of freshly trimmed construction paper. Nothing like it. It smelled different being cut on the big blade. Clean. Like tearing through the cells of the paper pulp cleanly released different particles into the air. It never smelled the same when I cut I made my jagged cuts with the safety scissors, and we weren’t allowed to touch the big one. It was a scent that I savored. Then one or two of the girls would break off with a pile of office equipment. Sharp metal things. Clips and staplers. They knew how to open a stapler in ways I didn’t understand. They had all these outlines and cutouts and markers, and ribbons and that weird that weird looking roll of border paper that had the frilly edges. When we went to recess, the girls stayed inside. All their planning came to fruition in a practical amount of time. Fifteen minutes. Long enough to find a comfortable place behind the special ed shack and stay out of sight while the other kids played football and let my brain wander off aimlessly for ten minutes before the bell rang. No sense in getting picked last and getting that extra shove after failing to make a catch. Probably was just staking out a good place to smoke cigarettes in the coming years. When that bell rang, my lanky, chicken legs ran faster than ever to my coat hook. I knew there was something special inside. The classroom door kind of had that eerie shine. Like an ominous looking door in a horror movie. Probably just the moisture had evaporated from the window and the mid morning angle of the sun was different, but I like to believe it was from nothing other than the hard work of the ponytail girls. A calendar. Not just a calendar. A really artsy calendar with dates highlighted. Thanksgiving would have a really cool looking turkey with a rear end made out of a hand cut out. Stickers and random alphabet letters. Things designed to provoke a child’s imagination. I lived a sheltered life. I certainly didn’t take my education seriously, and whether I was at school or at home I was in a hostile environment. These little things were like f*****g crack to me. I was a f*****g addict. My hand would quiver when I took my mittens off. I let my jacket fall wherever it landed. I put books on a shelf that I knew would fall down and I would be scolded for later. I didn’t care. Truth was, I didn’t know how to tell time. The meaning of a minute. An hour. What hand projects what information on a clock face.Couldn’t tell you the difference between am and pm. I needed cues. Lunch. Supper. Television. Big artsy f*****g boards that counted down the days. Couldn’t keep track of assignments, dates, or expectations. Still can’t. Mom swearing at me usually meant it was time to go to school. That or she got a letter from school expressing concern about my fundamental lack of interest in anything. On the morning of a test I relied solely on the knowledge that I had acquired by happenstance. Not by studying. I was pretty sure that I could find something more educational than a book about Susan B. But hey, I was f*****g ten. And when you’re ten, even the most hardcore dealers won’t give you crack, and my peach fuzz mustache wasn’t going to get me any liquor. There were rhinos and giraffes. Different looking words to teach us about the weird quarks in the language. I always wondered why we spent so much time learning about the quarks in the first place. It seems a more equitable use of time to just f*****g fix them. I would find myself in a cardboard, paper mache, glitter marker f*****g jungle. Climbing mountains with big hand shaped turkeys that I didn’t hunt because that just wouldn’t be cool. The point is, I was just gone. Not here. Climbing the jungle jim and spinning a little kid on the merry go round too fast. Then the bell would ring and it was time to bring my soggy lunch bag to the cafeteria. Where I pretended to eat for what seemed like an acceptable time before throwing it away and resigning to my future smoke hideout behind the shed. Through life, it’s all I ever wanted. The smell of construction paper. Ponytails. Office supplies. Big cutter blade scissors. The low pressure window. Like all things, we appreciate it while it’s there, but not enough. We don’t realize we’re appreciating it while we do. Then it’s f*****g gone. As an adult you wonder if there are people who have followed their passion. Lucky enough to sense the moment they’re in. I always imagined a crime scene investigator. Sure they get off pushing around the beat cops and even detectives, carrying a badge, and latex gloves, but things are never what they seem. They wait for that rare call. Maybe not so rare. The call that the paramedics didn’t respond to. The thing that was too late. The apartment that smelled of liquor. Tobacco. A burnt TV dinner. Gunpowder residue. Curdled blood. The drips smell different when it’s intentional. The smell of decay and the dump that’s been drying in someone’s pants for three days. That smell of vomit from a rookie cop. Efferdent in a filthy bedside glass. Dirty sheets. Cat piss.The scent of unopened mail and a TV that’s been on for too long. Yellow fingernails. Spilled pill bottles. Rigor. The sound of police chatter. The hum of engines and coiling exhaust. Those little cues that tip him off. The calendar. The low pressure windows. There aren’t any glitter markers and fancy borders in adult life. The kid hiding behind the special ed shack. And through all the channel flipping, and arguing, and struggling to be a good person, and just getting through life, is that cue all that really f*****g mattered? © 2022 Ranger KesselReviews
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1 Review Added on December 25, 2014 Last Updated on May 26, 2022 |