Nicholson Baker - Substitute - Going to School With a Thousand Kids

“You can’t lose weight,” said Michael. “If you try to lose weight your body will compensate. Your body will just hold on to the fat.”

“You’re so abusive,” she said to Michael. “Why did you tell Rodney to give James a lap dance?”

“I didn’t tell him to do that!” said Michael. “He said he’d give me five bucks if I gave a lap dance to Melissa.”

“How tall are you?” Bruce asked me.

“Six four.”

“Wow, six four!”

“It means nothing to be tall,” I said.

“WAVE ONE, YOU ARE DISMISSED,” said the secretary. Six kids left the room. It was quieter now.

“You know how short I am?” Olivia said. “I’m just shy of five feet.” She turned back to Michael. “Do you really want to be a teacher?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Michael. “Like from kindergarten to fifth grade.”

“I like kids a lot,” Olivia said. “I like little kids, one-year-olds. One through like five.”

They stacked some chairs on tables and picked up some stray pencils and I thanked them. “It’s been a pleasure having you in class,” I said.

“And people say I can’t be nice!” said Michael.

“He can’t,” said Olivia. “He’s abusive to me.”

“I’m not abusive unless you’re abusive to me,” said Michael.

I asked what abusive meant.

“When you hit me, you’re getting hit back, two times as bad!” said Michael.

I felt drained, numb, brain-dead. In the back of the room three of the remaining kids had begun playing hockey with a balled-up piece of paper, using their iPad cases as hockey sticks. “This is a long day,” I said.

“A really long day,” said Olivia. “I wish we’d start school at nine o’clock. They don’t understand how crazy I am if I don’t sleep. On Sundays I sleep till nine-thirty.”

“You talk a lot when you don’t sleep,” said Michael.

“I talk a LOT,” said Olivia. “Boys are always talking about… never mind.” She looked at me. “Are you new here?”

“Yes, I’m very new here,” I said.

“Do you like it?”

“Yes, I do. I like you guys. You seem like good people. Although sometimes things get a little out of control.”

“I was listening to what you said this morning,” said Michael. “You’ve got the wrong idea. Kids here are not what they seem. They spread rumors about me — bad stuff.”

“So all that clique business they were talking about is true?”

“It’s not cliques, it’s more like gang warfare,” said Michael.

“There are four girls in my class who are snobs,” said Olivia.

“DUDE, DON’T OPEN YOUR LEGS, WHATEVER YOU DO!” said one of the hockey players.

“Hah-hah, please,” said Courtney.

“Excuse me for a second,” I said. I went to the back of the room. “What is this, air hockey, brain hockey? Just crank it back, okay? Keep the volume down.”

I went back to Michael and Olivia. “So what are people snobby about?”

“Everything,” said Olivia. “They think that they have everything, and they really don’t. I’m kind of snobby myself.” She asked Michael, “How do you think I am? I can be really nice, but I am very snobby sometimes.”

I felt it was time for a platitude. “If everyone at school can find one or two people they get along with, that’s enough, right?” I took a bite of an apple.

“I hate apples,” said Olivia.

“There’s one kid, you even say something disrespectful to him, he’s going to punch you,” said Michael.

“Do you know I got grounded for punching my mom?” said Olivia.

“Why did you do that?” I asked.

“She was being annoying. She was behind me and I was trying to go out the door, and she pushed me, so I turned around and smacked her, and when I got home she was like, ‘You’re grounded.’ So I called the cops on her. I said, ‘My mom’s grounding me for punching her and I didn’t punch her.’ I lied about that.”

I said, “You called the cops on your mom?”

“WAVE TWO, YOU ARE DISMISSED.”

“Take it easy!” I said. They left.

I drove home. Day Five, check. At least I hadn’t bled on a whiteboard.

LASSWELL HIGH SCHOOL, ED TECH

OUT COMES THE EYEBALL

ON MONDAY, Beth gave me a choice of several assignments — fourth grade, second grade, the middle school. She hesitated. “Or, there’s an ed tech spot at the high school.” I said I’d do it. I drove there slowly, stuck behind a heating-oil truck. Even so I got to the parking lot early. I parked next to a large gray snowpile and sat thinking about the strangeness of giving a kid like Shane, who seemed quite normal albeit sometimes irritating, a daily drug to control his behavior. The early sun cast interesting pink shadows on the rubble of frozen slush. I went inside.

“You are Lola St. Pierre today,” said Paulette, the secretary, as I signed in. The ed tech room was just down the hall from the main office — a small chamber with a scatter of mismatched chairs and four desks and a file cabinet and not much on the walls. I shook hands with Mr. Bowles, the affable, black-shirted, striped-tied ed tech supervisor, and told him I was filling in for Mrs. St. Pierre.

A plumpish, friendly middle-aged woman, Mrs. Meese, looked up from her desk. “Mrs. St. Pierre is out, too?”

“Everybody’s out,” said Mr. Bowles.

“I’m shocked,” said Mrs. Meese. They two of them began conferring. “Mr. Wakefield is in for Mrs. Batelle. So this gentleman here”—meaning me—“will be with Nina.” Their eyes met — clearly it wasn’t a good idea for me to spend the day with Nina. “Nina has boundary issues,” Mr. Bowles explained. Better, he thought, if Mrs. Meese spent the day with Nina, and then I’d do ed tech duty in the classes that Mrs. Meese normally went to.

Mrs. Meese handwrote her Monday schedule, complete with room numbers and the names of the kids in each class I was supposed to keep an eye on — usually they were the ones with Individualized Education Plans — and gave it to me. “Our trimester has just begun,” she said. “We’re kind of just getting our feet wet here.” The first class was English, with twenty-six students, one teacher, and two ed techs. “We both kind of police one side of the room each,” Mrs. Meese said. “What we’ve begun in that room is we’re reading a book. Mrs. Kennett has been reading and the kids have been following along.” Next was a history class, then came Financial Algebra, then an elective called Community Safety, and then came a small literacy study group, where they were working on the difference between literal and figurative language. “The kids are going to need to highlight or underline things in the story,” Mrs. Meese said. “So if you’re familiar with all forms of language you’ll be fine with that.”

I thanked her for the helpful orientation.

“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” said Mrs. Meese.

The English teacher, Mrs. Kennett, was about thirty, upbeat and appealing, wearing a red cardigan. Her room was painted a pale blue, and it had six six-sided, wood-grained-laminate tables in it; the chairs had tennis balls over their casters so that they wouldn’t squeak. I took a chair near the windows and she walked to the front of the class and turned sweepingly to face them. “Goo-oood morning, folks!” Mrs. Kennett said, as if she were Robin Williams in Good Morning, Vietnam . “How are ya!”

Nobody answered. Five conversations continued.

“It’s like ten degrees outside,” said Mrs. Kennett loudly. “Who else is not okay with that?”

“I’m okay with it,” said Jared, in a blue sweatshirt.

“Come on, it’s the end of March!” Mrs. Kennett said.