short story

Teaching Science Fiction

The sun an unpeeled orange, cut in half, stooped behind a black and green hill. Parked my dark blue station wagon in the front lot, single piece of rust falling off the bumper as the hubcaps came to a full stop. Threw my cigarette out the window, rolled down by hand, before I turned onto the asphalt drive. Didn’t want to be making the wrong impressions.
Into the hospital bright hallway, smooth white winder block walls, white floors with some sort of embedded gold fleck, passing unfamiliar craggy faces with unshaved cheeks. My own mug was pristine, a narrow cut below my lip from a “just in case” shave at five in the morning.  Set my almost empty, battered, leather bag filled with empty manila folders on the desk, humming a twenty-year-old Wilco song to myself, “maybe all I need is a shot in the arm.”
I turned to the gleaming dry-erase board, brighter than my bare ass, wrote “Mr. Dooley” in big blue looping script, never quite settled the differences between upper and lower case, my father’s mild dyslexia in my blood. Then a numbered list:

1.    One person talks at a time
2.    No slurs, insults, or saying “shut up”
3.    The Golden Rule

They filtered in slowly, a full fifteen minutes before the first startling bell.  A blonde girl with sleepy blank grey eyes began putting on makeup. An olive skinned boy who looked older than me was text messaging on a phone that cost more than my rent that month. I sighed, pretending to drink my coffee, wishing I’d smoked another cigarette.
“Hi, um, Mr. Dooley”, it was the blonde, her hands were frightening, and they were flat on my desk.  Shallow cuts on every knuckle, a dark purple bruise on her left wrist.  “Is it okay if we eat in here?”
I didn’t know. I found out later that it was not allowed in any form. She looked hungry through, and it was no time to be making enemies, “yeah, just, um, clean up your mess.”
When did I start talking like that? My own teachers would never say things like that, they would either grunt, or just say yes. I was being motherly; it was foolish.  She sat down and pulled out a
waxpaper wrapped crust-less white bread peanut butter and jelly sandwich, cut down the middle twice, resigned her chapsticked lips to the triangles. She had just unveiled the classroom equivalent of an anthrax filled envelope and I didn’t even notice. I was too nervous.
The first ring came, like gravel in a church bell, and then another twenty filed in, skirts that were probably too short for the new rules, zebra print pants were way back, apparently, two pairs more than I planned on seeing. Sunglasses at seven o clock in the morning, a nice touch.
They chirped at one another, the Argentinean exchange students sat huddled, a tan quartet in the back left corner, saw their strangely punctuated names on my ten-point font list.
The bell went again, and something approaching silence. Heard the mouse squeak of weight shifting in a metal desk. The monologue I had prepared sitting heavy on my mind, something about my roommates from my freshman year of college, and the kind of person it is okay to be, but the sort of person you should want to be. Shit. I had no idea what I was doing there, should have been backpacking in Austria with Juliana.  But I summoned the courage to push myself back from the desk, standing from the cushioned office chair.
“Good morning everyone. I hope you all had a nice summer vacation. I am Mr. Dooley, you can call me Dooley, if that sort of thing…    suits you.” Dead silence. Crickets. Great.
“This is Freshman Composition, if you are looking for some sort of gym class, our textbook is pretty heavy. I recommend three sets of fifteen reps.” A single halting laugh, didn’t see where it came from. The blonde looked up from her sandwich with a crease in her forehead, looking like she had just seen a train crush a motorcycle.
Then a dark hand shot up in the back row. Scrawny Lebanese looking kid, a truly ridiculous crop of black hair crawling all over his arms, the back of his hands, and a nearly shaved head. “What is ‘the golden rule’?”
And for the first time in my life, I really felt old.