My biggest problem with Kirk was the way he slouched in his chair—that, and he had just been moved to sit next to me. It was a Wednesday in fourth grade and we had just learned our new seating arrangement, one in which, much to my chagrin, my desk-mate was Kirk. He sat next to me gumming an eraser and rubbing it into the plastic wood lamination, breathing short gusts through his mouth. On the board, a student teacher helped us identify the grammar mistakes in the large printed sentence: Our neighbor Lorna spilled milk in my parent’s car and it is smelling like a pig sty? I didn’t even see the easy errors; I was too busy fuming about my new state of affairs.
If you had given me one desk-mate veto, one person in the whole class I could set in the corner never to breach my vicinity again, it would have been Kirk. Kirk, who wore the sleeveless Emmitt Smith Jersey with the smudge along his back bottom rib. Kirk, with the penchant for kicking balls over the fence. I preferred to disassociate from Kirk, especially on days when we had substitutes, because unlike the other days, when those in charge knew Kirk like I did and were aware of his malevolent capabilities, a substitute would be left unarmed. Kirk would read books in a corner when he should have been sitting at his desk, he would throw things and speak out of turn. Once, he and another boy in the class switched places so that each time the substitute called one of their names, she didn’t know she actually meant the other. Neither would respond as they both sniggered mockingly.
When I was taking class full time at the University, I would wake in terror over not showing up to a test, or forgetting I had another paper to write. Now, my most common nightmare involves me subbing a group exercise class. It usually goes something like this:
I am late to teach the class because the bathroom has flooded and I had to scale my way out of the stall pressing against the two walls and then jumping to the sink. My ipod is playing loud music during class and I cannot seem to turn it off. My dance professor brings in pizza to celebrate my brother’s birthday. I run out of things to do and decide we will do partner yoga, so I tell everyone to hold hands with the person across from them. Suddenly everyone is naked and they are holding hands and squatting and I can’t imagine many things more awkward than how everyone is paired—young with the old, women with men, young men with older women. Then the regular teacher comes back, five minutes before the end of my class. One of the women leans over to her and says “we miss you.” And the regular teacher nods understandingly.
It is a dream, yes, crazy and irrational, and yet, these dreams would not shake me so much were they not at least somewhat based in reality. Perhaps we are conditioned from our elementary days to view a substitute’s presence as a chance to act out, to test and tamper and push the boundaries. I wonder this because, while subbing Pilates classes, I have had people roll their eyes and walk out partway through class, others who stay but repeatedly huff in a dissatisfied way, still others who send text messages while doing their roll ups. When introduced to a new stretch for their hamstrings, I have had people look at me as if I asked them to de-pants and hold hands with the naked man across the room.
If this sort of mayhem can unfold in a roomful of fully matured, rational adults, I hate to think what sorts of nightmares public school substitutes see in their dream-time wanderings through a world where critical thinking is a skill still left undeveloped and impatience and compulsion reign supreme. Does the chalk come alive and pour from its boxes as they try to explain the algebra homework? Do children stand on chairs, hang from the shelves, spit on the floor? Or is it just Kirk wielding his squishy eraser, his tongue dangling from his mouth, a maniacal glint in his eye?
This is the plight of the substitute who does not succeed in securing respect from the beginning. It is a position I’ve been in more than once. And in all my time in public schools, I have only witnessed one teacher do it so thoroughly and effectively that the whole time she was there, no one even dared to speak.
***
“I saw a girl get hit by lightning,” a third grade substitute confided gravely to my class. “It was at a softball game in Janesville.” She nodded thinking back on the incident. The woman occupied a wide area in front of the chalkboard, spindly hair rigid and alive as if an electrical current had only just left her body. Her wide-spread sneakered feet were anchored firmly to the tile, its gray surface cold as if all the warmth in the room had been channeled toward her, sucked up those two great tree trunk legs.
Sometimes, the best way to gain control is to spread a few nightmares of your own.
The classroom was dark and the only light sneaking in from underneath the drawn shades illuminated a word puzzle on the board, a game scribbled by this substitute in our first moments with her, just after we had returned from gym class to find our teacher unexpectedly gone, this woman in his place.
Man _
Board
Man overboard.
This substitute looked like a softball player, I thought; with that unmoving stature, she would never miss a catch. “It was stormy from the third inning,” she drawled, her voice deep and rumbling, her arms dropped firmly by her sides.
I imagined a solemn gusty day—horizon, bleachers, spectator faces, everything in sight a different shade of gray except for lurid green grass. It was hot, electricity collecting in the air, but in spite of the heat, the softball coach wore a jacket, large letters printed across his back. It was the kind of day where the crowd sits silently, arms folded across their chests, their postures erect. Their cheers are half-hearted, almost timid, as they sense that more than the softball game is beyond their control.
No one sees a giant oak tree behind the field sway in the increasing wind, but suddenly everyone’s attention turns to the center-fielder. She is planted on two feet her arms outstretched for the coming hit, her appearance unchanged except that her long hair, tied up in a pony tail, now stands on end, framing her head like a crown of fanned gold. The spectators gasp with horror. The ball drops from the air.
Our substitute shifted her weight. She brought a hand to her face and rubbed her chin slowly. The class was spellbound, suspended like a pop fly sailing inexorably toward the substitute’s open glove. She couldn’t have known of my fear of lightning, I assured myself, the way I talked myself down from excitement every time I slept in a tent or heard thunder, how I convinced myself that if it were not safe, my parents wouldn’t let me stay outside. Lightning was deadly, I was certain, and no amount of comforting statistics or rational thought could wipe the girl’s electrified picture from my mind. The substitute nodded again—the corners of her charcoal lips curling ever so slightly upward. Then she shook her head, switching in a fluid motion as if it meant the same thing as nodding, her hand still on her chin, eyes scanning the room: “Never even heard the thunder.”
