The school pretty much emptied by 2010. I had planned to retire in another year. We dropped from a student population of 1,200 back about the time Nixon took off on a helicopter all the way down to one student: Tony Timms. We wondered how come the school district didn’t shut us down. Tony Timms could be bused to another district, we all thought, for a cheaper price than keeping biology, algebra, remedial English, Spanish Uno, and history teachers on the payroll, not to mention the cost of electricity and the Department of Health and Environmental Control sending out inspectors tri-weekly.
It’s because our school board members didn’t believe in busing, and hadn’t since 1970—coincidentally the year when our allergy-prone students’ parents became so protective, holy, and litigious.
I won’t say that it wasn’t great having one student for ninety minutes every other day because of that A/B schedule. Tony Timms had me fourth period, after lunch, but I still clocked in at 7:45, stood around front as if I had bus duty, went to my room and played around with my collection of Bunsen burners. Sometimes I stood in the cafeteria and pretended I needed to break up a food fight on tater tot day. Mostly, though, I sat in my room and wished that over the years I had paid more attention to all the latest student-friendly lab experiments they’d developed that didn’t involve baking soda and vinegar.
Finally, in what seemed like the school’s final days, Tony Timms came into my class without his book or calculator. He didn’t have the slide rule I’d let him borrow either. He said, “Have you talked to my parents yet?”
I looked up to see him standing in the doorway with a plastic Bi-Lo bag over his head.
I said, “No. Was I supposed to? Did I miss a PTA meeting? Do they want to discuss your grade in here? Are they concerned that my trying to teach you how to master a 1964 Pickett No. 120 Trainer-Simplex slide rule is on par with our old home ec teacher years ago teaching her students how to darn socks and cobble shoes?” Perhaps I spent so many hours in silence at the school that, when asked to speak, I released all of my trapped thoughts. I said, “Did they watch that television program aired last night on NBC about the history of inappropriate teacher-student conduct? Is this about my saying I couldn’t offer you a strong recommendation to Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Yale, the University of North Dakota, or Arizona State because you’ve not recognized the difference between helium and hydrogen on the Periodic Table of Elements?”
Tony Timms lifted the bag. I saw, per usual, his mouth open enough to view his uvula. He said, “Here they are,” and moved closer to the doorjamb.
I turned to find his parents, dressed — oddly, I thought — in what appeared to be the latest swimwear. They wore scuba masks, too, and had those diving cylinders strapped to their backs. I said, “Hey. Y’all please don’t stand next to the Bunsen burners.” I said, “Is this one of those days when parents come in and tell everyone about their jobs?”
Even before real and imagined allergies took their toll on the student population, I dreaded Bring Your Parent to School Days, seeing as most everyone’s parents started up their employment descriptions with, “Well, I used to be a loom fixer over at the mill, but now I’m a…” whittler, small engine repair fiend, jockey lot entrepreneur, birdhouse maker…
Mr. Timms handed me a signed document from his son’s doctor. I read it twice. “He’s allergic to air?” I said. I looked at Tony, my final student. “That’s why you’re such a mouth-breather, because you’re allergic to air?”
Mrs. Timms said, “This air. Not all air. This air. It’s got too much argon. Tony’s allergic to argon, as are we. It’s a congenital condition.”
I didn’t know how to respond. Well, I knew enough to say, “Get the fuck out of my classroom, you idiotic people.” Then I ripped the mouthpieces away from their faces and chased them away. I screamed out, “This is what you get for naming your child after an adjective,” because I’d been thinking about kids named Tony, Misty, Merry, and Randy.
As it ended up, those were my last official words in my teaching career with American students. Later on, standing there with my five or six colleagues, waiting for our brick-and-cement-block school to become dust for the townspeople to breathe in and sneeze out, I imagined what my last words might’ve been had I taken a job at a less sickly and paranoid school district. Would I have said, “I’ve enjoyed every minute” or “There’s forty years I’ll never get back”? Would I have shaken hands with administrators even though I believed them to be a cross between weasels and newts? Would I have felt as though I made a difference in some teenager’s life?
The principal, whose name I never learned and who hadn’t shown up since we dwindled down to ten students, drove up on his new Harley-Davidson. He yelled out, “Good news! I’ve been hearing the rumors, but I didn’t want to let y’all in on it until it was official. They’ve postponed demolition! We’ve been chose by the government to be a Special Ambassador School. We got us forty children showing up tomorrow from a Chinese leper colony.”
He said that even Mr. Lawson would return to teach woodworking, no longer embarrassed to reveal his nub.
I shook my head. “Don’t count me in,” I said. “This has all been sad, confounding, and miserable enough. Do you know what happens right after all these new students die off? I’ll tell you. Amphibians from the sky. Fire everywhere. Winds we’ve never imagined. I don’t believe much in the Bible, but I do believe that Revelation section.”
The principal forgot to put down his kickstand and the motorcycle toppled over. He said, “There will be a need for extra grief counselors, if you’re right. What’s your name? I’m going to see if I can get you promoted to vice principal. If the end of the world’s coming like you say, then we need more vice principals with similar farsighted thoughts.”
As if I’d arranged it beforehand, three claps of thunder sounded. Everyone ran inside except for me. I righted the principal’s Harley, started it, and rode off in search of a high bridge with low guardrails. Speeding down the corrupted road, though, I understood that I didn’t have what it takes to end my own life. Being a scientist of sorts, I needed to view firsthand what happens after lepers.
What Could’ve Been?
Take a left out of the driveway. Take a left at the stop sign. Drive to the first convenience store — which used to be a 7-Eleven, or Pantry, or Quick-Way, but now offers scratch cards and Fuel Perks — and take another left-hand turn. Get in the slow lane.
Drive past the elementary school that looks nothing like the one you attended. A row of brick ranch-style houses. Maybe a set of clapboard mill village houses. At the light — there will be a McDonald’s here — take a right. Pass the Dollar General, or the Dollar Tree, or the Dollar Store. Look to the left and see how the pawnshop sells guns and buys gold, as always. Pass the grocery store that used to house a different chain, that used to house a different chain, that used to house a different chain — Publix, Bi-Lo, Food Lion, Ingles, Winn-Dixie, Community Cash, IGA, Piggly Wiggly. You’ll try to remember the succession.
The same will occur at the Bank of America. Nationsbank, FirstUnion, C&S, that other longtime local savings and loan where you started a checking account in high school.