Not the Bomb

Ten years ago, kids would have said, “It’s the bomb!” That’s fallen out of the vernacular, and it’s not quite accurate. Stay tuned, though.

A little background information first: Friday was field-trip day for the majority of the tenth grade, leaving me with two blocks and very few students—mostly those who forgot to hand in their permission slips. Not much teaching would happen, but it would be a chance to catch up with whatever work the stragglers were missing, and it would give me a chance to make a dent in my stack of papers.

That’s not exactly what happened.

I was out of the room, chatting with a colleague. My co-teacher, a special ed teacher with years of experience and copious grace, was in our room with our three students: a quiet kid seated at the front, and two class-clown types in the back.

I walked back in, and saw Mrs. G sitting in the back with the two cut-ups. Her body language—legs crossed, hands folded—put me at ease instantly, thus helping me not freak out when I said, “That’s a grenade.”

Told you it wasn’t the bomb, or even a bomb. Still, pretty close. And close counts with hand grenades.

Jester number one, a kid prone to wearing his hoodie backwards with the hood up, a kid whose parents receive regular email missives from me, had brought in a grenade, which now rested, upright, on the desk to Mrs. G’s right. A quick glance and I could tell it was just a shell, but still. A grenade. In the classroom. Just sayin.’

“Mr. W!” she began, in that animated voice teachers use when they are talking to other teachers but want students to hear. (It’s an old trick, but it still works fairly often.) “We’re just trying to figure out what to do with Stan’s grenade!” (NOTE: His name isn’t Stan. There’s nobody in my school named Stan.)

“Oh. Yes. That.” For some reason, I saw the absurdity in this situation right away. “Stan, why did you bring that in today?” I asked the urchin.

His face lit up into a big, goofy grin. “Show and tell?” he said sheepishly.

“Okay…” I said. “Where did you get it?”

“My grandfather was in the army. He gave it to me.”

“And you thought it would be a good idea to bring it in to school?”

“Uh…”

“Well, I think I should take it from you. I doubt you’ll need it before the end of the day.”

“Um.”

I picked it up. Despite its neutered state, it was still an impressively dangerous-feeling hunk of metal.

“Wow,” said Mrs. G. “That would send a lot of hunks of metal flying if it blew up!”

“That’s the idea,” I offered, at which point the other kid—an occasional hot-head whose bluster had melted into conviviality this morning—cracked up. “Hahaha, Mr. W! ‘That’s the idea’!”

“You know, Mr. A [our vice principal] is right next door,” I said, at which point Stan lost his smile.

Mrs. G exited with the grenade. She returned empty-handed. Mr. A soon appeared in the doorway, and motioned for Stan. The kid departed, and came back a few minutes later with a handful of pink referral papers. Turns out he had a few priors. To his credit, he still had his sheepishness about him. He’s not the type of kid I’d worry about. He probably just wanted some attention. We all had a good laugh, spurred on mostly by Mr. Convivial, who was probably relieved to not be the one in trouble this time.

The stars must have aligned that day. Would you believe there is more? Footnotes, really, after the grenade. But they have their own charm.

A teacher found an empty gin bottle in the boys’ bathroom. This, of course, led to all sorts of comments about said teacher’s imbibing. Someone suggested sending a message home asking parents to check their liquor cabinets, thus finding the guilty party. I told everyone that some kid had knocked on the faculty room door, looking for tonic and lime, but that I hadn’t put one and one together fast enough.

Last one. The tide of humanity outside my classroom door slowed, then did that weird forward-backward thing. My teacher senses tingled. Fight. Yup. Two girls, lots of yelling, everyone else spectating. Adults arrived before fisticuffs even started. Off each one marched, in separate directions, clutching their cell-phone talismans, trailing profanity and hangers-on.

I can say many things about my job. Most days, I can honestly say that it’s never dull. The preceding words are a work of fiction, somewhat. Names have been changed to protect the innocent and the guilty. Oh, and this all happened long ago and far away. Maybe.