September 28, 2008
One Page 46
I was disheartened and when I looked at your face I saw nothing but a blank slate and I remembered my second grade teacher, glasses slipping off her nose and slip showing, who drew diagrams on the chalkboard in chalk so faint that no one could really see what she was drawing so we looked at her, the flowers on her skirt dancing as she drew so vigorously, and we didn’t learn anything and failed all of her tests because we were more preoccupied with her lipsticked teeth than the numbers she wrote, but at the end of the year she didn’t notice, and we didn’t notice, and our third grade teacher was a tall bald man who wore blue suits every day that covered in chalk on the back when he leaned against the blackboard and we weren’t sure whether he knew he had drawings and numbers littering his back or not so we didn’t say anything because we didn’t want to embarrass him and he never seemed to notice and so we spent more time looking at the patterns on his back than they diagrams on the board and so we learned nothing and mostly failed his tests but he didn’t notice because he was preoccupied by the gym teacher who was definitely a lesbian but he didn’t know that and we didn’t tell him because we didn’t want to ruin his infatuation since it made him blush and the red of his cheeks looked dashing against his blue suit and we were sure that if the gym teacher wasn’t a lesbian she would be in love with him too, aside from his bowling ball shinny head and the diagrams and numbers imprinted on his back, but she was a lesbian and once we saw her behind the gym one afternoon after school making out with the vice principle and we almost yelled at them, laughing at their glory in love found, but we were too shy and embarrassed and so we snuck away and peered around the corned of the gym at them because we had never seen anything that made us tingle in quiet that same way and we weren’t sure whether we would ever see it again and so we had to enjoy it at that very moment and the unfortunate downpour of rain ruined the moment and the two of them laughed, covered each other helplessly with their arms and ran inside leaving us to feel the soaked through shirts stick to our skin and wonder whether the books in our back packs were getting ruined but we didn’t care because we still felt that special and unfamiliar tingle and our toes were warm and our cheeks were warm and we couldn’t look at each other without blushing and so we stared at the pavement that was filling with puddles and then we ran away, hurrying home, as if our hurry would keep us from getting wetter even though we knew better, and fifth grade was no better so we didn’t speak of it.
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