The Zoo

                                             by David

 

It was a sunny day; leafy oaks lined the labyrinthine grounds of the zoo.  So you could say it was shady inside the zoo, I suppose.  And it was.  Shady, I mean.  It was shady.  The warm sun and the shadiness made me sleepy; I napped on a concrete park bench.  I had instructed my students to stay where they were, to just look at the Colobus monkeys.  The park bench I planned to nap on was in front of the Colobus monkey cage.  The monkeys had tails that were four, five feet long, covered with stringy black and white hair, and the monkeys would leap from branch to branch, and the monkeys would excite my students, who often seem like monkeys themselves, so I guess they find the similarities attractive.  The similarities between the monkeys and themselves.  Themselves being the students, that is. 

Anyway, I instructed them to stay in front of the Colobus monkey cage. 

“I’ll only be a few minutes,” I said.  I gave Mike Thomas and Suze Wilkins a pack of smokes each (they’re sort of leaders in the class and the other kids listen to ’em), and I told Mike and Suze that they needed to make the kids stay.  That’s what teachers do sometimes, so it’s fine.  Teachers give instructions.  They have to know how to delegate authority.  ‘They’, as in ‘teachers’.  Teachers have to know how to delegate authority.  So the smokes weren’t really a bribe.  More like an impetus.  Like grades are impetuses.  Students are affected by impetuses—they motivate themselves for good grades.  But I guess the students didn’t care too much about the smokes, or Mike and Suze weren’t the leaders I thought they were, or whatever.  It doesn’t really matter why my kids were gone, but they were gone.  And, like I said before, the zoo grounds are labyrinthine, which is a stellar word, ‘labyrinthine.’  Rolls off the tongue very well. 

So I woke up, and I was like, “Aw, shit.”  And I yawned a little bit.  My mouth opened wide, and I scratched my back.  I didn’t jump off the bench, because I had just woken up from my nap, and so I was still a trifle sleepy.  Sort of snoozy, still basking in the sun.  The Colobus monkeys were still there, so I thought maybe I should get cages for my students, so they don’t run away.  But the thought was a joke.  I wouldn’t get them for my students.  Cages.  I wouldn’t get cages for my students, because that’s unethical, I think. 

So I investigated the scene, and there were a few smashed butts on the ground that I didn’t remember before, so the students must have stayed around a little while, which I needed to keep in mind when I punished them for leaving.  I thought maybe a good punishment would help with my authority.  I could have the whole class write lines or threaten them with the ruler or something.  But the students know I can’t beat them with the ruler.  So, that doesn’t quite work. 

          At any rate, I called some of their names.  Some of people near the Colobus monkey cage looked at me: a man and his wife and their kid.  I asked them if they had seen my kids.  That’s what I call my students sometimes.  Kids.  I call my students, ‘kids’. 

The man said, “How many kids you got?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“Twenty-eight kids?”

“I’m a school teacher,” I said.  “I teach school.”

“We ain’t seen ’em,” the man said.  His wife smiled sort of funny.

I supposed I had to go looking for them and, truth is, most of them weren’t too hard to find.  I found ten of them right off the bat, all grouped up and looking listless in the pavilion.  They had seen enough of the zoo, they said.  My nap had lasted an hour, they said.

“An hour?” I said.

There was a sort of collective nodding of heads and a few smirks.  I really hate smirks, so I said, in my most forceful tone, the one that I can make gravelly and vicious, “If you keep smirking at me, Judy and you others, you’ll regret that smirk.”

I didn’t raise my voice or anything.  Teachers shouldn’t have to.  Just a change of tone, I’ve been told, should suffice.  Should suffice to correct the students.  A change of tone instead of a change of volume. 

And Judy said, “Whatever.  Mike Thomas told Carlos Gonzales that he was going to feed him to a tiger.”

This news was a little alarming, I suppose, at first, because I always thought Mike and Carlos were friends.  They usually didn’t have too many problems at school.  Sometimes Mike would throw spitballs at Carlos—but that’s what boys do—and one time Carlos showed up with bruises on his cheek, a rapidly swelling eye, holding some of his own hair in his hand.  He told me that Mike had shoved him against the lockers, and threatened to put his head in the toilet.  Carlos said he fought back.  Carlos continued to say that Mike, and I quote, “beat the shit” out of Carlos.  I know bullying happens now and then, so I didn’t think too much of their incident when it happened last month, but I talked to Mike anyways, and gave him a pack of smokes to make him stop his bullying. 

“Mike won’t do that,” I said to my students.  “Because Mike knows I’m in charge.”  I put a little extra gravel in my voice for that last bit.

Some of the students laughed aloud in the back, and in the front there was some more smirking, so I barked, “No smirking!”

They had sullen faces after that, my kids, but that’s okay sometimes when you need to have power. 

 

 

1

 

Search for: