Autumn

The juniors want to do “walking TAPS.” This sounds ominous, but isn’t: TAPS is total and perfect silence, our ritual for beginning class. I didn’t invent it, I took it, and the way I do it, I put on a video with some soothing image and relatively soothing music (though sometimes if it’s a bit dancey, the kids or I may dance a bit, robot-y). We start with two minutes, and then second quarter, I bumped it up to three.

They were mad as hell.

Lol.

Anyway: my junior class, at the alternative school, is three young gentlemen. They asked for a walk instead of a sit. As walking meditation is equal to sitting meditation, and as their class is second-to-the-end of the day, I was ready to walk then.

So we walk.

One certain ritual at our school is the around-the-school-building walk. Past the metal detectors (“the metals”), around the front, and ducking under the outcropping where the altar is.

Let me explain. Our school is currently housed in half of a Catholic church. The bottom half and south end of the building are church. We are state. The overhang we walk under is where the altar and the Jesus snacks are administered. Man, I could use a Jesus snack.

The overhang offers storage space for the church, so there is a grate, and behind it I tell the kids there are dead bodies. There are leaves and broken gardening equipment and there is gravel.

Then we walk up again, and around past where St. Bernadette in concrete kneels. Several fat baby angels lounge. Someone has planted hostas, and impatiens. One time we walk by and an old lady is facing the plants and the brick of the building and never turns around.

The people going to the church pretend we do not exist. I think they probably don’t like that our students sometimes say “fuck,” but on the other hand, their gardens are never molested. Only a couple of times has a kid thrown something out my window. And then my stuffed animal turtle just sat there peacefully until I recognized him from above.

Poor Tortuga.

They’re rascally rabbits.

I take the juniors either around the building, or to the playground, which was originally used by Catholic schoolkids. Now it is used by our kids.

They grab the zip line handle and lift their feet. They climb monkey bars and dangle by their feet. They dare each other to go down the long tube slide, or the short quick one.

Mostly we swing, though.

When I was their age, my friends and I developed a love for swings. This moment happens when you think, shit, my childhood is really almost over.

So we swing. They jump out at the top of an arc. They get wood chips in their slides. The leaves on the sycamores next to the playground have turned yellow against a blue sky.

I dig my shoes in to stop my arc and go stand by the chain link fence. The security guard is there. He goes deer hunting every fall, and I’m pretty sure he’s voting for Trump.

“Hey, you need me?”

“Nah,” he says. “Just getting some fresh air.”

I have a deep respect for him as someone who’s been in the military, and been a military contractor, and as someone whose job it is to take a bullet for me. When I come down the stairs to make copies, he’s usually right there and I say something like, “Is it almost over?” when it is second hour. Or, “We’re going to make it,” if it’s seventh hour. On Thursdays I inquire about his theory of “Thunderdome Thursday,” Thursday being the day the kids who are going to “crash out” (as they say) tend to “crash out.”

There is no data to support this theory.

“Hey, look, there’s a little spider,” he says. “Hey, little guy!” He beams. I can’t see the spider. “I wonder if he’s gonna put out a web and fly.”

“Do all spiders do that?” I said.

“Yeah, of course,” he says, and I think that isn’t right, but then, I’m an insufferable know-it-all.

“He’s so cute!”

“I used to be really afraid of spiders, but I’m pretty much over it now,” I said.

The swingset creaks and creaks with three adult-sized people swinging. And they’re happy. The job isn’t about making people happy. Sometimes you get to, though.

“Oh, there he goes!” the security guy says.

Image: detail of “La Orana Maria” by Paul Gauguin.