Will Teach for Food

By Matt Baxter

(novel) Public education has its share of supporters and detractors. Frame is a fellow who accidentally falls into the teaching profession and is neither. To him it is simply a job. This is the story of an average man working his way through the system; the enjoyable and the excruciating. Although perhaps Frame is further along the behavioral spectrum . . . more odd than average.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 11, 2011
• ISBN: 9781257508587

Book preview

Kyle

Chapter One

Pie at ten o’clock in the morning was just plain weird. Calling it banana crème didn’t make it a breakfast food. Cherry or apple was no longer a whole fruit product once it was in a flaky crust, and the side of ice cream proved that everyone had lost their minds. Any group that sits down to such a morning treat must be deluded.

Frame sat in an uncomfortable plastic molded chair, one of several around a small square table with hard edges, thinking about pie. The crowd was typical for a Friday, larger than the other days of the week. A dozen of the unattractive tables were strewn around the room, some bumped up to others to form larger tables, and plenty of the uncomfortable chairs, in different colors, were filled with bodies. The pies along the back counter were still being sliced and dropped onto cheap paper plates, newly arrived folks were lined up near to the door. Any other day and most of the hungry would be milling elsewhere around the campus, but Friday they were here for whatever was being served.

Today it was pie, and Frame had a slice on his plate, but he refused to eat it.

Most Fridays he refused to even make his way to the staff room during morning recess, preferring to stay inside his classroom and doze. Friday recess was five minutes longer than the rest of the days (presumably to reward the students in a meaningless way but really to give the teachers more time to swallow their Friday treat) and there was nothing wrong with a twenty-minute nap between class periods. Other options included using the time to surf the Internet for a new job or to read odd news from around the world, but the nap usually won.

Once in a while Frame visited the staff room on a Friday because he needed the bathroom, and it was always possible that whoever brought the weekly treat would also have some bowls of munchies set out on the tables. Many of his coworkers took this tradition to absurd lengths and would have enough food out to supply breakfast and lunch, and intrepid folks could pocket some for dinner as well. Frame actually had used his pockets in the past, especially if there were some nuts, particularly cashews, to grab. He could be in and out, having used the bathroom and stuffed his pants, before anyone had really noticed.

He had shown up today not for the lavatory but because he was really looking for something to eat. Friday morning feasts he did not object to included fresh fruits and vegetable trays, or even chili and potatoes. He was in line this morning before he could see over the shoulders of the broad and unattractive woman in front of him, and suddenly a plate was shoved in his direction and Agatha, a kindergarten teacher who exemplified the worst of all such stereotypes, asked what he wanted at the same time as she plopped an oozing piece of cherry pie on his plate. Even holding it with both hands Frame almost dropped it.

Ice cream? Agatha asked as she gave it to him anyway.

No, thanks, Frame said as he turned to leave.

Unfortunately, having made his entrance and been seen by many of his coworkers who rarely saw him in the staff room, he was beholden to stay for at least a few minutes. He chose an uncomfortable chair, one of many still available at that point, and watched as the room slowly filled. Slurping sounds echoed off the walls, ice cream was dripping outside of the containers and onto the counter, pie crusts were dropping crumbs as the other teachers made their way around the room. Conversations were loud, uninteresting, and exclusionary.

Frame sat in a crowd with nothing to say. Most of the comments sent in his direction were variations on, Gee, don’t see you here much. He never knew what to say to that.

No, you don’t, sounded rude.

Why do you think that is? sounded confrontational.

The easiest thing to do was smile and nod, a trick he learned from his sister many years ago. Smile and nod. It deflects just about anything, and it always worked here. His inquisitors turned their attention elsewhere and Frame was allowed to sink back into oblivion and seek his exit. No chili, no veggies, no cashews. A plate of pie he didn’t want and would end up in the trash just as soon as he could extricate himself from the room.

He would have excused himself but no one would really notice.

Friday treat is an odd tradition that teachers like because they feel it is a perk in lieu of a decent pay hike. At the beginning of the school year a calendar is passed around and the staff would sign up for a Friday (or if they signed up in groups of three they had to choose two weeks or else some Fridays would not be covered—an unholy terror) and when their turn came they would spend excessive amounts of time and money providing unnecessary calories to a group of people who were always complaining about gaining weight.

The theory of treating friends to a little taste sensation is a generous notion, but these were the same people who said they didn’t have enough time in the day to complete their work and they weren’t paid enough to do it anyway, so why were they going overboard with this phony team-building exercise? It always confused Frame, to the point that he didn’t participate. He didn’t sign up, he didn’t ever bring anything to share with the staff, and he stayed away because he didn’t want to eat pie for breakfast, he preferred to nap in his room, and in some way he figured if he didn’t participate he shouldn’t reap the rewards. A rare form of altruism from Frame. Almost noteworthy.

Hey, Frame, funny seeing you here. Must be for the pie, eh? a friendly coworker said before he left. Most of the staff saw Frame as a loner, an antisocial misfit in this crowd of gabby talkers. Plenty of the others could have a reasonable conversation with him when they could find him, but he just wasn’t around that much. And nobody was going out of his or her way to track him down.

Commenting on his unusual visit was just a running gag. They actually had no idea if he even liked pie at all, and they had not yet pieced together he was always there when cashews were present.

Without a pocketful of snacks, and not needing the lavatory, the exit called. There were no calls to his backside as he departed. The door swung shut behind him, the cheerful voices became a mumble and then a murmur. Frame stood alone, happily outside.

The school campus was split evenly between World War II barracks and slickly modern air-conditioned rooms. No actual 1940- era battles were actually fought on the hallowed grounds of Caddlestock Elementary School, but the brick squares that were the original classrooms certainly looked the part. The teachers’ staff room was also brick-lined, but in recent years it had been gutted and spruced up for the teachers. Funds must have run low as the project neared completion because after the installation of all new cabinetry and much of the useable wall space was turned into bulletin boards and white boards, there was only pocket change left for the terrible tables and the torturous chairs.

In the original school design the room had been the school office, but as ready cash was spread amongst architects and contractors it was decided that the principal needed fancier digs. The new office, and entirely new construction at the front corner of the school, tripled the square footage of the original office. The principal had a sixteen-foot ceiling, beautiful wooden bookshelves, and a high speed wireless Internet connection. The only thing she was missing was a button on her desk to remotely close and latch her office door.

As the former office, the new staff room was located near the front parking lot. Wandering just outside that room Frame encountered the old-time school. He had the choice of walking by the office to check his in-box or heading back to his classroom for his near-nap. A number of students ambled by; fewer still ran pellmell past him, and most called out a greeting. Hey, Mr. Frame! The more easily confused students said, Hey, Mr. Petersen because they couldn’t tell one male Caddlestock teacher from the only other one. The school had a policy known as Every Child By Name, and expected that each teacher would be able to honor the inherent dignity of each individual by calling each student by their name.

Frame knew this was asinine. At over six hundred students it was never going to happen, yet at the start of every school year it was brought up in meeting after meeting, and those teachers who love to talk just to hear the sound of their own voices would offer strategies to achieve this lofty goal.

Those were easy meeting moments to zone out. Frame had no desire or interest in pretending to know everyone’s name. When a child said, Hey, Mr. Frame! he could offer, without guilt, Hey, buddy! Buddy, Pal, Chum . . . even Sport worked. If he were called Mr. Petersen, Frame would still offer his nameless greeting. He wasn’t angry that the students didn’t know his name, but he sure as heck could return the favor.

When the students ran by like lightning, Frame was supposed to stop them and discuss the dangers of running in the hallways. This was also discussed ad nauseum in staff meetings. Every time two knuckleheads scraped their knuckles or bonked their heads it became urgent to revisit hallway behavior rules and hold school-wide assemblies on safety. It was absurd. Kids run; kids should be encouraged to run! Run safely, of course, and run with your eyes open and your head facing forward, but run, damnit, run! The only time Frame would stop a runner was when it was a student he was fond of and strictly for the purposes of chit chat, not to castigate him for moving too quickly. Or her. Sometimes it was a girl, but rarely. At this age girls were generally smarter than boys and they took greater care of their knuckles and their heads.

The teachers who were trying to eradicate hallway collisions were aiming for a utopia that just wasn’t going to happen, in this era or any other.

Left to the new and improved office, right to his classroom. Decisions, decisions. A familiar face ran by, yelling that the friend right behind him needed a Band-Aid for an earlier collision. Frame was about to follow them down to the office when he saw the principal walking out the main door. Within a second or two she was going to see Frame and could very well call out a greeting or worse yet ask to speak to him. This was not necessarily a doomsday event, because Frame rarely had difficulty with the administration. But still, why talk when you can walk.

Taking a cue from the running students, Frame trotted around a corner and made his way safely to his classroom.

Ah, solitude. Ah, calm.

Career choice is a funny thing. A Mensa scholar behind the wheel of a cement mixer is an oddity, but not an impossibility. A world-renowned journalist might have been a total fraud at the beginning of his career but after some years earns his stripes. Many people go to college and then end up working in entirely different fields. Especially in modern times as life-long employment with one firm has gone the way of platform flip-flops, sometimes there is no telling where someone will end up.

In Frame’s case there were no indications that he would end up a teacher. Even the day before his first day on the job in public education it would have been a sure bet that he would never teach a day in his life. Bartender was more likely, bar patron even more likely. He had worked in retail and fast food, he had been a cubicle captive at several businesses, and though he had known teachers and was even related to several, he did not become a teacher until the day four bees stung him and his car wouldn’t start.

He had most recently been working in a men’s clothing store, in the powerful and integral role of stockboy. Frame’s fashion sense was several degrees below terrible. His clothes didn’t match, they were generally out of style, and looked like they didn’t really fit. His hair would have been well served by a thorough combing, and every time he shaved he left a quarter inch line of stubble that ran in a zigzag down from his right ear. He did not exactly exude gentility or confidence. Originally hired on an emergency basis, because most of the store’s employees had been sharing a nice case of mononucleosis, the store manager did not immediately realize how he had bungled in hiring Frame. When the truth came to light, as store sales began a precipitous decline, there were still not enough employees back to work. Eventually Frame’s tasks were moved away from client contact.

The job was not a good match. Everyone knew it but no one was brave enough to do anything about it. Frame spent weeks just wandering around the store, trying to find something to do but assigned nothing. One day he tried just skipping work. No one called to ask where he was, and when he got his next paycheck it had not been docked. Each week he began skipping more and more, until finally he wasn’t going in at all and yet he was still getting paid. A clerical error of a different nature caused a review of all company procedures, and when pay-for-no-work was discovered Frame was finally removed as an employee.

The checks stopped coming that week and Frame watched as his checkbook balance slowly dwindled. He was out gardening one day, considering various work opportunities, when a wayward shovel strike kicked a stone up from the yard and straight into a beehive hiding amongst the leaves of a mulberry tree. If he had ever aimed to do so it wouldn’t have happened; it was just the strange hand of fate. He heard the buzzing and looked up in time to see a cloud of bees, much like Winnie-the-Pooh had in Frame’s childhood read aloud. Frame took off running for the house and out ran all of the bees save four. One got him square in the back of the neck, one stung him in the right ear, the third in the left hand, and the fourth, oddly enough, actually stung Frame right in the middle of the first bee’s sting. That spot proved sensitive for many years.

Watching from inside the house, the hive filled the air in the back for over an hour. As it dissipated outside, and as the fog in Frame’s head from the bee venom grew worse, he knew he had to seek medical attention. He was going to try to drive to the doctor’s office but when he got outside his car wouldn’t start. He sat in the front seat for several minutes and continued to turn the key in the ignition, even though not a sound was uttered from the engine. Not the faintest click, not even a hum or knock of any random engine part. The car, a 1992 Honda Civic that looked like it could have been much older, was deader than dead.

Frame continued to sit there. The windows were rolled up because he feared a return of the bees. The car slowly warmed in the direct sunlight, to the point that it was downright uncomfortable. Outside the car life was going forward; the breeze moved through the trees and a few quiet neighborhood sounds infiltrated. That, and the heat, and the bee venom, and Frame was in a mild doze.

A window-rattling rap stirred him from his reverie and he looked out to see his neighbor, Stan. Grimacing and peering as if he was staring through a peephole at a nudist colony, Stan rapped again even though he could clearly see Frame was looking directly at him. Neither spoke a word until Stan reached to rap for a third time.

Knock it off! Frame said. He opened the door and stepped out of the car. What’re you banging on my car for?

You looked like you weren’t doing too well. I saw you sittin’ there for a while and thought I’d make sure everything was all right. Everything all right? Mind the rake. Stan grabbed Frame’s arm before he could take another step and then Frame saw the rake lying on the ground. Stan let go and reached down for the rake. I guess I shouldn’t have just left it on the ground, but I couldn’t knock with this hand, could I? Stan raised his left hand and Frame saw it was wrapped firmly around