The Indoor Recess

 Break is rolling along nicely.  No complaints.  I'm doing a lot of walking, reading, writing, weeding, and watching of the Mets.  

Here's a short story I wrote at the Writer's Conference.  It needs more revision, but I'll just leave it here until it's ready to work with me again.  It's a fictionalized account of an indoor recess episode from the past.  We were supposed to write something with "tension and transformation."  I did my best and now I'm going to forget the rest. You should read it if you feel like it.

Indoor Recess

They speed walk across the room to nab the best materials, the prime locations.

I down the final section of my orange and put my lunch box back in my tote.  Why is this happening? 3rd day in a row.  It’s not even raining that hard right now.

Finn and Keesha fill solo cups with water. They will watercolor a bunch of pictures they’ll neglect to take home.  Brad and Cora and Sheldon nab the basket of popsicle sticks and masking tape so they can tape sticks together.  Emma and her posse huddle behind the iPad cart with UNO.  Chess, Mancala, Sorry. Set.  Let the games begin. 

Doesn’t take long for Gage to start growling and balling his fists.  Turns out he likes to play SORRY a different way than Leah and Marta do.  They’re standing firm and he’s fixing to escalate the growling, so I lure him away with poster board and fancy markers.

Henry reads Dog Man at his desk.  Should he be interacting more?  Anna complains about April rolling her eyes at her.  No patience with those 2.  Not getting sucked in this time.

Vance chases after Richard in a high speed game of tag. I put the kibosh on that right away. No thank you. We’re not running.    

It’s so loud.  Why does Ian scream?  Ellie’s ear is right next to his mouth.  

Can’t find the poem for this afternoon.  Xeroxed copies yesterday.  Put them down in a good place so I wouldn’t lose them.  Story of my life.  I run next door to grab a copy.  Surprise surprise Mandy’s classroom is quiet.  Kids speaking at normal volumes. Mandy is at her organized desk grading papers.  Getting stuff done.  Maybe if I kept my area cleaner I wouldn’t have these problems.

With a copy of the poem in hand I race to the copier. That one teacher is copying massive packets, hogging the machine as usual.  

I'll have to write the poem on a chart paper.  It won’t be as good.  I like them to have their own copies, but too bad for me.  Next time, be organized.  My head hurts a bit because of jaw clenching.  I sidle over to the teacher closet to grab a few ibuprofen.  On the shelf I see the noise cancelling headphones I use for emergencies. 

Not crazy about wearing these because I look like a freak, but I clamp them on my head.  5 minutes left.

I can barely hear the screams now.  These things are miracles. 

I start writing the poem with colorful markers.  I love this poem. 

If I give us all 5 extra minutes I can get this done. Ten more likely.  Maybe I can add stars and moons to jazz it up a bit.  This is actually looking quite nice. 

What is purple?

Time is purple

Just before night….