Mr. Admeen Teaches the Teachers

He solved the gap alright.  A quick stitch was all it took, but the gap of pants that had opened up in the spot designed to conceal the lower testes area had been closed with a few safety pins.  Mr. Fissure  went on singing again and again.

"Now, I just have to leave the shirt untucked, and I'll be fine," he sang aloud.  "Fine, fine, fine-fine-fine. La-la-la-la!"

"Singing?  Again?"  Mr. Carter was not amused.

Mr. Carter was not amused because Mr. Carter was putting the finishing touches on an intricate webisode that he had spent his entire weekend crafting.  The webisode was designed to introduce his 11th grade Algebra-I-Remediation-and-Support class to the elementary and middle school topic of inequalities.  Something that, for some reason, was a new concept to his 11th graders.

"He should start singing about that stupid gap between his pants, is what he should be singing about," Carter huffed.

Mr. Carter was so much the glorious webisode maker that, in his spare time, he helped other teachers create their own webisodes. Super-Cooperative High School ™™®®™™ was really focused on technology.

More recently, his webisodes had gone unnoticed, and when an all-staff meeting was called two hours before the beginning of the school day, Carter felt as though his technology was being put further on the backburner.

"Technology?  Science?!" Mr. Admeen shouted.  "There will be science.  New science!  Fresh science!  Look!  We have beakers!"

And the teachers looked, and saw four large boxes full of different sized beakers, all emblazoned  with SCHS logos.

"What about English?" asked Ms. not Mrs. Cisneros.

"English?!  There will be English!  New English!  Look, we have new books!!!"  And with that exclamation, Mr. Admeen ripped open another box and tossed each teacher in the room a copy of Huckleberry Finn.  The teacher thumbed through the pages while Mr. Admeen looked on, licking his bottom lip and nodding his head in approval.

"What's on the pages?  Why is this on every-"

"You like those watermarks?" shouted Mr. Admeen.  "Ya, I figured you all would be pretty shocked.  The Education Office wasn't too thrilled with the idea of each and every page being watermarked, but I expressed, repeatedly, that it's entirely necessary for every single page to be watermarked so that our school's branding remains fresh and relevant.  It's really all in the branding."

"But you can barely see the words.  Why do the pages need to be watermarked directly in the center?  Isn't that confusing?"

"It might be confusing, for some.  But that's a concession I'm willing to make.  Not all students can read, this is true.  But what's more so truer is that all students need to be able to read the branding.  The logos, you know?  Brand recognition is paramount to student achievement.  We want this school to be recognizable, and to attract the best.  The very best.  Like professional athletes.  Think about it."

The teachers thought about it.

"Do professional athletes wear shoes without branding?"

The teachers thought.

Admeen continued.  "Do their jerseys remain a vacant lot?  The front of a race car, does it not display the brand's logo?"

The teachers thought about it.

"So why would kids want to go to school without a brand?  They wouldn't, that's the truth.  Haven't you ever thought about why kids hate going to school?"

"No brands?" asked Katy.

Admeen smiled.  "No brands, Katy.  No brands.  Well, I have given that to them.  The students are now part of something bigger, something more focused, and something clean.  Look at the detail on those hands."

And the teacher looked at the details on those hands, all 20 of them, forming a circle with fingertips in the middle, all touching.  It was near miraculous how the designers of the logo were able to fit 20 hands into a circular space only a few inches in diameter, but it was accomplished, nonetheless.

"Looks like a bunch of fuckin' toothpicks.  You can barely see the letters" added Katy.

"Toothpicks??  We have toothpicks.  Toothpicks and plates and forks and knives.  All covered in our branding!"  And with that Admeen began hurling boxes of toothpicks at the staff, laughing hysterically, before calling the teachers together to practice the Morning-Ritual-of-Thanks-and-Cheer™.

Mr. Carter kicked through the cardboard box of toothpicks, sending them scattering across the room.

"It's going to be a long year," he thought.

Insubordination! Insubordination!

Early Mornings
I came into the staff lounge and there was a newsletter with 7 or 8 not-so-wonderful pictures of your Humble Narrator, all smashed together.  My lanky body cut out of the shots, it was head, nose, beard, mustache, whatever.

"What the fuck?"

Meanwhile, at the end of the table, a co-worker of mine sat idly by.  He glanced up at me, quickly, with a short smirk and a twinkle of evil in his eye.

I hadn't an idea as to what all the words on the paper said.  I saw pictures of my face, saw his evil smile, and heard the sound of a furiously working printer.  I met my coworker's gaze with a most unsavory facial expression and  side-stepped from the collaboration room into the mailroom.

I heard giggles from the collaboration room as I saw, to my horror, every staff mailbox stuffed with that same piece of paper that had lots of writing and 7 or 8 not-so-wonderful pictures of your Humble Narrator crammed into the top.  The letters were strategically inserted into the mailbox so that my faces were the first things you saw upon reaching in for other things that you would end up throwing away later.

There came a voice from just beyond my right shoulder.

"I'm making extras, just in case."

"Why?  Why would you do this to me?" I yipped, "Don't you know what they'll do to me??"

"You haven't even read it," he said.  I felt a cold chill settle on my right hand.  "Here it is.  Have a look."

The icy sheet that landed on my hand was, in fact, not icy at all, but hot.  Rather hot.  The type of paper-heat reserved for a freshly made, color-copy of a computer document pumped out of a Canon printer.

"Whatever you put, it's not too late, man.  We can fix it.  I can take all of these out and no one will know.  Whatever you did, it's not too late." I was begging now.  "Please, dude, honestly, I didn't mean to trick you during that text-chain when you and Party God and CoCo thought I was mad.  Is that was this is all about?! I didn't mean it.  Joking was all.  I'll never do it again."

"Read it."

Insubordination
Whoever wrote it has the brain of an evil genius.  As each sentence led to the next, my anxiety grew.  My fingers curled until the paper crumbled.  No one was safe.  Not a soul, from rookie teacher to veteran administrator.

The newsletter seemed to be crafted in the vein of humor, but there was something darker lurking in between the lines.  The newsletter would, as I saw it then, be the undoing of a school that had worked so hard to undo itself previously.

All the quiet jokes, the comments, the secret deals behind the library, they all came to a front, printed out on a single 8.5x11 inch paper dispersed to the staff of Super-Cooperative High School™™®®™™ with the intent of bringing the whole thing down.  Maybe.

I finished the last sentence as my stomach moved into the back of my mouth.

"What have you done?  What have you done?!"

He smiled.

"It's simple, really," he replied.  "What I've done, you idiot, is craft the greatest satirical newsletter of all time.  Don't you see?"

I sat, trembling.  "I, I guess-"

"Think about it!  People have made comments in jest before.  People have made jokes before.  People have been made to feel that constructive criticism is safe on this campus, but, once the comments are made, the receivers of the message claim that they feel threatened!  Don't you see why this is the greatest satirical newsletter of all time?"

I had been unaware of my position and, during this time, my co-worker had backed me into the small space existing between the water cooler and the copy machine.  I sat on the blue recycling bin in the corner while he towered over me, madness raging in his pupils.

"Dude, this is seriously fucked.  Coal mines?  They might actually go for it!"

"No, you IDIOT!"

"And what about Schwa?  What happened with that?  I mean, the Vivar part was hilarious because I'm pretty sure I've heard him say that before, but come on, the noob?"

"That's not it, you MEGA-IDIOT!"

"Then why?  Why is it the greatest?  Because it will undo the culture of this school?  Because it will unravel the very fabric that we've spent the last few years stitching and weaving with our hands and sometimes our feet?  Because it will jeopardize the cohesion of our plans for Olympic Curling glory?  Because it will draw out the people on staff who never leave enough money to cover our tab at the 9-0-1 Bar?  Because that would actually be helpful!  Last summer I had to cover and extra 40 fucking dollars!"

He leaned in, closer still, as I shrank deeper into the corner, sitting on another cup of water mistakenly tossed into the recycling bin.

"No, you idiot," he whispered.

My eyes opened wider with fear.

"It's the greatest satirical newsletter of all time because I wrote all of this in like, one sitting. Like, 15 or 20 minutes tops, bro.  Don't you see?  People make satirical newsletters all the time, but not in 15 or 20 minutes.  No one can do that.  But I did, Smith, I did."

I searched for air, inhaling deeply because, during those few seconds, he had his hand locked around my throat.  And it was in those moments that I realized what had happened.  I walked into my room and remained silent for the rest of the day with images of MacBooks and iPads ablaze and Reading Counts scores erased in a snap.





(Written in 47 minutes.  Not good enough.)