Day 55

Breakfast in Amsterdam, originally uploaded by Blog-Sothoth.

This morning I saw two of our first period kids in the hall during class. I tried to coax them into the room, but they weren't interested. Ten minutes later I could smell weed coming up from the stairwell. Montrise was telling a story about throwing chicken in the air. Seagulls would fly down to get the chicken and he would shoot them with an air rifle. He mimicked the noise they made, and how they flopped over in mid-air. He stopped his story and shouted "Dag, where the smokers at?"

The entire second floor reeked of primo green. I opened the stairwell and it was like the car in Up in Smoke. This is the dark stairwell where adults don't go. The handrails are down on the steps and the floor is sticky like an adult theater after Paul Reubens drops by. As soon as I opened the door there was a rush of students out the downstairs exit. I didn't see who they were, but within minutes Keyan and Will were lying on the floor outside of class laughing their asses off. Then Will tried to scale the ornate Victorian molding on one of the arches in the hall. "I'm a rockclimber, muthafucka!" he shouted. Keyan's eyes were red as prison jumpsuits. Mr. C lured them into math class with a bag of Cheetos from his goody locker.

During planning period one of the language arts intervention teachers came into class as Lukie and I were grading papers. "It smells like chronic up in here," she said. "It was us," I replied. "Yeah, we had to take the edge off," Lukie said.

The intervention teacher said "Are you serious? You need to tell me next time. My source dried up a couple weeks back."

As I was grading papers I read a suspiciously excellent one. As soon as I got home I Googled one line I remembered--the entire essay was from Bud, Not Buddy.