Educational Experience

He wasn't talking to me and Big, though. It was the kids trying to rush in behind us he was angry with. The girls gave him some lip, but he was running interference for us, stepping aside just enough to let us through while he sparred with them verbally. You could tell he really liked the kids and vice versa. So they were mostly laughing and teasing him, and trying to bribe him with Christmas cookies and stuff like that. 

So we eased on by, but got this "Who do you think you are?" look by this angry looking black woman who was talking on the phone at a desk just behind the "Check In" counter. There were three other women in the back there, but they looked like deer in the fucking headlights for some reason. I mean, they just stood there staring like we all had two heads or something.

It was clear that the black woman was the "gatekeeper." You know, the one all the other ones defer to, who sizes everything up and does "triage" to decide who gets waited on and in what order. If at all. 

So I was glad that Big Man had followed us in. He hit her with his million kilowatt smile and said, "Merry Christmas!" in that smooth, "basso profundo" voice of his. 

And her demeanor totally changed. She smiled all flirty and girlish and said, "Ooooo, looka here, honey! Christmas came early this year--yow can I help you folks this mornin'?"  

I gave everybody else a few beats to recover, and then I said, "I think you're expecting me today, right? Colton James." 

The black clerk reached for a box full of folders, flipped through in a way that let me know she'd been doing this job 'way too long, and came up with mine in two seconds flat. 

And as she looked over some kinda note paper clipped to it, she said, "Your first stop'll be the Counselor's Office. Let me give them a call, baby. Just a minute. They been lookin’ for you." 

As she went back to her desk, Big Man said, “Call your P.O., too.”

“I did.”

“You sure?”

“No. just said the first thing that popped into my head—of course, I did!”

He chuckled and said, “Yeah, you’re crackin’ wise now, but you got a lot ridin’ on this, playa. It’s not just you’ll be in a world o’ hurt if you don’t get this done right. You get locked up…”

He didn’t finish that thought. He didn’t have to. There were some lives on the line, that was definitely true. So I sighed and started looking around the office myself as a distraction from the gravity of the situation.

It was an old school. In Tucson, they don't build schools with wood counters and things anymore and it's too bad because they feel warmer. Classier, too, I've always thought. Like the people who built them really looked up to teachers and thought education was a noble cause. The new places are like shopping malls. No soul. 

But like a lot of the old and new ones, both, this one had sort of gotten left behind in the sheer craziness of it all over time. Like, there was this wall full of posters that had been there as long as the clerk, probably. I say that because the celebrities on some of them were long past their five minutes of fame. I didn't even know who a couple of 'em were, to be honest. They slap that kinda stuff up on the walls trying to be hip or something initially, but once they go up, they never come down. Which defeats the purpose, of course.

But you can understand why they get behind the times like that. I mean, while I was thinking about the posters, this big white woman stomped up to the counter and said, "I have been calling here for the past hour trying to get someone on the damned phone--where's the goddamned principal?! Hidin' in her office as usual?!"