Substitute by Nicholson Baker
Penelope said, “I would be like, Give me CPR!”
I looked at the attendance list. There were many more people in the room than were on the list. “Huge class, my gawd!” I said. I shushed the shouters.
“People come in from their other activity,” Stefan explained. “They let their teachers know, and they come in here.”
“They do their work and they’re civilized and quiet?” I said.
“I’ll let you determine that,” Stefan said.
Melanie showed me her cotton ball project. “That’s beautiful,” I said. “Every ten miles is two centimeters. My god, it’s to scale.”
“A fire,” said Stefan. That was the answer to his riddle. “What goes around the world, but stays in a corner?”
“An office chair,” I said.
“No.”
I guessed again. News? A satellite?
“A stamp,” Stefan said. He pointed triumphantly at me. “Haaaaaah!”
Time to get started. “Okay, guys, hello. Hello, hello.”
“Hi!” said Rhys, a girl with a hairband.
Ashton crumpled up an empty packet of peanuts.
“Shh, for a second,” I said. “Quiet for a second with the peanuts. I just want to welcome you to this class. I like conversation, it’s good, what I don’t like is when the sounds kind of crest and get too loud. So just talk in a normal voice.”
Stefan stood and boomed out another riddle, reading from his iPad: “THE MAN WHO INVENTED IT DOESN’T WANT IT, THE MAN WHO BOUGHT IT DOESN’T NEED IT, THE MAN WHO NEEDS IT DOESN’T KNOW IT.”
I said, “When you read that thing next time, just read it in a softer level.”
“I will, I’m sorry.”
Beep, the PA lady. “Please excuse the interruption for a few announcements. All students who’ve signed up for AP Government or AP History next year should report to the auditorium at this time. Congratulations to the girls’ tennis team on their three-to-one defeat of Kennebunk yesterday.” More announcements—about softball, baseball, yearbooks, and Project Aware, which was an antibullying initiative. Nobody listened.
I asked a catatonic but smart kid, Greyson, how he was doing on the Earth’s atmosphere. He couldn’t work on the project, he said, because he didn’t have his iPad, and all his notes were on his iPad. I told him to make something with pipe cleaners.
“It’s all got to be to scale,” said Greyson.
“No, it doesn’t have to be to scale,” I said. I waved at the exemplars on the corkboard. “None of those are to scale.”
“That’s a different assignment,” said Greyson. “It has to look like this.” He showed me an exemplar lying on top of a bookcase.
“Well, then make it look roughly like that.”
“Okay, I can handle that,” said Greyson. “Uh, can I go to the nurse real quick?”
I nodded.
“Thank you,” he said.
Lionel, Hank, and Tucker reappeared. “Come on in,” I said.
Penelope called out, “Lionel, you’re my favorite.”
A sketchy-looking boy, Chris, dropped by. He stood, thumping his water bottle against a file cabinet, trying to decide if he wanted to stay in the class. I told him to take off his backpack and have a seat.
Chris said, “I don’t trust some people around here, you know?”
“Just don’t make loud noises with the water bottle.”
The PA lady came on with an announcement about picking up cookie dough.
Chris stopped thumping the water bottle and instead twirled it in the middle of a table, saying, “Are you a man, or are you a woman?” Then he hopped up onto a low bookcase and sat. He began poking Ashton with a pen.
“God dang,” I said. “What’s up with you? Just get some homework out and pretend to do it. Put a piece of paper or a freaking iPad in front of you and do something with it. Don’t poke. It’s ridiculous!”
Chris finished drinking from his water bottle and commenced making crinkling, crackling sounds with it.
“Dude, this is pathetic,” I said. “Take out some pieces of paper, put them in front of you, and make some marks on them.”
“You heard the man,” said Hank.
“Why are you telling me to get to work and not him?” said Chris.
“The reason is, he’s sitting quietly and you’re doing things with the water bottle. The water bottle is what’s killing me.”
“All right, I’m sorry,” Chris said.
“It’s that crackling sound. Doesn’t it drive you insane? Obviously it has driven you insane.”
“I like it,” said Chris. “I play it on my phone, and that’s how I go to sleep. You want to see a magic trick with gravity?” He took out a Verizon phone and put it on the table.
“I see what you did there, nice,” I said. I did the Chinese egg drop with a thumb drive I had in my pocket.
“That was pretty good,” said Chris. “It took me a second to realize it.”
Ashton came up. “I have to go to the South Building and get that cookie dough.”
“Go get that cookie dough,” I said. “It’s urgent.”
Beep. The PA lady asked us to excuse her interruption. “Freshmen, if you sold cookie dough, please report to the New Caf at this time to pick up your order, thank you.”
Stefan read me a riddle: “From the beginning of eternity, to the end of time and space, from the beginning of every end, to the end of every place. What am I?”
“A Milky Way bar,” I said. “No.”
“Read it again,” said Tucker.
Stefan read it again.
“I got it right off,” said Nora.
“It’s going to be stupidly easy,” said Penelope.
“What is it?” said Tucker.
“It’s E,” said Stefan.
“The letter E,” Penelope clarified.
“Beautiful,” I said.
“I get it now,” said Tucker.
Melanie and Sisely came back staggering under a load of Otis Spunkmeyer cookie dough, in tubs.
“Mr. Baker!” Stefan said. “What’s round on both sides and high in the middle? If you know it, don’t answer.”
“A cheeseburger,” I said.
“I know this,” said Penelope.
I said, “John Belushi? No. Sponge cake. I don’t know. I’m bad at riddles. I can’t do it. What’s the answer?”
“Ohio,” Stefan said.
“Ah. I’m going to find you a riddle,” I said, wagging my finger. “I’m going to find you a mega-riddle.”
Stefan said, “What can you catch, but cannot throw?”
“AIDS,” said Chris.
Another kid found a riddle. “What gets wetter and wetter the more it dries?”
“I have the dirtiest mind ever,” said Tucker. “Can I answer?”
“No,” said Stefan. “A towel. It gets wetter and wetter the more it dries you.”
“I get it,” said Chris.
Sisely said that she’d ordered so much cookie dough that she’d had to make two trips to the cafeteria. “My mom’s going to have to come in and get it.”
“Mr. Baker, do you have a riddle for me?”
“I’m trying,” I said. “I’m a little riddle challenged.”
Beep, please excuse the announcement. “Anyone who hasn’t picked up their cookie dough at this time, please go over to the caf, thank you.”
“Any cookie dough left behind will be destroyed,” I said. I browsed websites, trying to find a riddle for Stefan, but none of them seemed good enough.
Penelope read a riddle. “There is a boat with a lot of people, but at the same time there is not a single person on the boat. How is this possible?”
“There’s more than one person on the boat!” said Stefan, wagging a finger. “You said there’s
Penelope shook her head. “They’re all married.”
“It’s a couples cruise,” said Lionel.
“What about the captain, and the crew?” asked Melanie.
“They’re all married to each other. Marriage at sea,” said Lionel.
“It’s almost lunchtime, guys,” said Chris, standing.
I read a joke from Garrison Keillor’s joke book, which I happened to have on my phone. “How many surrealists does it take to change a lightbulb?”
Penelope had found another riddle. “What begins and ends with e, and has only one letter?” The answer was envelope.
“Do you have one for me, Mr. Baker?” said Stefan.
“I started to say it, but I was embarrassed and I moved on.”
“No, say it!” said Stefan.
“How many communists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”
“How many communists?” said Stefan. “That’s just a messed-up joke.” He had a riddle by heart. “So a man leaves his home in the morning, and kisses his wife goodbye. On his way home from work, he sees a man crashing through a power line. He immediately knows his wife is dead. How does he know this?”
Bong, bong, bong, bong, bong, bong.
“The answer is that THE WIFE WAS ON LIFE SUPPORT,” Stefan said, over the din of departure. “That’s such a messed-up riddle.”
I said, “Have a good lunch, good lunch, good lunch, good lunch.”
—
A HANDFUL OF KIDS ATE their lunch in the room. I took a long drink of water and washed my hands. One honors student, a hairy talker named Nolan, brought out a transparent spherical maze called a Perplexus Epic and gave it to his friend Ramsey to try out.
“Bollocks,” said Ramsey. “It fell down.”
“Roast beef and pepper jack today,” Nolan said, chewing.
Haydon, who had droopy shorts and black sneakers, was looking at the stacked tubs of cookie dough. “Who bought cranberry oatmeal?”
“Ew,” said Ivy.
“That is disgusting,” said Ramsey.
Nolan had a lot to say, and he said it fast. He talked about red wine and chocolate, whether they were good for you or not, and he talked about whether or not North Korea was a threat to the United States. “North Korea is producing a licensed model of the 1946 GAZ M-20,” he said. “That’s what they’re making. There’s the GAZ 69, which is a jeep, and the GAZ M-20, which is a sedan car from the forties. Those are the two mass-produced vehicles in that country.”
“You’ve got to ask why they are at that point,” I said. “It’s because the US bombed them till they were subsisting in caves. The country was devastated. The fact that they’re now able to do anything is kind of a miracle.”
“I think our being there in South Korea is intimidating North Korea,” Nolan said. “Kind of like if you bother a porcupine.”
I asked them why they ate in Mrs. Moran’s room. Was the cafeteria really noisy?
“Yeah, it’s not an enjoyable place,” said Nolan. He was skimming local news stories at the same time he was talking and eating—stories about fires and cops and break-ins.
We sat silently for a while, and then Penelope said to Jill that one of the teachers on the team had been crying on Friday.
I said, “The thing that’s hard—I’m sorry to interrupt you guys, but I’m lonely—the thing that’s hard is that if you’re a regular teacher, you actually have to get the kids to learn something. That’s hard. A substitute can just enjoy it. People say funny things, do amazing projects, and I just take it in.”
“It’s a dream job,” said Jill; Penelope laughed.
Six bongs.
—
HONORS GEOPHYSICAL SCIENCE was a huge class. I admired more models of the atmospheric layers. One used nesting rings, one used glass beads. I said, “Hello, hello, hello. I’m Mr. Baker, I’m filling in for Mrs. Moran, and she is OUT. How are you doing with the layers of the atmosphere, as they radiate upward? Some of them are hot and some of them are cold? You doing well with that? There are some incredible models. I have to say I’m really impressed by all the different ways that people have solved this problem of how to visualize layers of the atmosphere.” A kid with a hot pepper on his shirt was talking. “So—Chili Pepper,” I said.
“Did you just call me a chili pepper?”
“I’m just reading your shirt. All you need to do is focus down. Just give it everything you have. You’re honors, right? Congratulations, let’s have a moment of silence for that.” I told them to work on their projects and to not be loud. “If I can be of assistance to anybody, let me know. That’s it, enjoy. AND I MEAN IT ABOUT THE LOUDNESS!”
The Scotch tape ran out; I found some more in the cupboard. I met the kid, Joel, who did the yellow balloon and told him how much I liked its simplicity—just Magic Marker on a balloon. Grace took attendance for me while several girls made peals of laughter. Nolan said he’d made his atmospheric layers out of Jell-O, but the layers merged, so he now had four weeks’ worth of Jell-O in his fridge. “I’m going to make it again out of cookie dough,” he said. A girl named Mira had made her Earth using rainbow cake mix.
“That is way above and beyond,” I said.
“Oh, why thank you,” Mira said.
Linda, a tall young woman with blue-framed glasses, was tearing red M&M’s and pale blue Necco wafers from the base of her gorgeous candy-themed project. Why the tearing?
“It had to be to scale,” Linda said.
“Is anything to scale in this life?” I said. “No.”
“I’m going to tell Mrs. Moran that,” said Linda. “I’m going to say, Sorry, nothing’s to scale in this life.”
A bored kid, Wilson—the one wearing the hot-pepper T-shirt—was distractingly rolling a roll of masking tape on the desk. “I don’t have my iPad,” he said.
“Who cares about your iPad?” I said. “Do it in cardboard. Look at what people are doing. They’re making works of art. There are pipe cleaners up there.”
The honors students were not quiet and studious, they were flirty and jokey and loud, although they got work done, as April had said they would. There were many playful disputes over the glue gun, and I had to tell them several times to take it down a peg. Nolan talked knowledgeably about storage batteries and solar power and offshore oil drilling and a dozen other topics. A diminutive boy named Darcy said, “I mustache you a question, but I’ll shave it for later.”
“Ow, that hurt, you stabbed me!” said Linda, who was flirting with Joel—Joel was handsome.
Wilson bonked Case on the nose with a rolled-up piece of paper.
I asked Case his opinion of Mrs. Moran.
“She’s really nice to everyone but me,” he said. “She absolutely loves Nolan for no reason, and she absolutely hates me for no reason.”
“You’ve got to win her over,” I said.
“I almost got an ISS for messing with Wilson. Then he put shaving cream on my face twice. I told the teacher and she yelled at me.”
Linda asked Joel, “What temperature did you put for the thermosphere?”
I urged them on, table by table. “All right, now label it! Let the art come bubbling out! All those pent-up feelings that are inside you, let them go.”
“Is it hard being a writer?” asked Linda.
“Yes,” I said. “It never gets any easier.”
Wilson positioned a label on a cloud. “Feng shui,” he said.
Five minutes before class ended a Hokusai wave of noise began. “SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH,” I said. “Way down, way down, way down. Way down.”
“Lay down?” said Wilson.
“Clean it up, right now,” I said. “All the stuff that isn’t yours. Go above and beyond. Right now. Wilson, I’ve got my eye on you, clean it
Bong, bong, bong, bong, bong, bong. Twelve forty-seven on a Tuesday.
“Have a nice day,” said Linda.
“I broke my wrist the other day,” said Wilson, on his way out. “A Salter-Harris fracture, on the growth plates.”
“Wow, take it easy, man,” I said. Bye. Thank you. Have fun. Good work today. See you.
—
ONE MORE BLOCK of Geophysical Science to go. The first person in the door was the riddler, Stefan. The class was in full-out bonkers mode, just as April had warned me. “Hold him down, punch him,” yelled one of the class clowns. April said, “Can I go down to Ms. Miller at the end of the South Building for this block?”
“Because this class is too loud?”
“Yes!” she said.
I wrote her a permission slip.
A teacher appeared and began waving her arms. “Just go to class! Go to class! Go to class.”
The PA lady: “Please excuse the interruption. All chamber singers and chorus members must be in the auditorium at this time. Thank you.”
“That’s you,” I said, pointing at Vince, a shifty kid in a hunting hat.
Jill, Daisy, and Marcia were whooping and shouting at each other in Southern accents.
“They’re having a girlie fight,” said Stefan.
“Are you happy here?” I said to them, standing over their table. Then I gave my intro. “So you’re DOING SOME WORK. That’s what she wants you to do. Enjoy, have fun, and talk in really nice controlled voices, so we don’t drive each other nuts. Catch up on what you need to do. Okay?”
Jill said, “You look nice and sharp today.”
“Thank you so much, so do you,” I said. I was wearing a linen blazer.
A ruler smacked down. “Line in the sand,” I said. “Violence, things flying through the air, rulers smacking against the tabletop—all that is totally unacceptable. It will NOT be tolerated. I WILL drop the boom. It will NOT happen.”
They all thought “drop the boom” was crazy funny and said it many times—drop the boom, drop the boom.
“Lower the boom,” I said.
Bernard and Bucky were back. “How’s your day been?” Bernard asked, conversationally.
“My day’s been good,” I said. “You’ve been a part of it. You were playing the shark game. Do the sharks eat people, or the people eat sharks?”