“Mr. Curran!” challenged the teacher impatiently. “First you arrive late to class, and now you completely disrupt the proceedings. What do you have to say for yourself?”
“Nothing,” returned the confused boy. “I’m not sure what happened.”
“See that you regain control of yourself immediately!” replied the teacher.
As this exchange took place, Conor quietly slid the bully’s desk back about eighteen inches from its previous position. With the students’ attention riveted on the teacher/student confrontation, no one in the classroom noticed Conor’s interior decorating. No one, that is, except Janine, who stood in the back of the room with her face in her hands. Her raucous laughter echoed up and down the hallway as she watched Conor’s little scheme take shape.
Sure enough, while gathering up his possessions from the floor, the bully failed to look around as he leaned back to sit down at his desk. His rear end grazed the desktop portion of his chair, bouncing off of the front lip of the seat. The desk flew away from him, loudly crashing into two desks to his right. The boy’s momentum carried him back into the desk immediately behind him. He cracked his head on the steel framework of the desk and lay there stunned.
The room exploded with laughter. Now anonymous amidst the collective group, every student in the classroom laughed out loud at the bully’s mishap. No one even got up to assist the boy, for they all held memories of the taunts they received at the hands of him and his friends.
The teacher had seen enough. “Mr. Curran!” she cried out. “Will you please take your detention slip to the vice principal’s office and begin your session now!”
The bully’s friend stood and walked over to give aide to his companion, all the while looking around the classroom for any clues regarding the culprit. Just as he took his last steps toward his friend, Janine stuck her foot in between his legs, tripping him up. The boy went sprawling head over heels, landing in a heap and scattering the boy’s possessions again. The classroom roared with renewed glee as the teacher turned from her position at the front of the room.
“And take your hoodlum friend with you!” she bellowed loudly.
Conor and Janine ran out of the room holding their aching stomachs. They stopped in the hallway long enough to enjoy their fit of laughter, and then proceeded to check the other classrooms. When they spotted one of the other bullies in a room down the hall, they entered the room and stationed themselves against the back wall.
This classroom obviously housed the main collection of art and media supplies for the campus. Conor and Janine looked around and saw paint, clay, glue, and paper of all sorts located in different parts of the room. Innumerable supplies lay on tables or rested on shelves in cabinets that stood against three walls of the room. The students stood languidly around the tables, half listening to the art instructor’s lesson for the day. All except for the one boy who belonged to the group of bullies; he sat perched on one of the tables, fiddling with his car keys.
“Now, class,” continued the instructor, “I want you to be especially careful today as we work on building the foundations for our ornaments. The glue you will be dipping your paper into contains elements that make an extremely powerful bond. Working without your protective gloves might leave an irritating coating on your hands for weeks. And may the creators help you if you make the mistake of dripping some in your hair. No poisonous elements exist in the glue, so we need not worry about that. Just be mindful of your precautions and we’ll all get through this day without incident. You may now begin.”
Conor looked at Janine and grinned from ear to ear. Janine swore she saw the pride of the Circle of Evil dancing in Conor’s eyes.
The students worked diligently on their projects, carefully draping layer after layer of sticky paper around the foundations. The boy who belonged to the group of bullies did nothing to contribute to the class or to his project. However, he did seem smart enough to heed the teacher’s instructions. He doodled in the glue with one finger of his glove. He squashed up balls of paper and rolled them around in the sticky goo, stacking them together until they fell down and splattered glue all over the table.
“And what in creation has become of your foundation, may I ask?” queried the art teacher from behind the boy. “Please clean your table and place the materials in their appropriate storage locations. Then wash your hands and come see me for your detention slip. If you refuse to participate with the other students, then you may participate in the vice principal’s activities in his office.”
The bully glared at the teacher, defiantly obeying his orders. After all, he thought to himself, that’s what he wanted all along. Stupid art class anyway. He gave a half hearty attempt at wiping up the residual glue on his table. Throwing the rag away, he grabbed the plastic rectangular box containing the glue in one hand, and picked up the lid in the other hand. Even though countless warnings had been issued by the art teacher regarding fastening the glue box lids tightly, the bully simply placed the lid on top of the box and walked over to the cabinet.
Conor fell in behind him, following him over to the cabinet located at the rear of the classroom. He watched the bully open the doors to the cabinet, slamming them against the outer walls, of course, and then reach for an open space on one of the higher shelves. Kick me out of class will you, he thought to himself, let’s see what happens to the next student who uses this glue box. After placing the box on the shelf, he turned to walk away.
Conor reached around the boy’s shoulder and slid the box of glue away from the shelf. At the precise moment, he tipped the box so the lid slipped off, providing maximum spillage. The box of glue hit the bully square in the back of his head, sending a shower of sticky white cream cascading over the boy’s ears and shoulders. A goodly portion penetrated the boy’s shirt collar, sending a cupful down his naked back. The glue box crashed to the floor so loudly that everybody stopped working on their projects and turned around.
As with the first room, the sight of the bully’s predicament created an eruption of raucous laughter. Every student in the classroom laughed uproariously, primarily due to the comedic scene in front of them, but also because of who this boy hung around with. Every one of them had suffered indignities because of he and his friends, and now they merely returned the favor.
The bully stared angrily at the students, looking for someone to blame. While he pondered his next move, Janine stood on a side table undoing the twisty on an immense bag of confetti. The bag sat on top of the cabinet where the unfortunate boy had placed his glue box. Just as the bully started to shout at his classmates for laughing at him, Janine removed the twisty and let the bag drop to the floor.
The impact from the eight-foot drop released a wall of confetti that consumed the bully from head to toe. As the remaining chips of paper filtered down to the ground, a dazed and very colorful boy stood in the rear of classroom, totally mute. For the second time in minutes, the students in the classroom roared with laughter. Even the art teacher, concerned about the boy though he might have been, bent over and belly laughed with the rest of his students. Conor and Janine guffawed right along with them.
Finally worn out, the art teacher escorted the boy down to the nurse’s office. With every classroom they passed, a new wave of laughter rolled down the hallway back to the art class. Conor and Janine walked out of the classroom in search of the last of the bullies.
In the next building they found the last three boys in a large theater style classroom. They walked into the room and examined the scene. Around fifty-five or sixty students encircled a piano in the middle of the room. They sat in folding chairs clutching various musical instruments. Seated at the piano, the music instructor fingered a few notes while speaking softly to the students. The leader of the bullies and his two friends sat at the perimeter of the group. Although they looked disinterested, they held their horns in their laps and faced the music instructor. Apparently, thought Conor, this instructor handled her class with a firm hand.
“Now class,” she continued, “today we will attempt a new sheet of music that will present a challenge to many of you. Up to this point in the semester, all of you have performed admirably in harmony with each other. Today we will begin learning to play in smaller groups. Our individual musical scores will, after much practice, complement each of the other scores. Together, we will produce a concert quality piece that even your parents might appreciate during the holiday recital.”
Conor listened to the music instructor continue her introduction. She handed out sheet music to all of the students, including Chuck and his two buddies. As soon as Chuck took his music from the instructor, Conor smiled broadly as an idea danced inside his head. He looked over at Janine, communicating his intentions.
Janine couldn’t believe the shenanigans Conor had planned for this room. Before this odd journey she never dreamt that Conor could be so mischievous. She had to admit, however, that this might be his shining moment.
The classroom remained extremely quiet while the music instructor delivered her final instructions. The students in the classroom sat silently, paying attention to her every word. It reminded Janine of a great music hall with a prominent orchestra preparing to deliver an opening movement.
A strong, low tuba blast heralded from the rear of the classroom. The music instructor had never in her life heard a more sickening sound. It seemed as though someone had expelled as much air as they could into the tuba’s mouthpiece, with no regard to pitch or tone. Every student in the class turned around to find the offender.
“Mr. Simmons,” stated the music instructor as she stood to collect the full view of the offender. “While you and your two friends might find amusement in that little prank, I assure you the other students do not. I certainly find it distasteful in a cultural environment such as this. Are we understood, Mr. Simmons?”
Chuck the bully simply sat with his mouth wide open, unable to respond. He still wanted to know for his own sake how the tuba managed to make a sound while laying in his lap. He looked at his two friends, who returned his look with befuddled stares of their own.
Conor and Janine stood right behind the three boys, waiting for their next cue. They received it as soon as the music instructor began speaking again.
“As I alluded to before the interruption,” she continued, “our purpose here…”
Conor and Janine crouched down and blew into the horns held by Chuck’s two buddies. Half blowing and half laughing, they still managed to manufacture a considerable racket.
Cut off in mid sentence, the music instructor sat on her piano bench listening to the screech of a clarinet and the strangled blare of a French horn reverberating around her classroom. Although lasting only a second or two, the violent disruption grated on her nerves. She slowly stood and turned to see the two boys to the left and right of Chuck sitting with their hands in their laps. Their nervous smiles and sweaty foreheads instantly gave them away.
“What in the name of Mozart is going on here?” she asked forcefully. The music instructor did not normally yell at her students. In almost all cases, a stern rebuke in a calm but effective voice served just as well. However, she found herself struggling to keep her composure this day. “Am I to believe that the sole purpose of your joining us today is to disrupt the entire class?”
The boys had no answer. They sat with their mouths hanging wide open, trying to find some explanation to deliver to their teacher. After digesting her glaring eyes for a few seconds, they lowered their gaze and stared at their shoes.
“Please, boys,” the music instructor said sternly. “You must try and control yourselves. You’ll get your chance to play your instruments soon enough.” Turning back to her piano, the music instructor addressed her students again. “This is the cadence for the first movement.”
As soon as she began addressing the keys on her piano, a low, repeated blast emerged from the back of the room. The tuba emitted a sound almost exactly like a farting noise. It sounded like when Conor or one of his friends placed their palm in an armpit and flapped their arm. The low, rash notes kept repeating until the music instructor jumped up from the piano bench.
“Mr. Simmons!” she screamed. Leaving all decorum aside, she bellowed at the three boys in the back of the room.
The clarinet and the French horn answered her in unison. They too sounded like someone trying to control a bad case of gas.
The class finally fell apart. They all started to laugh at the boys in the back of the room. Soon the tuba joined in again and the room became a mixture of laughing students, a farting brass section, and a screaming music instructor.
“I want the three of you up front right now,” she yelled angrily. “Since you insist on disrupting the class, I will give you two choices. You may spend the rest of the class serenading us or you can find your way to the vice principal’s office with three detention slips. I won’t have any more distractions.”
Chuck and his two friends numbly accepted their slips. They left their instruments on the floor and turned toward the door. As they walked away from their seats, they heard a quiet chirp from the clarinet, and a low accompanying blast from the tuba. They jumped a little and hurried out the door.
“OUT!” yelled the music instructor one more time.
The three boys exited the music building and found their companions lounging around outside. One had a large lump in the back of his head, another looked like a reject from a bad movie, and the entire group nursed sour moods. This had certainly been one bizarre day for all of them.
