The rain on the glass disappoints you.  It dissolves your plans to ride your bike, your "Quad," after school.  At the moment though, the splattering drops do give you something on which to concentrate.  The droning of my voice from the front of the room irritates your inner ear, so you blend the tapping of your pencil on the desk with the sounds of water hitting the pane.  There is no doubt that the view out the window is entertaining - much more entertaining than my pedantic mumbles.  Sheets of water dull the warm colours of the newly turned leaves.  You imagine the drops trying to move with free abandon, falling from the sky, looking for a place to settle - to quench some undefined thirst on the earth - enduring the winds that may blow them anywhere.  And then, you think, they are blown toward this place.  Those drops may actually believe that this place is in need of quenching, or cleansing, and they may fill with hope, a desire to light within these walls.  The drops hit the window with an effective dissolution.  You see them slowly move down the pane, dissolving, changing, and sliding slowly to the frame with a last frustrating look at the interior of the room.  At you.  The familiar sound of your name scratches at your eardrum and you turn toward me with distain.

"Could you please?!"

The tapping stops and you glare at me.  Your eyes communicate more to me than you ever have in written or spoken word.

You hate me.  I know that you do, and I know that you are reminding yourself of that undisputed notion again, right now.  You are doing it with the most obscene, lacerating language you can think of; as if the thoughts of language this bad could actually escape the confines of your skull, blast through the eye sockets, soar through the air littered with chalk dust and the solid stench of thirty teenagers after gym class, and reach my mind to deliver its irrefutable message.  I get the message.  You hate me and you hate this place.  You don't know why you have to come here.

"This is stupid," you tell yourself, and anyone else who will listen to your catapulted murmurs.  Your eyes glance again toward the window while your pencil does a dance of pain across the torn shred of paper opened in your mutilated notebook.   It is the same notebook you take to every class for every subject.  It contains some pretty creative drawings of rock band logos, weed leaves, and the word "boy" transformed into a likeness of the word wearing glasses.  It is a little something that you are proud of, this boy.  I've seen you show one of the guys how to do it.  

"How'd ya do that?"

"It's easy, here . . .see 'boy' . . . now, this goes here . . . and then . . . see.  Pretty freaky, wa?"

"Let me try . . . wicked.  That's cool!'

"Yeah, but mine is better then yours, ya fruit!"

I'm glad I overheard that interaction.  It gives me a feeling that we do share something.  

You think we share nothing but the breathing space in this place.  You think that I hate you.  You're right.  

At times I hate you with a disgust that I am ashamed to feel.  You think that I am responsible for making you sit and ignore the information that should provide you with the intended curriculum outcomes, but the truth is, I also don't know why you are here.  Studying raindrops can easily be done at home.

You have obviously decided that you don't want to participate.  Or maybe it was us who decided that we don't want you to participate.  Is that what happened?  Did you give your thoughts at one time and get jeered for some answer that was so different than everyone else's that it made them feel superior to you?  Did it make you firm in the belief that you are inferior, or that we don't deserve your perspective-your contribution?  Or is it reality that you will never need to know what allusion is, that there is symbolism in Lord of the Flies, or that denouement occurs after the climax.  The guilt I feel for the times when I hate you eats at me in quiet times, like your determined hate eats at you now.  I know that you are frustrated - that your youth paints everything in extremes and doesn't allow you to have an intermediate view of me or anything else.  Stupid or cool, wrong or right, hate or love, rain or sun-one is nothing and the other everything in your world.  I wish that you could give it a chance - or another chance-that you could find something in the time you spend here that would excite you.  But you won't even try!  "Art club and drama are for faggots, the volleyball team is full of assholes who only think of themselves, and the coach won't let us have any fun anyway, the school band is for nerds, and the graduation committee . . . well, it really would be stupid if I was a member of that now wouldn't it." There's only "the boys." They're the only ones who get it, the only ones you understand and who understand you.  I sometimes hear what you talk about while I clean up the classroom, infiltrated by the smell of cigarette smoke and the audible expletives entering through the opening of the very window that is currently holding your attention more than I ever could.

"Gimme a friggin' smoke you idiot!"

"Are you goin' down the Arm tonight?"

"What time do you want me to pick you up?"

"I think I'll get a dozen tonight, and a couple of draws."

"I can't wait to get on the quad!"

The sounds are familiar.  Not because I hear them daily but because I too, at one time, would be there, bumming a cigarette, anticipating the weekend.  But I wasn't you.  I thank God.  I can't help but wonder if you even see me as a person?  Or is that another of your juxtaposed classifications: us/them, human beings/teachers, the boys/the world.  The sound of the half-way bell cuts your attention like the familiar rattle of the leash does for my dog, and your arm shoots toward the sky as fast as he lunges toward the door - time to go for a walk.  There are times when I really wonder if you think I am an idiot. . .  and then I realize that you see in black and white and hold no other belief but that I can be nothing else.  Although, I must admit, occasionally I do naively believe that your raised hand signals that you are going to contribute.  I believe that your hand indicates an attempt to reach for the ring of knowledge.  It shoots up like a new sprout, vital in its growth, waiting for the elements to nourish it, to cause it to bloom.  Your eyes have a glimmer in them.  The looks of indifference and hatred have been replaced.   Has a sudden inspiration hit you?  Have you experienced one of the epiphanies that I have been preaching about-like Ebenezer, have you wakened from your nightmare?!

"Yes?" I ask, with that expectant-teacher rise in tone.

"Can I use the washroom?"

You would not believe the rush of responses that move through my mind in the seconds it takes for me to answer that question.  Most of them, the more creative ones, are immediately discarded because I know that I have to keep my job.  But I realize that saying "no," will only cause you to argue that you "really have to go." I also realize that you are going to have a conference with one of your buddies, who at this very moment, in another classroom down the hall, is arguing that he really needs to go.  I doubt if you will even urinate.  You'll most likely lean against the sink, look at the window, unconsciously notice the drops slipping down the vapored glass, and discuss how much you hate being here, or hate some teacher, or talk about how excellent last weekend was, or how much you look forward to going on the bike after school and how the rain is even ruining that.

"Go ahead."

I can't even bring myself to say the now predictable, "Don't pee long," which usually manages to get some groans.

While you are gone at least, I rationalize, the "paying attention-to-looking somewhere else" ratio will increase.

You close the door behind you.

I feel guilty again.  The information I am spewing, the learning I am facilitating, cannot even be absorbed unconsciously from the bathroom.  I have a job to do.  You refuse to let me do it.  You will not let me do what I am supposed to do, what I am expected to do, and it makes me frustrated.  It makes me hate you.  Not you really, but what you do-what you don't do.  You make me hate my job . . . not entirely, but you definitely are the number one reason for bad days.  Do you even realize how important you are?  Do you know that my hate for what you do makes me earn my pay?  You think I hate you and I do.  But I also hate hating you.  I hate you so much that you are the one I think of when I plan my lessons, trying to include material and examples to which you can relate and even react.  You are the one I think of when I create an assignment that incorporates some of the music you like.  I take the time to study you.  The few signals you let slip, I try to incorporate in my maneuvers to educate you.  I know you like certain music because you spend half my classes creating the band's logo/symbol/name in that mangled green notebook, on the desk, and occasionally, when I am not looking, on the wall.  You know the assignment I'm talking about . . . the one you didn't hand in.  Sometimes I feel like telling you how I lay in bed, next to my sleeping wife, and create visions of reaching you, of getting you to do something.  I persuade myself that you will learn and enjoy the process of learning.  I see you getting excited, responding, soaking up information and putting you own personal slant on it, making it grow.  But you quickly and persistently reveal that I am trying to move through a boundary of glass that separates us.  You do not respond.  You never respond.  Then I hit the pane and slide.  I look at you and am disillusioned.  You have made me a failure.  The door opens and you stroll back to your station near the window.  Your body language is profuse.  You slide into your seat smoother than anything else I've seen you do, balance your pencil on your finger, and turn your gaze once again to the view outside.  Then it happens-the climax has been reached.  Gone are the great expectations, the elaborate plans, the vivid dreams.  I have set my hopes for you to a more-realistic setting.  My view of you is refreshed, and I see you the way you insist on being seen.  I have new anticipations.  I become the dynamic character, finally experiencing a vision of truth and making the life-altering change that is necessary for a resolution to the conflict.  I experience epiphany, not the life-altering epiphany that characters such as Ebenezer or Darth Vader experience, but epiphany none-the-less.  I lay down my chalk, close my textbook, and walk toward the window at the front of the class.  Most of your classmates now tune in that something has changed and some whispers arise.  Almost everyone comes alive, notices that I am looking out my own window.  Necks crane.  Some stand.  Questions flutter around.  You and I are the only ones with a clear view.  I look at the streaks left behind by the drops that have slid all the way to the bottom and mourn for them.   The bell rings.   I continue to look through the pane, as you rush through the door.  I try to fully accept my epiphany, but stumble slightly and have one final desire for you; I hope that I see you riding your quad in the rain on my way home.

Author Bio

Reilly Fitzgerald is a writer and artist with a B.A. in English and Folklore, and a B.Ed. in intermediate and secondary education.  He is currently working on his master's degree in Teaching and Learning.