Etiquette
Published on November 16, 2009
As in:
Ventworth (“you can call me Vin”) Bradley was sure he didn’t have a drinking problem because, after all, being a man in whites, he was supposed to be a role model. And role models don’t have drinking problems. So all he could admit to, this morning, is that he had a hangover problem. This is not a problem you want when you’re a still young-ish gym instructor, in charge of forty elementary school children at a time, and especially on a Monday.
So he hid from the kids. Put his feet up on a wooden chair, in his office, behind the industrial strength chicken wire protecting his windows from airborne athletic equipment.
“Slap!” he heard, open hand on rubber ball.
“Out!” he heard.
“Not!”
“Was so!”
“You’re a cheater Anthony, that’s why we hate playing with you!”
“You’re a liar Stevie! That’s why no one wants to come to your house!”
Stevie, a popular third grader, had a comically husky voice to go with a slickly-combed, overgrown flat-top that looked like a wheat field in sunlight.
Tony’s voice was as clear as it was obnoxious, a Gatling gun of unmitigated convictions shooting from a tightly configured face beneath black bangs.
“You do this every stinking time,” went the husky voice. “Every stinking time Anthony!”
“My name’s Tony you pussy-head!”
“Wrong. You’re the liar Anthony ass-hole!”
This was so clearly beyond the pale of third grade etiquette that “Vin,” even with his hangover, could hear the other boys and girls gasp and uuuuuu, not just in shock of the conflict, but in the clear sense that if the man in whites didn’t arrive soon, God just might.
“Coach Bradley! Coach Bradley!” Freddy Mays started yelling, into the chicken wire. As if souls were on fire in the middle of the four square court.
He rose from the chair, the ice bag still on his head, and did what he had to do, the first part of which was to blow his whistle, loudly, out the window. It was brave. It restored order. It also made about as much sense as hammering his bare toes with a brick.
God, reassured, spent the rest of the morning working on climate change and First World materialism.
Tony and Stevie could smell exhaled vapors of aquavit, just before they tasted the justice soap in their mouths.
Coach Bradley, head still ringing in pain, closed the door of his office and re-considered the ramifications of calling in sick from work.