Thou Shalt Not

I felt like I was swimming laps in the world’s warmest pool. The air was unusually warm, even for a September day. The humidity, which normally felt like a heavy wool blanket suffocating you every time you even thought about stepping outside, now felt like the blanket had quadrupled in thickness and been set on fire. The air conditioning in my 1997 Suzuki X-90 (which was lovingly referred to as a funky looking roller skate on 4 big wheels), had apparently known the weather would become nearly unbearable and had no intention of being overworked, so it ceased working at all at the end of August. This inconvenience changed my entire routine of getting ready for work, and as a creature who functions on routine, it added needless stress to my mornings.

Anyone who has ever driven in Florida without the luxury of air-conditioning knows that even with your windows rolled down, you will begin sweating profusely by the time you back out of your driveway. They also know that unless you are driving a block or two, you will wind up with perspiration-drenched clothing when you arrive at your destination. So instead of getting dressed for work before I left the house, I wore my gym clothes while driving to work, and then got dressed once I arrived. There’s nothing professional about a well-dressed man dripping with sweat.

There were only three stop signs, and two traffic signals on my way to work, but that rarely meant I’d arrive in a timely manner. Without any traffic, and with only green lights, I would probably be able to get to work in about seven minutes. But anyone who has ever driven in Florida also knows that traffic can be a serious bitch, and that morning the bitch was mean as hell.

By the time I reached the school, my shirt clung to me like an overbearing girlfriend. And, unfortunately, anyone who saw my drenched body probably thought the same. I was behind schedule because of the traffic, and early-bird students had already begun to congregate outside the glass doors that welcomed them to another day of high school.

I grabbed the tattered blue backpack containing my books and the brown duffel bag containing my clothes, and hurried toward the sidewalk that ran along the west side of the building which led to the outside door of the boys’ locker room. I had hoped to sneak past the group of students sitting on the picnic tables out front, the ones who couldn’t drive and had to be dropped off earlier than everyone else because their parents had to be at work at an ungodly hour.

“Looking good, Mr. H!” Andrew Preston shouted from the table where he sat with the other band nerds. Andrew had taken my 10th grade English honors course the year before and could rarely get through a class session without making a joke about something or someone. “Does the Roller Skate come with indoor sprinklers?”

“Don’t be dumb,” Samantha Bennett said. “He was obviously at the gym. Look at his clothes.” Like most of the band members, Samantha was sizably overweight. I was surprised she knew what a gym was. I scolded myself for even thinking this, but it’s true—most teachers love their students, but we are capable of thinking some pretty awful things about them on occasion. Don’t believe me? Spend an hour in a teachers’ lounge at any school, anywhere.

I ignored both of them and reached the locker room without further harassment. I showered quickly. I could hear the sound of whistles coming from the gymnasium outside the locker room, where Coach Clemmons was finishing up one of his famous early morning practices with the varsity basketball team. I had played for Coach C in my high school days and didn’t envy the boys out there one bit. They would likely turn out to be a disciplined team that made a run at yet another state title, which would give Clemmons his fourteenth in twenty-three years. But as much as the players would remember the championships, they would remember the practices just as vividly, if not more so.

The thud of basketballs being bounced in various places across the court meant practice was nearing an end. Coach Clemmons always gave the players 5-10 minutes of “free time” at the end of every practice, and the chaotic sounds reverberating the locker room walls indicated free time had arrived. I dressed hurriedly, already knowing I would be late for the meeting upstairs. For some reason, that morning I was having the most difficult time tying my necktie (navy blue with small grey hearts), and I had almost given up on it completely when Landry Perkins, one of the school’s star basketball players, entered the locker room to get first dibs on a shower.

“Hey, what’s up, Mr. H?” he asked as he sat down on the bench to remove his Nikes.

“What’s going on, Landry? How was practice today?”

“Oh, man, you know how it is.”