9
9
F OR QUITE SOME TIME, it has been clear that your school is falling apart in ways that are more serious than can be addressed by the odd bit of scaffolding.
For instance, in the girls’ toilets, there are five cubicles. Only one of these cubicles contains a functioning lavatory, and even then, it’s not a very nice one. Elsewhere, large patches of damp have started to travel around walls, turning the school’s once-magnolia hue into a bruisy brown that is also blue and black. Weird fungal spores fill the air – the very same air you breathe. This is not good for your health, or indeed the health of anyone else.
Also, in the dining hall, parts of the ceiling have begun to crumble and fall. Sometimes a light dusting of ceiling dances like dandruff. Other times, larger pieces tumble downwards. The larger pieces are perilous. They go everywhere – people have to duck to avoid them. You are not sure, but you also suspect the ceiling is not good for your health or the health of anyone else.
It is lunchtime, and you are in the dining room – a cavernous space with echoey acoustics and too many children.
As per school procedure, all the students are sitting in their assigned places. At each table, there are three students plus one member of staff – the person whose job it is to ensure the students eat safely, not to mention behave. Your tablemates are Bobby and another boy called Nigel. Nigel has ginger hair and an unwashed look about him. According to your mum, Nigel is a perfectly ridiculous name for a small child because what is he, forty-five or something?
In any case, you are poking at your meal of Turkey Twizzlers and baked beans. You have already finished the accompanying mashed potato, even though it wasn’t really mashed potato. Made from powder and water and kept in the fridge till it’s needed, it’s technically a potato substitute.
Opposite you, Bobby is banging on about paper. He is saying you can’t eat paper. He is saying it is not good for people to eat it. Next to him, Nigel – who isn’t the brightest – is telling Bobby he eats paper every day and he is fine. Bobby is saying he only thinks he’s fine. Really, Bobby says, Nigel probably has a digestion issue he doesn’t even know about. Nigel disagrees. He does a poo every week, he says, and wees all the time. There is no issue with his insides.
This conversation is not engaging, largely because they have these discussions every day. Nigel says he likes doing something. Bobby tells him he’s dumb for liking to do something. The member of staff sits there like a lemon, telling them to shut up and eat their food.
On this day, however, Bobby and Nigel’s conversation is rudely interrupted – not by the member of staff – but by the piece of ceiling that falls into your lunch. To be specific, the piece actually falls into your portion of baked beans. This causes tomato sauce to splatter over your shirt and tie.
‘Oh dear,’ the member of staff says.
You make a face at your food and the mess on your shirt. You try to clean the tomato sauce splatters with your palms but, in the end, you only succeed in smearing them around. Now you have bean sauce on your hands and your shirt. This is not ideal, so you try to wipe your hands on your skirt.
‘Stop playing with your lunch,’ the member of staff says. ‘They spent a long time cooking that food. The least you can do is eat around the damage.’
You look at her in a way that you hope seems imploring. You don’t know anything much about cooking. You haven’t ever made anything more complicated than a glass of squash. That said, you just get the feeling that the dinner ladies didn’t spend ages cooking this meal. You get the feeling they simply heated it up. Also, you really don’t want to finish your meal now. Your meal has ceiling in it.
You know the piece of ceiling is small, at least as far as pieces of ceiling go. But it is a piece of ceiling nonetheless. The ceiling makes the meal look unappetising and you have a feeling that, much like paper, ceiling is not very easy to digest. Also, your dinner is now very cold.
You try to articulate these thoughts. But your thinking is sluggish. Indeed, every time you think a thought, another thought escapes you. It’s like some wiring has gone wrong, some sort of fog has descended, like your tongue is far away from your brain.
‘B-but…’ you say. ‘But…’
‘But w-what?’ the member of staff says, mocking your hesitation.
‘But I c-can’t—’
The member of staff throws her head back and laughs. ‘Ah, ah, ah!’ she says, wagging her finger right in your face. ‘There is no such word as can’t.’
Frustration bubbles within you like pasta water. You start to make something we shall from now on dub your noises.
Have I not mentioned your noises before? Your noises are sounds that you produce. They are somewhere between a hum, a moan, and a groan. They indicate that you are frustrated, annoyed, or overwhelmed. In this instance, the source of the frustration is relatively easy to locate – you are overwhelmed by the sheer idiocy of the member of staff assigned to your table. You know that ‘can’t’ (and its longer form ‘cannot’) are perfectly real and useful words that most people employ at some point in their lives. Hearing an education professional telling you otherwise is, in your humble opinion, very strange.
But it’s not just this. There are other things making you frustrated, annoyed, and overwhelmed too. For instance, it’s really bright in the dining room, and the children are really loud – clattering their cutlery, scraping their plates, and speaking at an unnecessarily loud volume. Also, you are aware of Bobby staring at you. You start to sweat under his gaze. Your acrylic school jumper feels scratchy and not nice.
It must be said that your noises are not common. Not everyone makes these kinds of sounds. People tend to express their frustration in other ways. Sometimes they express their frustration via a conventional facial expression. Sometimes they utter a sentence such as, ‘Oh Jesus, I’ve had enough of this.’ With this in mind, when you make your noises, people tend to question what you are doing, or else give you a wide berth.
Today, it’s Nigel’s turn.
‘Why is she making those sounds?’ he says, leaning backwards in lieu of berthing you widely.
You try to muster up the strength to stop making your noises. You succeed – manage to lessen their volume, then stop doing them altogether. But you feel the need to do something else. The frustration can’t just sit there. It has to go somewhere, be somewhere, manifest as something. And so, you do your body rocking – the other thing you do when you’re frustrated. But alas, body rocking is another odd thing to do. Though not unheard of, it’s largely uncommon – an easy target for ridicule.
‘She was just making noises,’ Nigel says, who seems frustrated now. ‘Why was she making noises? Why’s she moving like that?’
Behind you, a group of girls laugh. You don’t know if they’re laughing at what you are doing or what Nigel said. However, the thought they might be laughing at you distresses you, and so you resume your noises as you continue to rock.
‘Stop that,’ the member of staff tells you, pointlessly grabbing the sleeve of your jumper. ‘Stop this silliness.’
You stop, put your hands on the back of your neck, massaging it weirdly.
Bobby pipes up. He puts down his knife and fork. His eyes dart from the Turkey Twizzlers to the member of staff to Nigel then back to the Turkey Twizzlers.
‘She’s not eating that,’ he says, shaking his head, addressing the teacher but pointing at your meal. ‘That’s rank.’
‘Excuse me,’ the member of staff says, ‘I think you’ll find I’m in charge and she can eat that. She just has to eat around the mess.’
Bobby shakes his head again. ‘No, she can’t. It’s rank. That’s rank.’
The teacher shakes her head right back, eyes Bobby narrowly. ‘Rank isn’t a nice word,’ she says.
Bobby shrugs. ‘Rank might not be a nice word, but it’s not a nice meal, is it?’
The member of staff clicks her tongue. ‘What did you just say?’
‘I didn’t say anything.’
‘Yes, you did.’
‘Nah, I just did this and this.’ Bobby re-enacts his shrug but not his comment. ‘I shrugged.’
‘I know you shrugged but you were also rude, weren’t you?’
Bobby shakes his head. ‘I don’t care. She’s not eating that.’
The member of staff and Bobby continue to quarrel. Out of the corner of your eye, you see a mouse darting from a corner of the dining room, stopping to pick up a random hunk of bread before darting out again. You do a little inside shiver. This school doesn’t feel clean. Just the sight of the rodent makes you want to go home and scrub yourself in the bath.
The member of staff is now lecturing Bobby on social niceties. ‘Talking back,’ she says. ‘Arguing, interrupting—’
‘What’s the matter with her?’ Nigel interrupts, pointing at you. ‘Why’s she making those noises?’
Your noises have got even louder now. Now you are doing heavy and rapid rasping gasps. When you do this at home, either your mum dabs your forehead with a wet flannel and tells you to take deep breaths, or else tells you to snap out of it. You wonder if Bobby is going to do the same thing, but he does not.
Bobby looks at Nigel. He gestures at your plate of dinner, angry on your behalf. ‘Well, Nigel,’ he says. ‘I think you’d make some noise too, if you were being asked to eat… to eat the ceiling!’
The member of staff stands up, folds her arms. ‘All right. I’m going to have to ask you to leave, Bobby.’
Bobby stands up. For a second, it looks like he is going to accept her request. He doesn’t even look that angry or annoyed any more. Not in his face, at least. As far as you can tell, Bobby doesn’t look anything other than calm when he reaches over to your side of the table, picks up your plate, and lobs it right into the air.
If you could see in slow motion – if your vision had slo-mo capabilities – you’d now see individual beans splattering on white shirts, ceiling dust poofing into the air, and bits of Turkey Twizzlers flinging themselves far and wide. But of course, your vision lacks slow-mo capabilities, and so you simply see Bobby lob your plate of food, hear a smash, and feel some stray sauce spraying over your face. After this, Bobby gets up to vacate the room as per the member of staff’s request.
It all happens very fast.
A few seconds of stunned silence ensue, followed by the sound of children making a great deal of noise. Their noises don’t sound like your noises, but the sentiment behind them is much the same. The children are frustrated, annoyed, or overwhelmed. Some scream. Others yelp. Everyone does a lot of talking all at once – with many feeling the need to state the obvious.
‘He threw her food,’ they say. ‘He threw her food. It went everywhere and then he ran away.’
Some of the children nearer to your table are using their sleeves to wipe your lunch off their school uniforms. Your lobbed food achieved an impressive trajectory. Even kids by the wall are now splattered in tomato sauce. One girl has bean juice slicked over her white-blond hair.
The general hubbub turns into uproar and frustration. Nigel is whining in a high-pitched way. Somehow, the food on his crotch makes it look like he’s soiled himself. Elsewhere, a previously laughing girl is crying. It is not until the deputy swoops in and yells ‘Everyone get out of here now’ that the noise subsides, and everyone gets on with their day.
Further reading:
The Art of Construction Management: Ceilings, Floors, and More