Sunday, May 22, 2011

Hall Pass

“Give me a piece of paper!”, Jon insisted in his most distinct Spanish accent. Matt’s huge hands reached into his blue notebook. He ripped out a piece of white lined paper and handed it to the typically Spanish looking kid with the tar black hair, dark eyes, and olive complexion. Matt watched with his questionable big colorless eyes as he was waiting for Jon to get done with the forged pass, the pass that would give them freedom to move from one place to another inside the crummy little school called Monroe High. He ruffled his hand in his semi-curly hair and than ran it down the not so smooth complexion of his face.
“Ok man, lets go roam.” Matt and Jon walked from the noisy jungles of the cafeteria into the vast nothingness of the hallway where they had a daily ritual of wandering around, during most of their remedial math classes, or for that matter, any of their remedial classes. Matt and Jon’s philosophy was that nobody learned anything in any of the remedial classes. They were all the bottom of the barrel and low level, where kids rotted away until they are able to graduate from high school.. The only thing that happened, if something happened at all, was that attendance was taken. The teachers sat around drinking coffee, while the student’s sat around talking to each other and wasting time.
“SO , ask that chick out yet man!” Matt’s face began to grow with a light color of red as Jon’s question began a friendly conversation. This conversation would engross their journey as they traveled to their unknown destination. Their journey took them along the gloomy looking hallway that had poorly painted walls and dirt that looked like it had been packed on the floors. The odor of dirty sneakers that had come from hundreds of people throughout the day hung on to Matt and Jon as they journeyed onward. Their own voices and footsteps faded into quietness that over swept them like a flood.
“No! Why do you always have ask me that ?” Matt replied with kind of a smile.
“She likes you man.” They rounded the sharp edged corner as they continued to speak.
“If she liked me she would have come to the door instead of sending her mother to do it.” They were fast approaching the medium brown desk in the middle of the mile long corroder. They had walked down these halls with a forged pass so many times that they knew that they would make it by the security person, who was parked at the desk, with no troubles at all.
“Where’s your pass?”, asked the fat blond harried women with silver tinted glasses.
“Right here Madam”, Matt responded in his most reassuring con voice. The lady at the desk snatched it from him and looked at it for awhile , and then slowly started to hand it back to him.
“Just a minute.” She grabbed it back again, before Matt had a chance to touch it, and she carefully scanned the paper through.
“Hey, Harry could you come out here? A man with ugly black hair, and an even uglier brown mustache, that always had coffee in it, appeared five seconds later. The man with the ugly face thoroughly looked over the pass. He then made a little wrinkled smile, which indicated he was done examining it.
“I don’t like this”, whispered Jon to Matt.
“Yeah, I kn..” Matt started to whisper back.
“Where are you boys going?”, interrupted the ugly faced man, as breath that could kill a cockroach seeped out though his mouth. Trying not to choke on the bad coffee garlicky breath, Matt responded,
“To Math.”
“To the bathroom,” came out of Jon’s mouth at the same time.
“No you’re not.” Leaning closer to the boys, Harry unleashed more of the bad odor. Matt tried to fight back the words,
“Got a copula dozen breath mints on you pal?”
“Your going down to see Mrs. Hunter. Matt’s mind was suddenly filled with the music from the “The Wizard of Oz’. It was the music that came while the Witch, before she was a witch, was riding her bike on her way to Dorothy’s house to try and kidnap her little dog Toto. The music matched the semi-ugly, mean, wicked looking lady, who was identical to the woman in the movie. Jon insisted that he has seen Mrs. Hunter flying around on a broom and that if there was a tornado, Matt would see her on one too.
Matt and Jon sat quietly on the old wooden dirty brown bench awaiting their death sentence. There were at least two other benches, around the office. Several different students sitting around the office had looks of worry and concern on their face. They all awaited the punishment for whatever crimes that they had committed. The cling Cling of the secretary’s typewriters rang through the air.
“Name please!”, sang out the tall golden blond woman secretary behind one desk.
“Albert Godfrey Maim.” responded the fat short kid with a huge rip in his formally clean white dress shirt. The secretary continued to interrogate the fat kid, while it looked like even more depressed looking students were trudging their way down the hall way. The scene before Matt and Jon made them feel that they had been taken to the police station. The familiar smell of donuts, coffee, and diet coke, was there as well, which added that uniqueness which make it feel like they were down at police headquarters.
“Man, I wish they would hurry,” insisted Mat. At that moment two smiling kids came out of the spooky looking office door that was located next to Matt and Jon. The amazing thing is that they were looking rather happy. Normally, students who went into that office never looked happy.
“Gosh she must have won the lottery or something,:” explained the tall muscular kid with the pink tank top.
“Yeah”, the second not so muscular person added. “She let us off Scott free.” They made their way to the door and left.
“Next”, called out the rather pleasant sounding voice behind the door. The next two individuals who were dressed in tie-die Grateful Dead shirts passed through the doors into the next room. PLAM, went the door behind them.
“Man, those two guys were beating the crap out of one another, and they didn’t even get detention. “ Jon explained excitingly.
“This is our lucky day, “Matt insisted with a smile.” If these two Dead Heads get off for smoking in the bathroom, they were sure to get off for forging a lousy pass”.
After about four long minutes of sitting still, the door to the office opened and out walked the two Dead Heads. They were smiling just as the other trouble makers had before.
“Next”, said the voice sounding even more pleasant than it had the first time.
“O.k.. I’m going to do the talking. I can handle this woman,” Matt told Jon.
The two boy’s walked through the doors. They passed through an anti-room, where the very beautiful secretary smiled at them as they passed through. They reached the door that had “Judith F. Hunter. Dean of Discipline.” painted in fading black on the door. Matt turned the rusty looking door handle and he and Jon entered the domain of Ms. Hunter. It was a rather nice office. There were pictures of Mrs. Hunter’s family posted all around the walls. It had a nice fresh scent of roses, and a nice blue carpet that had been shampooed not too long ago. She was smiling as they entered, and had her hair done up in a bun. Her wonderful blue dress, that matched the rug, seemed to suggest that she was in a good mood. Jon took a seat and Matt approached the desk where Mrs. Hunter was sitting.
“You see, it’s all been a misunderstanding”, Matt began to explain with a convincing smile. At that moment Mrs. Hunter’s smile disappeared and she got really ugly. Her new look seemed to say.,
“SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP, YOU LITTLE PUNK.” The Wizard of OZ’ music began to play in Matt’s head, as he slithered back into a chair. His face turned a little blue, as he thought,
“Maybe I approached her wrong,” he thought.
“Just who do you think you are? Don’t you know that this is illegal! This is the second time that you two have been down here for this. It’s in-house suspension for the both of you.” It was all over in a matter of minutes. Before Matt could say anything in his defense, Mrs. Hunter straightened her arm out and pointed toward the door. Jon picked himself up and disappeared with Matt into the next room.
“That will be tomorrow, you will report to Room 303, Section three. She handed them a note that would restate them into their next class which was already a good ten minutes underway. Matt took the note and preceded out the door with Jon. “Next.” rang the voice of the mindless secretary as the fat kid came waddling in. She smiled the same fake smile as Mat and Jon had seen when they had come in earlier as she began to do some paper work on the last victims. Matt signed as they left the office, where more kids were sitting. The kids saw the look on Matt and Jon’s faces and seemed to turn a little pale. As Matt opened up the door and as he was fading from sight explained,
“Life is not fair.” Matt was so upset he felt like kicking a wall. Jon seemed to have a glow come into his face. Matt started to question why.
“At least we have a legal pass now.” Jon said quite excitingly.” The day’s events resurfaced to Matt’s mind. It was the stinking lousy pass that had stuck their butts in in-house suspension. He responded to Jon’s happiness with not much of a smile. “SHUT UP.”

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