Sports Night girls take smoke breaks. They crouch in their leggings on the concrete steps, stretch their hamstrings, gossip, cry.
I go out there and find Lindsay in tears.
“What’s the problem?”
“People are abusing their power.” She lights a cigarette with one of her old bat mitzvah matches.
“I thought you were a captain,” I say.
“Who are you again?”
“I interviewed you for The Argus.”
“That Josh guy interviewed me, too,” she says, coughs.
“When?”
“He said he needed to ask me some stuff you’d forgotten.”
“He always does this. He undermines my relationships with my sources. I’m quitting.”
“I’m quitting, too.”
I don’t know what she’s quitting, smoking or her dance team, but it doesn’t matter. We sit on the steps and quit for a while. Lindsay’s matches say “I shopped till I dropped at Lindsay’s Bat!” Her bat mitzvah theme was shopping. Guests were assigned to sit at tables labeled Bloomingdale’s, the mall, the Gap. Everyone got a little credit card with their name on it. I wasn’t invited, but I remember teachers confiscating the Lindsay cards at school, as though they paid for things in a junior high black market.
“I hate Sports Night,” she says. “At this point, I actually hate it.”
“We could switch places,” I say. I picture myself ablaze with blush in the gym on Sports Night, cat-crawling across the volleyball court, telling a reporter I’m just proud of my body.
“So I would have to be on the school newspaper? Nobody reads that.”
“That’s not why we do it. We do it for college.”
“That’s not why you do it,” she says. Before I can find out why I do it, detention comes out of the building and turns the steps into a skateboard ramp, a dangerous, bumpy thing.
—
MY MOM won’t let me quit. She says we’re not a family of quitters. She shows me her yearbook to prove she was on committees. A committee to plant flowers, a committee to end the war.
“Didn’t you basically want the U.S. to quit the war?” I say. “Quitting is powerful.”
“The Argus is not a war,” she says.
“They both exploit the young,” I say.
“You sound like Alan,” she says. I’m not sure if my father is antiwar or anti-Argus. He works late and my mom likes to turn me into him when he’s not home. When he is home, my parents talk about things I’m not interested in, like homeowners’ insurance, or how much it will cost to fix the scratch I put on the car. They have no extracurriculars anymore. It’s hard for them to see what they could give to this town.
—
WHEN SPORTS NIGHT arrives, it’s Lindsay I follow. I follow her through several songs gay men used to dance to before the virus, and a skit about the yo-yo. I take notes for Newspaper. They’re not just doing dances from that time. They’re doing dances from now: pops and locks, the Dougie, the Butterfly. They lip-synch their songs. They lip-synch their skits. Spumondi takes notes on a clipboard. It’s unclear what decade we’re in.
Balloons hang all around. Boys pop them with pencils, get threatened with detention.
“But it’s Saturday,” a popper argues. “You can’t get detention on Saturday.”
He’s right. We’re in the school, but we’re not in school. The bans don’t apply Saturday. Kids wear hats. Teachers wear jeans. Kids run around saying, “Mr. Hinkle’s wearing jeans.” JAG doesn’t have his backpack on and looks like a dismembered turtle. He looks good.
“Make sure to write down the order of the dances,” he says.
“You’re micromanaging me, Josh.”
JAG’s notebooks all say Joshua Aaron Geller in block letters on the front.
“In your suicide article,” he says, “you left out the name of the girl who committed suicide.”
“I thought we had to protect her privacy. You know, she did Sports Night last year? But they made her be a swordfish.”
“Fact-check that,” says Josh.
A group of boys starts throwing pencils at us, or maybe we’re just in the way of what they’re aiming at. Josh picks up a pencil gently, like it’s a gift.
“I wonder who’s going to be traumatized this year,” he says.
I think about Lindsay on the steps, but Lindsay’s not crying now. She’s smiling through her eye shadow, inexplicably dressed as a French maid, crawling across the floor near a pile of balloons. We’re both traitors to quitting. I got my college acceptance letters last week, but I’m still here, reporting from a laminated bleacher on a Saturday. The guy from the post office is here, too. He comes every year.
Lindsay straddles her feather duster. I still can’t figure out how this costume fits into the theme. Maybe there’s a sitcom about a maid from that decade? Or maybe she’s the housewife on the show where the witchy wife controls her husband with her appliances? She twitches her nose at a girl dressed as an ad executive. Boys from the school start chanting, “Ride that broom! Ride that broom!” and soon men from the town join in.
“This theme is disturbing,” says Josh.
“She’s just confident in her sexuality,” I say.
He eyes me like he can’t believe I made the honor roll.
“No, really,” I say. “What are we doing that’s so much more important than what she’s doing?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Preparing for our futures?”
“Our bright futures in journalism?” I say. I fight with boys instead of dancing for them. “Are we going to be Woodward and Bernstein? You said in Debate practice that you wanted to be a prosecutor.”
This isn’t fair. We lie in applications. We lie in interviews. We lie everywhere but on top of each other. The town’s men are screaming around Josh, a boy who became a man by memorizing United States currency fluctuations in the decades before girls were allowed to play sports. Josh sits up straighter, unable to look at Lindsay on the floor now, like if he studies her any longer he will memorize her. He will turn into something else.
“It’s all good practice,” he says. “You know that.”
But they practice, too. It’s paid off. The whole thing looks like a never-ending halftime show, a sluttier version of a tumultuous time. The next dance number is even sexier than Lindsay’s, but the team burns a bra during their skit and gets disqualified for creating a fire hazard. Now girls I haven’t interviewed are crying. Their captain tells Spumondi to go fuck herself. Parents around me take sides, with some pledging allegiance to their daughters’ teams, and some saying Sports Night has gotten out of control.
The principal runs down the bleacher steps and announces that Sports Night is canceled. Every girl on the floor starts crying. People boo. I’m taking notes. The teachers turn into teachers again and start telling everyone they have to go home.
“See you Monday!” they say, as though we have a choice.
“See you Monday!” says Josh. He takes his cues from those in power.
“Wait, I think we have our headline,” I say. For once, I’m breaking new news. “Sports Nights Celebrates Past, but Future Hangs in the Balance.”
“What future?” he says.
“Its future. The event’s future.”
“Yes!” he says. We slap five, the kiss of nerds. “This is going to be a great issue.”
Communication Arts
Dear Student A,
I’m sorry I put a sentence from your recent essay up on the SmartBoard without explaining to the rest of the class that they were critiquing writing by a fellow classmate. It was not smart of me, no matter what the board is called. I’m sorry that Student B said that his advice for how to fix your sentence was “Start over.” He believed that we were critiquing work by an anonymous student writer, perhaps from another college altogether. As you correctly pointed out during class, his advice was “too harsh.” I agree that criticism should be constructive. At the same time, I did not want to say th
at his advice was wrong. Sometimes the best thing we can do in writing is start over. Still, I am sorry you felt humiliated in front of the class. I know English is not your first language. You told me that if you could write an essay in Russian, you would not make as many mistakes as you are making in English. Please know that I find it impressive that you wrote a complex and thoughtful essay on “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath. I could not do the same in Russian if I had only lived in Russia for two years! Student B didn’t mean to offend, I’m sure.
Best,
Professor S
Dear Student B,
I’m sorry I didn’t explain that we were critiquing your classmate’s work before putting Student A’s work on the board. I know you felt bad about your comment, but it is my responsibility as the teacher to warn students in advance if you will be giving feedback to people who are physically in the room.
As for your grade, that remains to be seen. I’d like you to come to class more than once every three weeks. You write well, and you challenged the idea that toddler playpens are more humane than child leashes, which showed a willingness to take risks with ideas, even though the children-on-leashes discussion strayed too far from the poem we were discussing. Why are you at community college? You could go to a four-year college if you worked a little harder.
All the best,
Professor S
Dear Student B,
Regarding my last email, I didn’t mean to imply that a four-year college is necessarily better than a two-year college. College is dumb, jobs are few. All of you are becoming nutritionists or nurses or physical therapists and will probably make more money than I do adjuncting at your community college. I make enough to pay rent, but not to afford all of the dresses I wear to class. My creditors are going to come get me one of these days. By creditors, I mean credit cards. They have booths in front of the school to trick you into going into debt early. They sure tricked me, with my master’s in English Literature and my thesis on the advertisements in English periodicals where serial novels first appeared. What did those ads say about Victorian society? What were they trying to trick women into trying?
Do you study child development or marine biology? Though our class is in the Marine Building, I have yet to meet a student who studies marine life. Most of the Marine Building is for the Fashion Department. They are looking for models. I saw a sign. Perhaps the Russian girl you inadvertently insulted in class could apply. She’s tall and wears clothes well.
Sincerely,
Professor S
Hi Student C,
I am sorry you weren’t feeling well enough to come to class today. Morning sickness can be tough. Some of my friends have experienced it. I have not, though I am twelve years older than you. My mother keeps sending me articles about Oocyte Cryopreservation, but I worry about the defrosting process. Can that be safe? Plus, being a single mother looks like no picnic. Will you be going it alone?
Please bring a printed copy of your essay to our next class to avoid further penalties for lateness.
Best,
Professor S
Student A,
Thank you. Or спасибо, as they say in Russian. You guys have some great writers. It’s a shame that we had to read The Cherry Orchard in translation. I’m glad that things are smoothed out between you and Student B. He is a young man and sometimes doesn’t think before he speaks, though he is majoring in Communication Arts, a major I don’t totally understand, except that it means he is required to take more English classes. What are you studying?
Prof S
Dear Student F,
If you do not turn in your paper by the next class meeting, you will get an F on the paper and it will be difficult for you to pass the course. I gave you an extension after your grandmother died, but a month has passed since then. Unless your grandmother raised you, or played a central role during your childhood, grandparent grief is not the kind of grief that makes essay writing impossible. The death of a grandparent in college is a natural occurrence and happens to at least one student per semester, usually when an essay is due.
If you continue to have trouble processing your loss, there are support groups on campus. I am sending you a link. Please bring your essay to the next class to avoid further penalties for lateness.
All best,
Professor S
Dear Student B,
You and Student A seem to be getting along well these days. I am pleased when students in my class become friends. At the same time, I would like you to remain respectful while other students are speaking and not carry on side conversations during class discussions. Student A is quite fetching, with her blond hair and her Russian accent, but it is crucial to your participation grade that you stay focused on the class discussion, even if you find the story “obvious” or “moralistic.” To be honest, I have never liked Hawthorne, either. He goes on the syllabus for the symbolism unit and so I feel like I have covered my bases re: 19th Century American literature, but I think I will replace him next year with Melville.
We can reschedule your appointment for Tuesday. If you’re going to miss that meeting as well, please text me instead of emailing me.
Best,
Professor S
Dear Student D,
I’m so sorry to hear about your legal troubles. Please look online to find the appropriate forms for withdrawing from my class.
Professor S
Dear Student E,
You’re right. I should not have yelled at you or slammed my fist down on the SmartBoard control panel. I was frustrated that you and Student M were laughing at Student Q, whose learning difficulties are obvious to all. You are not in high school anymore. But it was wrong of me to respond to immaturity with unmitigated rage. Two wrongs do not make a right, and I would like to model better behavior for you and Student M, who often enter class late holding iced mocha drinks. These drinks leave small puddles on the desks. While the desks are Formica and the marks do not cause permanent damage, the puddles can wet the handouts or the SmartBoard stylus should I rest these items on the desks upon which you have rested the iced mocha drinks.
Have you considered making an appointment with Psych Services? Therapy can be beneficial, even to bullies. Especially to bullies. Power is what you are enjoying, though I’ve noticed a look on your face sometimes that suggests you don’t feel powerful at all. Student M has no idea what she feels. Being a teacher offers the temptation to abuse one’s power, but I find that firmness and kindness are usually effective enough to manage a classroom, even a classroom full of adults who behave as though they’re in the throes of puberty.
You’re currently averaging a B– in the class, but could manage a B if you focus your attentions on the upcoming final and come to the rest of the class meetings on time.
Sincerely,
Professor S
Student A,
I’m sorry you feel that way. Of course I am happy that you and Student B found love this semester. I’d like to think that some of the literature we read deepened the connection you made to each other. Seating you separately was a decision I made because you two could not stop whispering during class. I know you think you are speaking softly, but even whispers can be distracting. You’ve spent the last few classes punishing me for this decision, snickering at my lectures and occasionally suggesting that I “start over.” Please reconsider your behavior. We’re rounding the corner to June. Let’s finish the year on a high note!
Thanks,
Professor S
Dear Dean Z,
The reports you’ve gotten about my conduct are understandably disturbing, but I believe that the “evidence” against me has been misconstrued. I never had intimate contact with Student B. Halfway through the semester, Student A and Student B began dating. Student A was jealous that Student B would sometimes ask me along on their movie dates. I always refused. I have no interest in going to the multiplex to see the latest Caucasian stoner heist with a couple of nineteen-year-olds. I never spend time
with my students outside of school grounds, save the occasional shuttle bus ride to or from campus, where we have no choice but to chat. The shuttle bus is invaluable for those of us on the faculty without cars. On the bus, I keep the talk on neutral subjects such as the weather and the requirements of the course.
Yes, Student B had my phone number. He had neglected to email me about canceling a prior meeting, so I decided that texts would be a more efficient way for him to reach me. The texts where I say that he is an adult with the right to make his own decisions were not about a decision to be with me, but rather about his decision to quit school. Student B is very intelligent, but he has not completed any assignments, and seems stifled by the many graduation requirements of our institution. I never encouraged him to drop out. I merely suggested that college might not be the best use of his or his family’s financial resources if he fails the same English course every semester. Student B is a talented musician, but neither his family nor his girlfriend support him in this endeavor. As educators, we’re supposed to value school above all else, but we must remember that a college learning environment is not for everyone. Again, I am sorry that I got involved in a matter that should have remained between the student, his parents, and his academic adviser. Student A forwarded my texts to you either because she misunderstood them (English is not her first language) or because she wanted to cause me harm.
As for the more explicit texts, I find them as shocking as you do. I hope that the spelling errors and the use of sex message slang indicate that they are the work of someone younger. I don’t even know what many of those abbreviations mean.
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