Time Is a Marshmallow

“Time is a marshmallow, waiting to be eaten.”

Justine hated reading aloud to the children and I often find myself wondering if my teachers were filled with the same distaste and trite resentment when I was a parochial school prisoner. Or, is my wife and her young counterparts products of a more selfish and materialistic generation?

Don’t get me wrong, I hate my job just as much as the next guy, but the difference is, I’m not molding and shaping the future, unless of course, clanking on my keyboard dropping advertisements where advertisers want them is vital to our collective success. Never did I think teachers were saints, in fact, I can count on one finger how many of them earned my respect, but to find out the sheer magnitude of their pettiness with one another and total lack of care, frightens me.

I’m a realist. I always knew they went home and shopped for pantyhose, celebrated birthdays, fucked their husbands (albeit rarely), and on and on and on. However, if I knew they laid awake at night staring at the ceiling obsessing over chalk and book sales and carving pumpkins and school assemblies and fleeting glances, I would have dropped out in the third grade. Mind you, these late night internal seminars in my wife’s head are not rooted in a deep desire to educate today’s youth, rather, they are grounded in unappreciative female self-righteousness. And the terrifying thing is, Justine is ten times better than most.

Our home office is littered with a rainbow of construction paper, laminated cutouts of turkeys and a huge letter “T”, each hindering the use of virtually all of the floor space. Stacks of spelling tests sit on the keyboard disarming the computer while colored pencils spill from the drawers.

“I’ll move everything by the weekend,” she assures me. “I’m working on our Fall into Fall bulletin board.”

“Great,” I say, knowing all to well that in an academic flash it will be 'Win with Winter,' 'Spring into Spring' and 'SUMthing About Summer' moving into the office for the season.

Teaching, for a teacher that actually cares, is not an 8:30 to 3pm gig, it’s hands extend much further, grasping and squeezing everything in their reach.

“I have to make this one better,” my wife says, extending a conversation that I thought was dead eight minutes ago. “Last year Denise and Debbie gave me shit for a dated board.”

“Dated board?” I questioned.

“Yeah, I used some old lessons and stuff.”

“Like what?”

“I dunno, I did that “Thumbody” loves you thing for Valentine’s Day. You know, the one where I imprint their thumbs on a shirt to give to their parents.”

“Sure, I remember. So, what was the big deal?”

‘Well I also did the “Boo-tiful” thing for Halloween and I could just tell that no one was impressed.”

“Well did the kids like it?”, I asked.

“Sure, but the staff gave me looks.”

Children are rendered second class citizens as adults immerse themselves in a soup of silliness. Of course, things at my place of work are no better. The games played in high school hallways cast an ugly muddy shadow on the corridors known as the real world. The jocks lose strength, but not their ability to be self-absorbed assholes. Geeks, for the most part stay geeks. The whores never settle down and certain people will always beat to an off-kilter drum, and I, like yesterday, sit back and curse them all.

We need a retreat.

Justine and I spent the weeks bridging fall and winter tearing down the old wallpaper in the living room. It seemed to have turned from light beige to an ugly brown overnight and had to be chipped off the wall rather than peeled. It was a challenge to remove more than six inches at a time. We always had plenty to talk about, but for some reason, with every foot of glue stained wall exposed, came a new dark revelation of where we were. Work was draining us, leaving us as white as ghosts and as bitter as bitten aspirin. More and more I find us embracing the past, reminiscing of our youthful weekends up north, getting lost along the lush weeping willows running parallel to the Charles river, making love on unfamiliar king size beds and most importantly, leaving work a world away.

Pieces of wall snowflaked to the ground, lightly dusting the polished amber floors.

“Let’s go away this weekend,” I asked. My eyes wide, hopeful, forced on her. She continued to stare at the wall, performing sloppy surgery on the crispy wallpaper.

“I can’t, I’ve gotta finish their report cards.”

“Didn’t you do them last weekend,” I asked, coaxing my annoyance to the forefront of my being.

“I didn’t fill out the comments section,” she replied.

“James is a great student,” I mocked. “He has shown great progress but I would still like to see him excel himself –“

“You think it’s easy?” she asked menacingly, for the first time all night searching frantically for eye contact.

We have these constant battles, some lighthearted, some not, on the difficulties of being a teacher. Unfortunately, teachers spend something like fifty percent of their careers attempting to justify their cushy bankers hours and summers off, an argument, in my opinion, that is never worth having. It’s like the man with the small penis constantly trying to prove he measures up to the porn star. We must work with the cards we are dealt. And even though he can properly operate his machinery, the fact of the matter is, he’s still a thumbdick. But I understand how we live in our own bubbles where individual events rule. Ingrown toe nails beat out world hunger, first kisses are chosen over cancer cures and bad haircuts are worse then paralysis.

Justine would not bend. Her face held the answer, if anything was gonna give, it was up to me to bring it on. And I knew what I had to do.

I swallowed the world’s largest rubberband ball today, and the tightly wound mass sat in the pit of my stomach, itching to unravel, hoping I would allow little elastic bullets to bleed me from the inside out. But today was my day. Our day. On four wheels I rolled under the obnoxious blue and yellow shelter to fill 'er up unleaded regular. The brown bag of warm bagels crinkled under the crook of my arm as I raced into the florist to pick up as many flowers as the weight of sixteen dollars would bring. My nerves flared as anxiousness doused whatever calm reality was left. Under the red glare of the traffic light hovering over Union Turnpike and Utopia Parkway, I envisioned Justine in her classroom. All of the children are assembled neatly on our old pink oriental rug which is now affectionately known as the ‘reading rug.’

“Miss Michele?”, Judy asked.

“Yes, dear?”, my wife replied.

“Remember when you told us that time is a mushmallow?”

“Marshmallow,” she corrected.

“Yes, mushmallow.” Little Judy continued, “What did that mean?”

Justine’s eyes shot blanks at the ceiling as her earlobes flushed crimson. The answer was nowhere to be found. School bells slashed the giant pause and the children all shot upright, slinging their knapsacks across their backs and heading for the door in one swift motion. Jody’s small slanted eyes remained fixed on Mrs. Michele as she waited for an answer.

Suitcases in tow, I made a quick left at Grand Avenue and pulled up in front of the school. My hand sat heavy on the horn as Justine looked out her window and shot me a perplexed look.

I don't think Littly Judy ever got an answer that day. But I was going to get mine.