Let's Get This Repast Started

Today, we were all Tom Sawyer.

By we, I mean three of us at the teacher lunch table. Since nobody was crafty enough to bring a round of knitting needles for everyone, we had to devise a way to stay awake, to not nod off like Dorothy in a field of poppies on the yellow brick road to Oz. Nobody wants to wake up to screeching monkeys.

I will admit that I was the mastermind behind the plot. I was actually just doing my duty. Parking lot duty, in fact, from the day before. I had some sleuthing to complete. A bold scoff-rule driver has been motoring up the wrong parking aisles. I believe it is on purpose. Two weeks in a row is no accident. How can one be so totally oblivious to yellow arrows painted on blacktop? It's as if someone knows the right way, but deliberately chooses the wrong way. A motorized nose-thumbing, if you will. So I cast my line with the names of riders who were picked up by Wrong-Way Club Cab. I described the vehicle.

My left-hand gal, Tomato-Squirter, declared that she would boldly strut to the table of the riders, and ASK who picked them up. No nuanced finagling in that one's style. I argued that she could NOT simply strut over there and interrogate two in front of six others. That would let them know that something was afoot. We are quite outnumbered, you know. Sometimes surprise is the best tactic for information-gathering. We bickered back-and-forth for a few moments. My right-hand guy tried to worm his way into the mix by informing us that the very first YouTube video was now ten years old, and was called "Me at the Zoo." The fact that he is not a math teacher is glaringly evident, if you know anything about this video. Deflecting his pronouncement with a flick of the wrist, like a bothersome gnat, we continued our heated debate.

"I also saw that one guy go up the last row the wrong way. He had traffic for the softball field backed up. I don't know his name." I tried to describe him in my best Seinfeld movie-goers description. "'New kid, skinny jeans, thinks he's cute.' Can you believe nobody knew who I was talking about? And he drives a black truck. NO! He was NOT a parent picking someone up. He had backed into the last row, like all the trucks, and went up the wrong way on purpose to get out faster."

"Oh, that's Pretty Boy. In fact, I call him 'Cute.' Because I told him, 'You think you're cute, don't you, and he said, 'I AM cute.' I'll ask him if he went the wrong way."

"I don't think you should be doing that here in the cafeteria. Wait until they walk by in the hall."

By this time, the boring-talkers had stopped their discussion of...um...don't know, don't care. They were dying to know what we were talking about. They leaned forward, open-mouthed. We could have easily put them on the case to identify the swimming-upstream culprits. Perhaps for a cup of sherbet, a drink of Coke, a promise to serve a day of duty. Because our conversation beat theirs all to not-heaven.

That is how it's done. Whisper-argue, and glance furtively at your intended canaries. Whether you make them sing or not is immaterial. It's the interrogation, not the confession, that drives us, that piques our curiosity. If the canary sings, that's just a feather in your cap.

Teachers can never have too many cap feathers.