My nickname awaited. 

I expected fear and misery to accompany me on my first day of school–it comes with the territory.  And I had no reason to expect any compromise on a nickname.  That school was a place to learn seemed ludicrous and secondary at this point.  It was a volatile atmosphere; too unruly and hectic to consider any good will.  It was a powder keg waiting to go off; I didn’t want to be the one to set it off.  It was onerous.  It was scary.  Isolating.  I didn’t mind the thought of lying low, but if I had to do it for an entire school year—or perhaps longer—it seemed as an unfair twist of fate.

But, wouldn’t you know it, just as my doubts were peaking, for a moment…time stood still—and for a redeeming reason no less.  It was an open seat.  The sight of an open seat lessened my fears.  It was the last seat in the back of the room, which also meant I was the last student, and I’d just taken the brunt of an entire class.

The excitement would have been almost euphoric if not for that last realization.

Nevertheless, I was now overcome with something other than fear for a change (I often wonder how I ever got to my seat with so many suspensions to disbelief in my march through the valley of pubescence).  There were no words to describe the sudden but brief excitement in me when I spotted the last seat, in the last row, and so close to the windows.  There was nothing between me and the outside world but a glass wall; it was my dream seat (Pun intended). The outside world had birds chirping, swaying on playful trees.  You couldn’t feel the wind but you could see its kinder touch.  And the sun shone brighter against the sky’s bluest canvas.  The view was amazing.  It was a great spot—and it was all mine now.  However, this brief complacency quickly compromised the little serenity I found in that seat (Oh, oh).

And, as wise people say: good things never last—and for good reasons.

In a flash, my brief euphoria withered.  I was about to be exposed to a far worse level of angst.  There was no way of expecting the kind of drama about to unfold.  How could I?  I was just a clueless kid.

It was eight o’clock in the morning when the school bell sounded.  The conventional tones heard across schools all over somehow took a sinister tone in mine.  Maybe it was just paranoia, but it sounded portentous.  Perhaps because it called to attention, in such an eerie fashion, an unfamiliar person pressing his way into the classroom.  He walked in with such conviction and swagger it spooked the hell out of me.  The person was so prompt in his entrance—I was startled; he triggered a torrent of unwavering moisture down my face.  He was our new teacher; if I stood, I knew my knees would just collapse.

In retrospect, his entrance seemed contrived; it was almost dramatic.  Through the years I’ve wondered why, but at the time the thought was too cynical for a young boy like me to presume; I was neither precocious nor keen to such vagaries.  Now, I think he was waiting behind the door—listening.  It is possible he was just listening for some leverage against the anarchy taking place inside his realm.  I mean, I would have feared walking in had I been a teacher on the other side of that door.  But, I prefer to think he’d been standing on the other side of the door, biding his time until the bell rung, to make sure his entrance had an added shock value to it.

I don’t know about anyone else but I was disturbed by his entrance.  My stomach cramped so bad that even the butterflies flew away.  As a matter of fact, my thoughts flew away with the butterflies the second he walked in.

Either way, whatever his play was, it worked; it was unnecessary, but it worked.

So there I was flushed; I was hot; I was cold.  The recent feel-good emotions, aroused by a corner seat, left with such haste that my body seized.  My complexion must have appeared ghostly.  It was not just me that felt the sharp contrast—the classroom fell into place as if they had been drilled on this before; however, I was the only one who seemed shaken by this turn of events.  From then on, the uneasiness seemed to magnify while everybody else was just stoic.  But, good thing I was in the last seat tucked away in the corner, right?

As soon as the teacher settled at his desk, he took a quick glance around the classroom (my guess he was looking for troublemakers).  He said nothing.  He didn’t have to; it was quiet now.  But the silence in the classroom was now deafening in contrast to earlier scenes, and it spoke volumes to the teacher’s reputation.  I sensed his notoriety growing the longer silence veiled the room.  It preceded him, which explains why a chill ran down my spine the moment he walked in.

He then shuffled a few things on his desk, checked his appearance, reshuffled more, and all without saying a word to the class.  All eyes were on him.  All ears anticipating the timbre of his voice.  You could cut the suspense with a knife.  He had yet to look up after his initial scan of the classroom—adding to the drama.  And then, just like that, with his head bent over a paper, he jumped right into his opening dialogue: a brief introduction and expectations.  You could see a synchronized ripple move through the classroom when he spoke.  He acknowledged no one.  He didn’t ask for names certain he would get them as he moved along.  My math class was underway.

Without pausing, the teacher broke into his first lesson—a brief history of Egyptian numbers.

He followed that with what I am certain suggested required information.  But, then his tone was different.  It wasn’t scaring me.  In fact, it was having an adverse effect on me.  It stirred in me monotony more than a cause for thought.  

So it was then when I sensed myself drifting—transfixed on the windows.  The awkwardness I was convinced I suffered when I entered the room had lessened.  I eased my soul right into the soothing choreography from Mother Nature just outside the windows.

I’ve always found windows to be cathartic—an escape to the sublime.  It’s a frame to something spiritual.  It’s a sense of connection to something profound beyond the frame.  Think about it: when we look out a window we are almost never looking at something specific; we are always somewhere else.

And so it was.  I was suddenly bored and drifting.  It seems unthinkable now I could be so dismissive of my new teacher considering how scared I’ve been up to this point.  But, I gave myself permission to drift; and I took a leap of faith to leave everything behind for the beckoning fingers of nature.  I floated out that window without grave concern breaking the threshold of my imagination.

I can only surmise it must have been his Tick-Tock dialogue, coupled with the gentle swish and swaying of nature outside the window, that I found hypnotizing—as if a pendulum was being swung in front of me.

The moment was mesmerizing and thus I daydreamed.

When I left I had no intentions of coming back to the lesson at hand.  However, after a deep respite—and what seemed to have lasted an eternity—I sensed someone was trying to get my attention.  Just as fast as I had abandoned the class, I snapped out of my transient state only to find my teacher trying to get my attention.  It was then when I noticed all eyes were on me.  The class and I all shared the same confusion, but I knew mine was a little different.  Everyone kept looking at me!  I asked myself questions that at that moment bore no answers: What happened? Why are they looking at me? What do they want from me? and Why me?

This time, my bones rattled as I snapped back to reality—and I’m sure the class heard them.  My fears became palpable—and I know they noticed that.  They noticed my distraction intensifying.  How could they not?  It disturbed me that all eyes were on me; I mean, it was an audience.  I’d become a performer.  It appeared they were expecting something peculiar to happen to me.  If not from me, then from my cast member—the teacher.  Either way, somehow I’d become relevant.  Or, you even could say the star!

The anguish they saw in me was fodder for their already stirred curiosity.  The corner chair had failed me.  It failed to provide security.  It failed to provide promise.  I was exposed.  Again.

To what though?  I couldn’t fathom.  I felt isolated.  It is ironic I was surrounded by so many people, and yet felt so alone.

For a second, it was like being in a Hitchcock movie; vertigo struck me hard.  I spun, free-fell—you name it.  The scene had it all,  even the effects of the dolly zoom technique often used in old movies.  It scared me.  I couldn’t come to terms with what was happening.  The same question kept looping in my head: “Why me?”  You’d be surprised how many times you can ask that in such a short time.

So, with no rationalization, or even a haphazard explanation—and with no resources for reasoning—I uttered: “Egyptian…”

What followed next I could never have imagined.  Before I could even articulate a complete, but what I knew would be an incoherent answer—a sudden screeched outburst of laughter soared through the classroom with the intensity of a sonic boom.  The windows rattled; I was brushed back.  I know it had to pierce the halls.

The outburst defied logic.  The laughter seemed to go on forever.  Out of the corner of my petrified face, I noticed bodies falling from their chairs, fists slamming desks, heads to heavy from laughter resting on forearms from which the echoed sounds only added to the medley of mirth. There were students holding their sides in writhing pain. It was chaos at my expense.  

To say the moment was surreal does little to justify the scene and my stupefied state.  Even the teacher couldn’t help it; he joined in the mass hysteria—not seconds after—but right on cue with the students.  I felt betrayed; even if I didn’t know him.  He was supposed to be a person of trust.  Had I any keen ability to dissect what was happening, I could justify the student’s reactions to immaturity, but…the teacher?  He added to my list of questions: What had I done to deserve this?

All I knew at this point was that something profound had just occurred as I witnessed my teacher—not as a figure of authority—but as just another teenager in harmony with chaos; at my expense no less.

I tried hard to make sense of this reaction to such an innocuous answer—to whatever he asked; but, to no avail. The conditions were contagious, and they spread like wildfire.  Like a disease, the laughter struck and rippled through the entire classroom and it appeared I was the only one immune to it.  It wasn’t very comforting.  There was nothing I could do not stop it.  So, it was then when I realized that the best thing to do was to join then—but of course, not with the same spirit.

Acquiescing didn’t seem to help matters; they knew something I was not privy to.  They laughed in earnest while I laughed to preserve my dignity—or, to find enough time to gain perspective.  But there was to be no perspective gained from chaos.

And, as with life itself, it fades; some laughter was becoming discordant and seemed too painful to be fun.  I had broken them; I just didn’t know how.

The students could laugh no more.  They were too weak to look at me now.  So after the affliction died down—an affliction that dispersed in me so much buoyant pain—the end seemed near.  The teacher collected himself from his own wrenching laughter.  And once again, he assumed his role as the grown-up—as the educator.  But with his facial muscles still caught in the remnants of laughter, and trying his best to act composed and resolute, he looked at me to say, “Son, thanks for the laughs, but all I asked you was… what’s your name?”

Now, I had a nickname…