Broken Glass

I’m living in an empty room with all the windows smashed

And I’ve got so little left to lose

That it feels just like I’m walking on broken glass

Annie Lennox (1992)

It is a bright cold day in January and the clocks are striking fifteen.

I brandish the red tablecloth like a spangled bullfighter daring my 7th period class to charge.  A rise from their seats let alone a stampede is the last thing I want (a few of these antsy adolescents snort and stomp above six-foot-buckaroo), yet the thirty-five amped up sophomoric beasts (no disrespect to the animal kingdom) cease their movement, a collective lean in.  I snap the tablecloth twice before it billows and drapes over the edge of a lab bench.  I smooth the wrinkles, admire my work.  Volunteers?  Student inclusion in the demo can narrow class focus, but it’s tricky, as easily grinding the show to a halt with an awkward teacher turn-of-phrase or scene-stealing juvenile.  Talk about ‘showstopper’.  Today, I am my own lovely assistant.

I direct their attention to an assortment of chemical glassware: flasks, graduated cylinders, beakers on the table just beyond the tablecloth where I pluck the tiniest, a baby beaker between thumb and forefinger, place it alone in the center of the tablecloth.  I gesture for quiet, flick the beaker – tink! tink! tink! – bunch the cloth at the corners, careful, keeping my hands wide.  I tug, like reining in ol’ Betsy, burping air pockets, and turn to the class, “How I should pull?  Up, down, fast, slow?”

A burst of recommendations I acknowledge with a dramatic breath, set my feet and – snap! – the cloth disappears, the tiny 50 mL beaker twitches atop the black slate, transported a mere centimeter, anti-climactic.  A smattering of applause.  “Do it again,” someone says.

I caress the cloth, smooth the wrinkles, “Two this time?”

As I reset, a little pickle of a boy, aged four or so, wanders in.  He’s in a green Incredible Hulk t-shirt and green pants.  Alone. Mute. A teacher’s child, unusual he’s wandering the halls during school hours unaccompanied.  Puny his advantage, too small to be detected.

My door is always open. Per school security policy, teachers are to stand in the hall during class change. Upon the tardy bell, lock shut the door.  Locked in, the argument, for safety.  A response to school shootings. This presents a dilemma for teachers whose students leave; re-entry invites disturbance, requiring someone interrupt, alert me to open the door or nose-goes between themselves before a door exchange, worse when male friends greet, a guffaw, a tangle, culminating in a Stooges slapstick –  You lamebrains!  My habit, keep the door wedged open.   Reduces teacher why I oughtas.

Jessica, debutante and door greeter extraordinaire, sits up front and sees the little boy first, out of her chair, immediately taking to him, “Aren’t you adorable?  I could eat you up.”  For a week in December, Jessica carried a fat, baby-sized, tan bean bag encased in nylon as part of a health project on childcare.  Thin arms fatigued, she’d hand the baby off to a boy menace who’d pull, choke, and distend the malleable newborn until its corpus a bloated, ellipsoidal oddity.  Absent a mouth, nose, or eyes, the baby – thank goodness – appears non-plussed.

I drop to my knees, eye-level with the green pipsqueak and ask, “Do you like magic?”  Mouth open, his brown eyes seem to search my face for something. His face is inscrutable, but I can’t miss the fact his ears are wiggling.  In sync, like an alert cat, a wiggle a second.  I wonder if the wiggles are a sign of stress – is he lost?  Unsmiling, he points a little finger to his ear.  His own magic trick. A serious performer. Jessica, now sitting on the floor, says, “Look,” points to her wiggling nose.

The muscles around the ear that allow for ear movement are called auriculars.  Cats, ever-vigilant, evolved ear muscles as an aid to hunt mice and evade predators.  Like wisdom teeth, tailbones, and ear ridges, the ear wiggle is a vestigial trait.  No evolutionary advantage (a lost child might argue otherwise, advantage adorability, critical for newborns).

I’ve lost the class – I grab cloth, make a show of the difficulty presented by three glass beakers – snap! – beakers wobble, safe. Take a bow, raise my hand, “Wait. There’s more.”

Then, static crackles emit from the ceiling speaker, spits, scratches, a front office call, that I expect is for the missing gherkin (a ‘cuke-Amber’ alert?). The authoritative yet lovely voice, reminiscent of airport terminals, intones, “Hellooo.  May I have Aduum for uhly dismissal?”  Adam my student, the little pickle still unaccounted for. I count two-Mississippi, wait for the transmission to clear, try my line, “Ok, but you can’t have Adam if he doesn’t want to go.”

A classroom hush falls in anticipation of a front office response.

But no response. The silence unsatisfying.  For a moment we wonder, is the line still open – the lovely voice flummoxed – or not?  The control is asymmetric, the front office commands all from their central position.  Are they listening in?  Who knows?  One might call it a case of connectile dysfunction.  Or not.  Best to avoid limp turns-of-phrase in the classroom.  Administration, unlikely to get a rise, frowns upon student moaning.

***

A panopticon is a term used for a central surveillance scheme, introduced in the late 18th century as a means for controlling prisoner behavior through smart architecture.  The idea is a central observation tower, tinted glass, the armed authorities can see out, no one sees in.  Prisoner living quarters, cells, surround the tower, exposed cell walls constructed of glass.  The architectural goal: constant surveillance by the authorities, or at least the threat.  The social theory is prisoners who believe they’re being watched will modify behavior accordingly.

Years ago, a principal had shared that the teen cretin responsible for setting a trashcan ablaze in a boy’s lavatory was collared, “Good thing we installed those restroom cameras.”  It took a second to sink in he was joking.

Just this year, our school upgraded the resolution and field-of-view of its closed-circuit Avigilon cameras. Dark blue domes ceiling-mounted along every hall and cranny.  There are no cameras in the classrooms though I’ve heard some teachers would welcome them, operational or not.  I read there are liability issues with dummy domes, when the presumption of protection is not actually there.

On the telescreen mounted on the living room wall of Winston Smith’s cramped apartment in George Orwell’s 1984, sound and video is transmitted both directions, simultaneously.  Winston is being watched as he watches an exercise video called The Physical Jerks.

‘Smith!’ screamed the shrewish voice from the telescreen. ‘6079 Smith W.! Yes, you! Bend lower, please! You can do better than that. You’re not trying. Lower, please! That’s better, comrade. Now stand at ease, the whole squad, and watch me.’

A sudden hot sweat had broken out all over Winston’s body. His face remained completely inscrutable. Never show dismay! Never show resentment! A single flicker of the eyes could give you away. He stood watching while the instructress raised her arms above her head and — one could not say gracefully, but with remarkable neatness and efficiency — bent over and tucked the first joint of her fingers under her toes. 

To my wife’s disappointment, I decline her requests to join her getting barked at from the upstairs tv screen by the insanely lean and efficient instructress Autumn Calabrese, of Beachbody on Demand fame. My wife endures interminable spells of streaming Kenpo X-Core Abdominal Plyometric Synergistic Rippers and other contorted tortures.  I make allowance for a workout every so often called X-Stretch, but not before dimming the lights and drawing the blinds.

Early in my career I was disturbed whenever students held their phones up to video me performing a demonstration, telling a story or joke requiring slapstick.  I’d cease my routine until the phones – back then, one or two – were put away.  Those days are gone.  I’ve recently been shown grainy phone footage of me, strutting like a chicken on a lab table with pant legs rolled up to my knees, bare feet.  I haven’t performed the joke in years, yet there it is, immortalized.

How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live — did live, from habit that became instinct — in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”

Like Winston Smith, I wonder if I’m living from a habit turned instinct.  In other words, have my classroom antics been modified, worse, dictated by the presumption that someone is always watching, recording, to be played back for my own or the authorities’ ‘enjoyment’ at any future moment?  The student with the saved footage coyly asks, “When will you be peacocking for us?”

***

I’d practiced my tablecloth trick the class period before.  Just time enough for a couple breezy whip-aways while complying with school policy: teach bell-to-bell.  One beaker had come to rest a smidge beyond the table’s edge.  Magnificent, the adrenaline rush.  Emboldened. Lucky.

The ear wiggler is captivated, front row.  I add a tall flask between a triangle of shorter beakers.  I tug the cloth hesitantly, a mock failure of nerve, but feign timidity once too often: the flask topples – sprink! – its cracked neck leaves me short a flask, long one schoolyard weapon.

I swap in a cylinder – whip! –  applause.  Check the clock: two minutes to bell.  Do it again.

Grand finale: seven pieces of chemical glassware.  “Ready?” Maybe nerves, the young child so near, I whip, not fast enough, maybe the mass, the inertia, the glass too close to the edge, too weak a pull, the drag, distracted by the pickle hogging my spotlight, so near my crowning moment, the glorious wave of the tablecloth above my head, when the crash – sprink! sprink! clink! clish! sprink! – crunching under my shoe as I keep the boy back, the class roars in support of mayhem, out of their seats, the bell rings, backpacks harnessed, cinched, out the door headed for the weekend.

Jessica sweeps up the boy.  I grab a broom and dust pan.  Milling students point out skittered glass fragments.  I empty the dustpan in the trashcan where I spot a snack-size potato chip bag.

Food is not allowed in the science classroom: department policy.

On a knee, I insert the larger shards into the potato chip bag and gently place it in the trash when I look up to Little Sarah Silverman, class comedian, towering above me, phone in hand, “Gotta get a pic of your epic fail.”

One minute after dismissal, the room is empty.  I tidy up for the weekend.

***

The Eurythmics created a soundtrack titled 1984 (For the Love of Big Brother) for the movie,1984, a flop released in, of course, 1984.  From an article on diffuser, the movie’s director was never on board with their hire.  The director was quoted, calling the Eurythmics efforts, ‘crass rubbish’.

In a Forbes article, the celebrity fitness instructor who paved the Beachbody way for the likes of Autumn Calabrese was Tony Horton, whose list of clients back in the 80’s included Bruce Springsteen, Billy Idol, and Annie Lennox.

***

A half-hour later I’m in my living room on a brown leather recliner. From the recliner I have an unobstructed view of the street through my front-door window.  At night beside my reading lamp, the transmission is reversed, and I sit exposed to sidewalk passersby.  More than once, I’ve scooted the recliner to the other side of the living room where I can read without feeling like a zoo animal, but my wife says the recliner doesn’t fit there, ill-proportioned.  “I hate that recliner.  It’s too big,” she says.  Back scoots the recliner.  I check my phone. A text time-stamped 3:35 pm, school’s end, from my department chair:

Do you need a box for the broken glass?

Department policy: dispose of all broken glass in sturdy cardboard boxes.

How did she know?

Her room is a hundred feet down the hall.  We share no students.  The glass incident must’ve preceded her text by minutes.  How did she know?  Cameras in the room?  In the hall? In the phones?  Little Sarah Silverman?  What exactly was behind the brown eyes of that pickle kid?  Did his un-muted lips divulge class magic under adult interrogation?

***

The black-uniformed men thrust a ladder through the window of the secret room above Mr. Charrington’s antique shop where Winston and Julia were reading anti-Party literature.  The antique shop was where Winston had purchased a forbidden diary and glass paperweight.  More men in black stampeded up the inner stairs to block all exit.

There was another crash.  Someone had picked up the glass paperweight from the table and smashed it to pieces on the hearthstone.  The fragment of coral, a tiny crinkle of pink like a sugar rosebud from a cake, rolled across the mat.  How small, thought Winston, how small it always was!

Per LitCharts.com, “The tiny fragment of coral embedded in the glass paperweight represents the fragility of human relationships, particularly the bond between Julia and Winston, which is destroyed by O’Brien as easily and remorselessly as the glass paperweight is smashed by the Thought Police.”

As it turns out, those closest to Winston, who he thought were members of The Party, were actually members of the resistance (Julia, his love-interest) and those he thought members of the resistance were actually of The Party (O’Brien, his peer; Mr. Charrington, the antique shop owner).

My department chair has played no small role in my satisfaction with my career change fourteen years ago.  She gave me my first job in education, my first classroom, my second classroom (a science room with slate tables, storage cabinets), my third classroom (powered slate tables, running water, bigger storage cabinets, drawers), and a schedule that allows a daily breath. She invites me to an annual winter retreat for an environmental science conference that she organizes, runs like a clock.

Her role as department chair places her firmly inside Camp Administration.    But I’m convinced she’s working on the inside, for me, with the resistance, just like Winston’s Julia, to promote the interests of the teacher proletariat.

After Winston and Julia betray one another under duress of torture by O’Brien for their anti-Party actions, they are returned to society brainwashed.  Winston is alone in a bar:

Winston sat in his usual corner, gazing into an empty glass.  In these days he could never fix his mind on any one subject for more than a few moments at a time.  He examined the chess problem and set out the pieces.  It was a tricky ending, involving a couple of knights.

Winston looked up at the portrait of Big Brother.  White always mates, he thought with a sort of cloudy mysticism.  Did it not symbolize the eternal, unvarying triumph of Good over Evil?  The huge face gazed back at him, full of calm power.  He loved Big Brother.

The voice from the telescreen paused and added in a different and much graver tone: “You are warned to standby for an important announcement at fifteen-thirty.  Fifteen-thirty!  This is news of the highest importance.  Take care not to miss it.  Fifteen-thirty!”

The tinkling music from the telescreen struck up again.

I decide not to return the text. Through the front-door window, an unidentified person walks to the door. I’m out of the recliner in a flash and hide on the other side of the room. In my own home.