Nothing could murder Peter’s faith in public education like health class. The teacher—a beefy former college football player with curly hair and a jutting chin—announced that today’s subject was “Condoms, prophylactics, sheaths, or, as you’ve probably heard older kids refer to them, rubbers, safeties, raincoats, the fez.”
He flexed his thick neck and stuck out his awning jaw.
“You guys gotta know about this stuff for when you”—here he almost snickered—“get married and consider family planning.” He was bouncing a half piece of chalk in his right hand. He looked around the room for someone not paying attention. His eyes fell on a chubby kid with a pubic mustache. The young teacher reared up like he was back in the URI Thanksgiving game and winged the chalk at the kid, who snapped to attention as it cracked against his ear.
“Frisco!” the teacher barked. “What are the two main reasons for using a prophylactic?”
Frisco rubbed his ear and considered. “Because the girl won’t let you do it otherwise?”
The teacher laughed. “You’re a scholarship student, aren’t ya? That’s not a bad answer. Girls! If any of you ever in your distant future lives find yourselves in a situation where you’re considering becoming intimate with someone like Frisco…”
A stereo-panned Ewww rose from the young women in the room.
“By all means, make such a course contingent on his having functioning protection. For your sake, for his sake, and for the sake of your unborn children, who we pray to God stay that way.”
The boy in front of Peter raised his hand. “Mr. McCabe?”
“Yes, Rolly?”
“Ain’t a rubber a waste of money? Don’t most guys just use one of their socks?”
The health teacher stared at Rolly, a pimply boy with one sleepy eye, to determine if he was making a joke. Nothing but sincerity registered on Rolly’s bumpy face. Mr. McCabe tried to stifle his amusement but couldn’t. His lips began to quiver, someone else laughed, and pretty soon the whole room was in hysterics while Rolly looked around and said, “What?”
Peter’s next class was at the far end of the school. He would have to haul ass to get there before the bell. He passed John North in the hall, who made a gesture that he wanted to talk. Peter nodded and kept moving. He turned from F wing into D wing and passed a large bulletin board, which Delores Marx had decorated with smile faces and a banner that said, “HAVE A NICE DAY!” Beneath that banner someone had tacked up a cardboard sign with an American flag and the slogan “POWS NEVER HAVE A NICE DAY.” Some wiseass had come along with scissors and a stapler and moved the letters around so the sign now declared, “WOPS NEVER HAVE A NICE DAY.”
Peter arrived at the Language Lab and took a seat behind a plastic screen and put on the cheap headphones. Through the static a recorded voice said, “Bonjour. Je vais bien. Et vous?”
The French teacher sat at the front of the classroom looking bored and clicking through switches. You never knew when he was listening to you. Peter remembered an old trick—you just moved your lips as if you were answering, and when the teacher got to you he would think the microphone was broken and move on. Peter did that for a while before he got bored.
The taped voice said, “Comment allez-vous?” Peter sighed and said, “Bonjour, ma ami invisible. Je souhaîte que je pourrais dire que j’étais bien mais je me trouve dans un dilemma métaphysique. Je suis un enfant encore, emprisonné dans la Bastille de mon corps de quinze et forcé endurer le tedium d’un journée à l’école dans les printemps de 1970. Est ce qu’il y a un sant Gallic à qui je peux petition m’aider échapper et rétourner à la monde de mobiles et télévision réalité?”
He heard a ticktock in his earpiece. The French teacher had been listening. For a moment Peter wondered if he had found a way to prove he was from the future. In 1970 he could barely conjugate aller. He was bringing a college education and a lifetime of European travel into the Language Lab today. He waited to hear the teacher’s response.
The response was, “Ha ha, Wyatt. You go to the trouble of memorizing that whole spiel? Wouldn’t it have been easier to just do the homework? Get with it.”
The French teacher’s voice clicked off. The static came back on. Peter went back to moving his mouth with nothing coming out.