Afterwords: Solomio

The story behind the scene in the faculty room in Solomio.

When I was in 7th grade, I had a music teacher. The moment he turned his back, the class exploded. It was Red Light-Green Light on amphetamines.

I was an elementary school class clown. My relationship with my pre-adolescent peers was based on my ability to make them laugh. Making people laugh is a limited power but a real one. I wielded my twelve-year old powers foolishly, sometimes at the expense of adults.

If it was funny, I could not contain it. And knowing what it was to be stung, I knew how to sting.

And nothing is riper than a teacher who’s lost control: an adult trapped in a performance they must press through. So when my 7th-grade music teacher turned his back, hello paper airplanes and flying chalk.

If you’ve read Solomio, you already sense where this is going.

After some long-forgotten disruption of mine, I was given an unusual detention. "Please come over to the high school after school, to the music department." My teacher taught both the junior high students and the high schoolers. The schools were adjacent. Middle-schoolers rarely stepped foot in the high school.

I navigated my way, one hallway direction after the next. Eventually, I found the music room. I was surprised there were students there.

In the middle of the room there was a music stand with sheet music on it.

"Sing."

The high-school students may have laughed. I don’t remember, but now, somehow, I remember laughter.

His notes blurred in front of me. This continued until I wept.

I did not sing for long.

It was one of the most humiliating experiences of my life, and the only one I remember delivered with premeditation.

As I've gotten older, I think less about the humiliation and more about the cruelty. Some might call it rough justice: punishment for the clown who crossed the line.

I don’t.

There was the pretense of an eye for an eye. The middle-school class clown deserved something alright, but he didn’t deserve that. I’ve had some time to think about it.

Solomio’s face-off with Jeffrey in the faculty room was born from that event.

See you next Sunday 9:00AM for a sneak preview of XVIII:

Cimarron County, Oklahoma.

1930’s.

Boxcar.

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