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 sc…