Teacher of the Year
A pot-fueled craving for Oreos crowded out thoughts of anything else as Matt tossed his varsity jacket to the couch and headed for the kitchen cupboard, letting the front door slam shut behind him. Ignoring the “no cookie is safe” catcall coming from his father in place of a “hello,” he nudged aside that morning’s San Francisco Chronicle and its headline announcing that Gerald Ford had edged ahead of Jimmy Carter in their bicentennial Presidential race. Then he placed two uneven stacks of cookies on the dining room table, arranging and rearranging them like poker chips. It took a mere 45 seconds to reduce both stacks and a tall glass of milk by half.
The family’s portly dietary scold stood in the kitchen, palms on the table, scrutinizing layouts for the next edition of the McAteer High School paper on which he served as faculty advisor. With a little luck he would remain engrossed long enough for Matt to extract, read, and replace the sports section and its stories of the upcoming Raiders-Steelers clash, thus avoiding the all too familiar “How about reading the front page for once?” which he’d answer with something unintelligible to be met by a snarled “SAY THAT, AGAIN!” eliciting a more intelligible (and spicier) version of the mumbled wisecrack leading to a loss of car privileges and having to take two buses if he wanted to see his girlfriend open her door wearing a crooked come hither grin to go with a spaghetti strap tank top and cutoffs.
Any hopes for enjoying a few articles about the big game in peace evaporated once his father looked up and strode into the dining room brandishing a piece of paper. Sensing an incoming inquisition, Matt retreated behind carefully cultivated Jimmy Page bangs.
“Matt,” he said, eschewing “Lump” and “Smilo,” two oft used and deeply resented nicknames, “I was soliciting ads for ‘The Pioneer’ and one of the kids recommended these guys…They even offered to pay for one of our bigger spots.” He was actually shifting his weight from foot to foot with excitement. “What do you think?”
A glossy 5x7 was now sitting atop the Chronicle. So Matt brushed away his bangs and leaned in. Then, blinking in disbelief, he leaned in closer. Several bleary-eyed gnomes were sprawled in the shade of a mushroom cap that towered over them like a Middle-Earth cabana. Above that, the sun peeked through some clouds which spelled out the words “Psychedelic Head Shop” and their Market Street address. The ad trumpeted their seasonal bong sale and its 20% discount on the entire inventory. In the right upper corner sat a note plugging kits for transforming psilocybin spores into magic mushrooms.
Though not his preferred stoner destination, that distinction belonging to The Underground Head Shop with its superior collection of dirty magazines and underground comix, Matt knew the Psychedelic Head Shop and its extensive array of pot smoking paraphernalia, black light posters, and back issues of High Times. They’d even sold him his first pipe. “This is for the school paper? SERIOUSLY?”
He’d often found it amusing that a veteran teacher had remained oblivious to his own kid’s recreational drug use while boasting of a sixth sense for recognizing when students showed up to class “high as kites.” But this level of naiveté was more mind-blowing than a Led Zeppelin show. So despite the pain fed by constant dismissals of any expression of individuality that neither good grades nor deportment could stem – from a growing preference for girlfriend over family to a wispy first mustache – Matt felt an involuntary glimmer of parental concern in reverse. In lieu of sitting his father on his knee, Matt pushed out a chair. “Look, dad, if you place this ad, you’re going to be the most popular teacher in town…and you’re going to go to jail.”
The man could only gape in silence as Matt broke down what was in the proof, supplemented by an overview of the world of head shops and stoner culture. Matt described bongs and how they worked. And hookahs. And he explained the connections between the spores and middle-class teens’ vision quests set to the music of Pink Floyd. Instead of issuing the standard issue “How do you know all this?” his father lurched into the kitchen and started dialing the phone.
“Um…Hello? This is Mr. Snyderman from McAteer High School…Yes, that one. I, uh, confess there’s been a little misunderstanding…”
Matt eavesdropped on the conversation while polishing off the Oreos until “I had no idea what these, um, boangs were for…” came perilously close to bringing milk and chunks of creamy filling erupting from his nose. “…Or that those spores were hallucinogens of some kind” only worsened a coughing jag that made it impossible to hear what followed. But the fact that his father’s furious pacing, a habit during stressful phone calls, had slowed indicated the Psychedelic Head Shop crew were probably being good sports about losing a miraculous advertising coup that must have had them salivating.
A final “Thank you for understanding” punctuated by a sigh brought the proceedings to a close. Rising to attention, Matt expected a heartfelt pat on the back for having spared his father from being tarred and feathered by an enraged P.T.A., if not appearing in a human interest story on the evening news. But the elder Snyderman made a bee-line for the living room, bypassing Matt as though he were invisible, like a waiter avoiding the eyes of a party whose entrees are woefully late. Strains of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, a musical stand-in for a stiff drink, floated out soon thereafter.
Sympathy promptly morphed into indignation on its way to something else. Waiting for a crescendo to cover the sounds of him rummaging through the trash for the discarded Psychedelic Head Shop ad, Matt realized he might just have been gifted something far more satisfying than a grudging gesture of gratitude; a story that would provide endless laughs to him and his friends plus a double-barreled comeback to the inevitable fatherly provocations to come.
Matthew Snyderman lives in Northern California with his wife. When not writing, he enjoys swimming, watching old movies on the big screen, and participating in the occasional Moth StorySLAM. His work has appeared in The Avalon Literary Review, The Berlin Literary Review, Bristol Noir, Bare Back, Fabula Argentea, Killer Nashville, Literally Stories, The Loch Raven Review, The Lowestoft Chronicle, The Opiate, Punk Noir, The Under Review, Twelve Winters, Twin Bill, and The Yard.
