"Snack time!" I shout to my students the moment the clock strikes 10:30.
My class of kindergarteners swarm the tables with startling speed and organization, I've certainly trained them well. I walk briskly to the locker and retrieve the box containing thirty small Ziploc bags filled with small portions of pretzels and dried raisins. Opening the box, I elect Cici, one of the more well-mannered students, to assist me in passing them out.
"Thank your Mister Martin" each student repeats as they receive their bag.
No bag is opened until the last student has received theirs and my well-mannered Cici has taken her seat. I take my own and seat myself at my desk. The students take their cue and open their snacks and begin to eat, I open mine and stare at the little twists and lightly sugar-dusted raisins. A clock on the wall behind my desk ticks and tocks, devout to the turning cogs within.
I drown myself in the sound, silencing everything but the second hand making its rounds, moving slowly forward until one day the battery will die or one of the mechanical components will fail. Even machines are mortal, everything in this world is marching towards the end. One day each of my students will grow old and die, some of them will die before that, in fact any of them may die tonight in a car accident on the way home or a senseless act of violence on the street.
We are all only hanging by a thread, all counting the seconds until the next point in our day, then our week, then month and year and decade and eventually we wait for death. My students don't know yet that there's not a point to any of this, I hypocritically endow them with false hopes about the bright world around them as much as I'd like to tell them that life is hard and they're going to struggle with things they couldn't possibly imagine or understand sitting at their tables eating pretzels and raisins and looking forward to nap.
ring ring ring
The alarm goes off indicating that ten minutes have passed, and snack time has ended. I realize, once the sound snaps me back out of my little internal dialogue, I haven't eaten a single pretzel or raisin and I've been staring at them for the duration of snack. I look up at my students who lock their eyes with mine awaiting my next instruction.
"Alright" I clear my throat, "time to clean up!"
YOU ARE READING
Healed
Short StorySometimes the hardest part of recovery is accepting that it's successful. For Isaac Martin, even a perfect life with his beautiful wife and daughter isn't enough to make him forget his past. Blades still call out his name, and his skin begs to be pi...
