Cereal Killer

So Aguilar, a computer teacher, is sitting in the lounge shoveling generic Lucky Charms into his mouth. I know they’re generic for two reasons. First, what teacher can afford the real deal? That stuff is so expensive that they may as well be called Gold Bullion-O’s. Second, the marshmallow charms are not the same. Instead of clovers, moons and stars there are genie lamps, rabbit foots and something like lotto tickets or something.

Anyway, he’s just shoveling them into his mouth, hunched over his bowl, for shorter spoon travel and staring off into space, and teachers are doing they’re usual lunch thing. Some are grading while spilling crumbs all over the students’ work. Others are standing in line at the microwave looking at their watches while the current heater mumbles, “Come on, come on,” peeping through the glass hoping for their microwave soup cup to spin faster. And others are just trying to catch on eight-minute naps.

As this is going on, Aguilar, still stares, never taking his eyes off the wall across the room with the faded poster of a whale’s tail coming out of the water and some positive message underneath, and he finally says, “You know—the best way to poison teachers is to put something poisoned into some bagels or cookies around here.” After some silence he continues with, “I’m just saying,” and goes back to his Fortunate Flakes.

The crazy thing is that, sure, a good deal of the teachers (at least the ones who are awake) stop what they’re doing and stare for a moment at Aguilar, but then they go right back to their lunchtime routine.

I guess it is just that time of the year when teachers are a bit more comfortable with their demise, especially if it means missing finals.