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As far as I’m concerned, no teacher goes into a classroom without concealed weapons. I know I never have. Chalk is a bullet in the right hands. Students have no idea what I’m up to or whether what I’m teaching them is algebra or how to live. They don’t get either at home. Where the district has it wrong is making me conceal my actual gun: they let me carry it to make the students safer; the policy makes that clear; so aren’t things even safer if the kids know I’m carrying? I know it makes me feel safer. Anyway, it’s not as if I could hide this bulge for long. The kids I need to worry about can smell the oil on the cylinders, just as I will smell theirs the day they think they’re too smart for me. The training was a joke. If I’m not already responsible, I wouldn’t have a permit in the first place. What I do is show it, to let them know there’s a willing readiness to balance anything they might bring to class. On your ankle today, sir? they ask me. Under your arm? At the hip? They don’t get the answer until they perform academically. I tell you, the kids we lost last year were casualties of academic failure. The shooters thought the only way to challenge authority was to shoot. Of course they came from broken homes. What home isn’t broken? We teachers have to raise a generation that isn’t taught anything, they’re only sold. From me they get nuance. From me they learn that authority is a matter of negotiation. We don’t just question it, we defy its right to exist until it proves itself. And extra credit for anyone who can make it into school with contraband.
Copyright © August 17, 2008
Read the rest of this entry »At age six, we are wiser than at any other age. We know things nobody could have told us and we keep them to ourselves. Before I forget everything forever, shall I tell you what it was like for me that day? You know what it did to my sisters. Mother had taken me shopping for clothes for school—just me!—and the prettiest pair of patent leather shoes. For half an hour, I’ve never owned anything I loved more. I remember them like yesterday. When I look at the toes, my big fat baby face is smiling back. We’re almost home from shopping. Mother is smiling at the wheel of the big new Pontiac. Here comes Daddy, walking down the hill from the house to meet us. He has never done this. Something is wrong. He looks me back into my seat. I’m scared. I want to be the girl at school with the prettiest shoes. Daddy opens the driver’s door and leads Mother up to the house. I wait behind in the big hot car and swing my feet and look at my shoes, but the sun has died and all I see are clouds. Mother screams from the parlor, not an angry scream. They send my sisters, not my brother, to fetch me. Something is wrong. We walk along the dirt lane to the house and they tell me. I don’t cry. My shoes are nothing but dust. I see his body on the loveseat under a towel, but I don’t cry. I haven’t cried since, at anything. They’ll make a fuss of me at school, I thought. I’ll be the girl whose brother was shot and killed. I couldn’t say any of this until you asked me. I’m not wise enough anymore to know why.
Copyright © August 05, 2007
Very Short Novels 
Thank you so much, anhinga, but I wouldn't want to try it without the other 199. —David
Why, thank you, brother. It's wonderful to see you here. :) —David
All you need is 100 words to make an emotional impact. Touching.
Brilliant, brother. Just simply brilliant.
This Very Short Novel has a strong resemblance to Simple Lessons of War from almost 20 years ago, but is…