Next Time You Meet

There were loud days in the career of Mr. Genesis, but today from the millisecond he entered his classroom, he could feel in his “been here too dang long” teacher bones the mega-mega loudness there was and was to come.

What gave it away, anyway? Was it Mahatma and Timmy almost grinding into each other’s faces as their steam rose way, way up in the air? How about Latoya and Jenny, little gal pal soul mates since whenever and no matter what—those two were now at least a mile away at opposite ends of their homeroom that morning. No looks at her, and no looks at her, either.

Nope, not that either, whatever that was. That word loud pounced again in his teacher face and stuck on his craw as the volume exploded to the ends of the universe inside Room 306 of the much more middling madness of his young adolescents. It was a very good day to be on the top floor at the end of the hall! Mr. Genesis would not bother determining which one of his 25 seventh graders added what to the cacophonous noise. He did know that a stolen lunch box or slashed bike tire was the least of his worries. That was a career generation and then some too long ago.

Even the names of the others didn’t matter now. The son of the local preacher was seething in anger since the patrolman’s daughter sat across from him in the first row. They were competing with three girl athletes from 7th/8th grade modified field hockey, but it was hard to tell who was talking to who, when the enemy was their boy football classmates who clamored at an ear-splitting volume about their athletic worth and the others’ lack thereof.

Loud could also be terribly silent, as the smallest, gentlest of them all just took it all in for being the only child of the town’s wealthiest family. They were ganging up on him, for sure: Five versus one. If those nightmare kids left him naked, poor, and hungry for life, that surely would’ve made their day.

Mix in fifteen more “I didn’t say that!” screams, another dozen comments cut off at the legs by classmates who (of course) knew what their fellow boys and girls would say decades before their mouths even opened, and the more obnoxious lately middle kid kiddie rumors directed beyond Room 306, and Mr. Genesis plainly understood these were more than twelve going on thirteen year-olds that were simply acting twelve going on thirteen.

Nothing at all was in his toolbelt for this one. It had been thirty long years in Room 306 for Mr. Genesis, and from the beginning with his teaching certificate and M.Ed. degree from the local world of his entire life, the experts told him forever that great hormonal excuse about his job for life: They’re at that age.

What age was that? What’s that supposed to mean? Is that really supposed to explain what he saw and what he heard through his very eyes and ears now? His kids from a generation ago were now his middle-aged neighbors, but their age then was not that age now.

Mr. Genesis certainly got the “that’s why pencils have erasers” part of children, but he didn’t get this morning’s complete lack of joy in Room 306. Something had been sucked out of this room and what replaced it scared the bejeezus out of his middle school child teacher heart and brain and very base of his human gut.

Still, the clock read 7:50 AM, even if no one between here and Pluto had heard the first or the second bell. This classroom, this room of his entire adult job life, never, ever sounded like this, and somehow Mr. Genesis had to bring everyone inside it together and quiet (quiet?) for an allegiance pledge and announcements pending.

He figured it wouldn’t end with the pledge and he was right. When did children too young to drive know what was their country and when to suddenly blurt out, “I ain’t saying that thing, this isn’t my country”? When did children’s fights become world wars that gave no one respect for anything?

After less than a minute of the principal’s announcements, and still no peace in the atmosphere, who would expect that this lifelong, eternally serene, profoundly kid loving man would erupt and explode into exasperation?

It came that very day, and his words heard across the bow were simply these: “What the HECK is WRONG with each and every ONE of you today!”

Mr. Genesis had taught their parents. He had even taught some of their grandparents, for it was a deep-rooted kind of place. Never, ever, ever had it hit the fan like this. But it did, this time. And there were five precious and terribly short minutes between now and that first period bell that his homeroom would hear if he had anything at all to do with anything.

For now, there was a seventh-grade question that needed a seventh-grade answer. Silence wasn’t acceptable, but that’s what followed, at least at first until his new arrival Mahatma from Pakistan tried to oblige.

“Mr. Genesis,” she panted out of breath from a ten-minute shouting marathon, “Doesn’t he know I live here, too?” He, of course, was Timmy, who was too quick to retort, “Does she really know what a real American looks like?”

This was not going to go well at all for the remaining 300 seconds of homeroom.

Way soon enough, the preacher’s son screamed back, “Since when are we supposed to all look like YOU when you can’t respect any of US!” That was too darn much for the daughter of a police sergeant, and even Mr. Genesis could not believe it when she stood up and over him and held back all of her rage in her whispered reply: “Do not ever talk to me, or my dad, and use the word ‘respect’ EVER AGAIN!”

If only that whisper had lasted five whole minutes, but it only took less than four seconds for the extreme sound machine to bust the Room 306 volcano. Football players disregarding any other sports. Smarter members of the class disregarding any athlete’s worth. Anyone with any money becoming public enemy number one.

That last one became Mr. Genesis’ ultimate surprise.

That surprise was when the boy who never said or did anything but sit silently in the back of homeroom, the one whose father’s net worth was known to one and all, suddenly stood straight up and said too loud and too clear, “At least SOME of our parents in this room know what a JOB is!”

For that kid’s sake, Mr. Genesis was grateful—deeply grateful—this moment was in school and not on a side street on the way home from school. He surely wouldn’t escape the emergency room if this crowd followed him after the final bell. For now, the grownup in the room had less than two minutes to matter.

His entrance question didn’t help things, but maybe his exit answer just might.

“Boys, girls,” he begged them, not escaping the unescapable fact these were still kids sitting in front of him. “Can anyone, any last one of you, tell me what has been accomplished here in last the ten minutes?”

As Mr. Genesis looked out over the half-stunned, half-chomping at the bit to get in their last word crowd, he made the decision to own the moment, as his hand went up to quash any resumption of the wars at hand.

“Can I show you something?” he patiently asked, as he drew on the whiteboard a circle colored in green, and then around that another circle filled in with blue lines, and then a third empty red circle around the blue one.

“See that green dot there? That is you, and you, and each of your classmates. You can control that green dot with your thoughts, and your words, and your actions, and by your doing nothing or saying nothing at all. And that red circle on the outside? Well, you cannot do a thing about what is in there. Now, look at the blue lined circle. You can help shape that, using your green dot and accepting the red circle.

“Do you really wish the next seventy years of your lives to be like these last ten minutes? Any of you?

“If you do, I feel very, very sorry for you. But if you don’t, may I suggest something?

“Everything that has occurred in history is done, it’s DONE, it’s OVER! And if you make future choices based just on past mistakes, well then those are just future mistakes. But, if you were to take your next encounter with someone and made it count like it never did before, and just focus on that one next encounter, do you see how fair and easy and important that can be?

“How about this? Next time you meet, could you see each other’s green dot, and then understand each other’s red circle that’s out of their reach, and understand even more each of our blue-lined circles that’s trying to make sense of all this noise we are hearing and seeing in the world these days, knowing our own green dots and unable to change our own red circles?

“Can you do that? Can you?”

And with that, twenty-five seventh-grade young men and young ladies heard a very loud and very clear first period bell.

What else could Mr. Genesis do?

Much like another genesis story, when it all began, they had everything they needed. All that was asked of those two folks were to obey a few rules. In that garden very long ago, they knew what was in the green dot, they knew when to stay away from the red circle, and it took very little effort in the blue lines to be happy with each other.

As they say in the business world, it was a great concept but a flawed execution! Some business plans, and some teacher’s lesson plans, don’t change over time.

Not this time, and not this weekend, was this teacher’s first reaction. Boy, I didn’t want a Friday morning homeroom to go like this, but what could I do? I get less than a quarter-hour with these twenty-five kids every morning and then I don’t have them in class the rest of the day. If all that was left was to teach the next class as if nothing took place, and to record more grades, and to send yet another kid to the principal’s office, what would matter after all this?

They can’t help it if the green dot of what is theirs to control, the red circle out of their reach, and the blue lines in between may seem so very weird to them at that age of theirs. Don’t even try to reach them about a world where the green dot usually stays the same size, the red circle just keeps growing, and the blue lines often don’t make a difference.

What could Mr. Genesis do? Thousands of years ago, a man and a woman traded in a big green dot for a very little one and inherited a humongous red circle when they didn’t see the blue lines of their own decisions. Now all he could do was muddle through this last day of the week and then go home for the weekend, and hope Room 306 would not erupt into Mount Vesuvius again next Monday at 7:50 in the morning.

Friday morning homeroom never really went away, sleep didn’t come that night nor the two days away, and the dread really set in for Mr. Genesis that Sunday night. Middle school work never goes away for a teacher, though and somehow, he plowed through 125 English papers with ease even with all of this on his mind.

Was he fearful of another 7:50 rerun? Scared that bad would devolve into worse? Mr. Genesis had heard the scary headlines from bigger schools elsewhere, but his life wasn’t in danger—was it? Would any twelve going on thirteen-year-old boy or girl honestly care about a green blob inside of a blue-lined donut that was inside a red inner tube from the municipal pool?

Besides, situations like this come and go. You could have a war in a classroom on a Friday and nothing at all like it the following Monday. And so, that’s exactly what happened.

That is what deeply hurt our Genesis man the most.

A kid’s classroom almost sank into a declaration of nuclear war. Twenty-five young boys and girls ignored seventy-five fingers of their own faults pointing back at themselves, and each of them instead viciously pointed one finger at the kid that looked different from them, or seemed like less of a citizen to them, or had a parent with a job that offended them, or played a sport that had no meaning to them, or had much more money than them.

But nobody said nothing on Monday.

Was it time for Mr. Genesis? Was it less and less a time of genesis, or more of a revelation that the end for him in Room 306 had arrived? If the world on the television or internet screens couldn’t be conquered, what chance did he have? If this was all just a set script based on so many set scripts from all these years and hyperlinks, then the human kids just become the human adults, click Play, and simply walk away.

Next encounters? These encounters? So, what did it matter the next time you met, or he met, or any of these kids met, anyway?

Maybe it was time for the retirement paperwork, after all.

Mr. Genesis filled it out, and he placed it in his homeroom desk, and there it sat, waiting for that talk with the principal he had known since they were both teenagers, waiting for the long ride down to central administration to tie it all up with a bow.

Months went by as green leaves gave way to brown ones, too much snow, and even more spring mud, and more green leaves preceded many higher green lawns. Mr. Genesis had it planned for that third Monday in May, right before Memorial Day: That walk to the principal’s office was coming.

7:50 homeroom came and went uneventfully the morning of the decision. As Room 306 emptied of its almost eighth graders, a teacher of thirty years opened a desk drawer and pulled out a large manila envelope. He stood up, mind made up in hand, and headed to the Room 306 door.

That was when Mahatma and Timmy straggled out as their eyes met, or maybe they wanted Mr. Genesis’ attention.

“Mr. Genesis, do you have a minute, please?” whispered the young lady from another place on the planet. Her classmate was in no hurry to go elsewhere even with first period beckoning very soon.

“Yes, Mahatma, what is it?”

“Well, Mr. Genesis, it may have been a while ago, but Timmy and I never forgot that Friday morning, and how very, very loud it was, and those three circles you drew.”

Timmy chimed in, “Yeah, but for weeks—weeks—there was no reason for us to meet. But there was a next time, wasn’t there, Mahatma?”

“There was, Timmy, and though it did not happen until after the new year, you might say that I got to know his green dot, and he got to know mine. And sure, there is much from our past histories that are two very, very big red circles. But you know, there is so very much inside our blue lines that allow us to understand what we are all about.”

“Yes, Mr. Genesis,” Timmy agreed. “And for that, Mahatma and I are very grateful. And we thank you very much.”

“And you may not realize this,” Mahatma added, “But Marilyn—the policeman’s daughter—introduced that boy to her father while he was on patrol. Not an easy conversation but a conversation, nonetheless. And those football players? They spent some time watching field hockey practice the following week, they even tried playing it themselves and the girls got such a big laugh when all the boys went home with aching backs!”

“And this, too,” from Timmy.” You know those guys who gave grief to the town millionaire’s son? The next time they met, he invited them to dinner at his house. Needless to say, they did not go home hungry!”

That got a great big laugh from Mr. Genesis, “No, I imagined there were no empty stomachs after that meal. Mahatma, Timmy, I’m glad you stopped me and let me know about these things. I’ll let you get to class, but thanks again to both of you.”

“Mr. Genesis,” Mahatma concluded, “We both thank you, Timmy and I, all of us thank you, for a green dot, blue lines, and a red circle, one inside another. And we all will thank you once more the next time we meet for the rest of our lives, whenever and whoever it is we meet next.”

The two of them sprinted off to first period class, almost needing a note from their homeroom teacher in case they were late. But now there was something Mr. Genesis didn’t need, two things really: A large manila envelope and a walk to the principal’s office.

From a much too old desk in Room 306, Mr. Genesis figured that in the beginning of that school year, his own red circle could not create a new heaven, but from twenty-five green dots, he might have created a new earth after all.