Michael Jumper
Detention Essay
(I don’t like essays so I wrote a
poem.)
Okay,
here’s the thing.
If
they don’t want you to jump up
and
touch things,
then
why—I mean why—
do
they put them right in front of your face?
Right
where you can see them?
Right
where you can read the message written all over them,
or
hear the little sing-songy voice that seems to taunt you:
“You
can’t touch me! You can’t touch me!”
’Cause
then I just have to say,
“Oh
yes I can.”
Take
the other day.
I’m
walking down the hall between classes.
And
I see up ahead of me, sticking out from the wall,
not
far below the ceiling,
a
clock.
One
of those big round ones,
high
on walls,
that
they put all over the school
to
keep kids from being late.
Teachers
too.
So
anyway, this clock and I are old friends.
It
was one of the first things I jumped up and touched
when
I first came to this school in sixth grade.
It’s
so easy to touch that I hardly ever even bother anymore.
But
I usually look up and smile at it when I go by,
as
if to say: “You know just as well as I do that—
if
I wanted to—
I
could jump up there and touch your face,
right
now.”
The
clock, of course, never says anything,
though
if I’m late,
I
can hear it humming,
which
is what it does
just
before the second hand clicks onto the twelve.
And
if you look at the clock just right,
with
the fluorescent light sort of angling in,
you
can see my fingerprints all over it.
They
clean it in the summer,
so
it takes me about a week to get my prints
back
where they belong,
which
is all over the face of the clock.
So
anyway … today …
I
saw somebody else’s prints up there.
You’re
wondering … how I could tell, right?
I
mean, prints are prints are prints …
or
are they?
You
see, I could tell they weren’t mine
because—I
almost hate to confess this—
because
they were higher on the clock than
mine!
I
took that as a challenge.
Somebody
had put his mark up there,
as
if to say: “Here. See if you can top this.”
Dogs
do that, you know,
on
trees and fire hydrants
trying
to spray as high as they can
so
the next puppy that trots along
will
smell it and think,
“Man,
there’s a big dog around here
somewhere!”
Red
flags bother bulls.
Bees
scare my little brother.
Worms
worry my little sister.
Bad
grades set off my mom.
And
my dad.
And
high fingerprints on a clock
ring
my alarm.
And
so I dropped my books,
right
there on the floor.
I
reached in my pocket,
pulled
out a pen,
quickly
colored the tips of fingers two and three
of
my right hand.
(Pointer
and Tall Man.)
Then
I started backing up a little,
to
get a running start.
I
didn’t even bother to look behind me,
just
kept my eyes fixed on those new smudges
on
that old clock.
Kids
all around me were stopping to see.
They
could tell what was up.
Some
of them started chanting:
“My-KULL!
My-KULL! My-KULL!”
I
hardly heard them.
When
I was far enough back,
I
started jogging,
like
a high-jumper
or
pole-vaulter
and
then I was sprinting.
The
faces of kids lining the walls
were
nothing but blurs as I blazed by.
And
then I left the ground,
soared
high,
maybe
higher than I ever did,
maybe
higher than any kid ever did in the whole history of clock-touching.
I
sort of saw you as you came out of the teachers’ lounge,
but
by then I was airborne,
and
I didn’t really care anyway.
Up
Up
Up
Up
Up
I
rose,
like
I had wings,
a
hummingbird, floating on air,
like
I was jumping on the surface of the moon.
I
sort of paused there a minute,
looking
the clock right in the face—
even
old friends look different up close, you know—
and
then I reached out—
gently,
gently—
and
touched the top of the twelve
with
my ink-blue fingers,
leaving
two perfect prints.
Then
drifted back to earth
and
you
and
this detention room.
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