Juvenile Seurat

And around the corner, outside the back door to the lunch room, the one no one used that much, that's where the gum wall was. A slab lining the walkway just outside the door, helping to support whatever classroom was above it. It didn't share the same brown and red mix of brick with the rest of the school. On top of that, caked and plastering it all, was a stucco of ancient gums. Mint and bubble and fruity and sugarless and with flavor and appeal long gone. Spat violently by dozens, hundreds, of tweens that passed through those three grades over the years. Each chewed-up stick added to the students' masterpiece, their own juvenile Seurat or Pollock.

Brandon was just one kid. One of the he-didn't-even-know-how-many who would spit at the wall. And almost every day! Maybe it was because they had never actually caught a student doing it, maybe it was because they didn't care, maybe it was because in their own little nostalgic way they actually liked it. Whatever the reason, the faculty did nothing about the wall, and the wall always remained. Until that penultimate recess when Brandon spit out his Big Red, and Mr. J. put his hand on his shoulder.

There is the notion of retributive justice, that a punishment should never be cruel or unusual, that it should fit the crime. It is something on which this country is based. But middle schools, sadly, are not countries. And when Brandon's class returned after summer vacation twelve weeks later to find that the wall was clean, that every scrap of gum was missing, he had to explain what his summer had really been like. Why he couldn't make all those sleepovers and trips to the beach. He had to explain about the chisels, and picks, and buckets, and the horrid stench of it all. He, not the administration, not any teacher, not Mr. J., had to explain to his friends that his hand was forced to destroy this thing that they, and so many others before them, had built. It was crude, it was grotesque, but it was theirs. And then it was gone.