This reminds me of a memory from my childhood. Walk with me, Fedi friends, back to November of 1982. I’m in the first grade of elementary school at Our Lady of Good Counsel. Our first grade teacher was this tiny little Polish woman who looked like a straight-up Mongol and, in spite of her diminutive stature, was every bit as frightening as one.
She had left the classroom as she sometimes did, presumably to go get something from the school office or run some kind of similar errand, and would be back after a minute or so. Understandably, you don’t leave a classroom of 25 six and seven year olds unattended for too long.
But this time was different. She was gone longer than she’d ever been gone before. Where she was, we had no idea. As the minutes ticked by, you could feel this electricity steadily building in the room. And then it just happened. It was as if we all at the exact same moment believed with our entire beings, that she was never coming back, ever in life. Total madness washed over all of us.
The classroom exploded with noise and chaos. Kids are screaming and laughing, throwing whatever they can find. The air is filled with a literal blizzard of paper wads, damn near blocking out visibility. Kids are running all over the room, climbing up counter to the window at the top of the wall that overlooked the hallway, making animal shouts at passersby. I was myself engaged in drag races against my class rivals, up and down the rows of desks, running atop the desks and jumping over the heads of the kids seated. Some kid even had a horn of some kind and was making loud blares with it.
At a couple points, other faculty being peeking their heads in the room in horror, probably drawn by all the ruckus.
It was arguably the most free I’ve ever felt in my entire life. It must be what it feels like to be in a prison riot.
Anyway, our teacher eventually did return and we were all banned from recess for a full week. But what a time those several minutes were.
That comment, about how it’s like no one is running our country until inauguration day, immediately brought back that fond memory. If only it could be like that here and now. :cooldoggo :