Balderdash

Addressing the class had never really been a chore for Roop - today was no exception. His hands where chalky and dry, his head was pounding relentlessly - but by-god he wanted to be there with the students. The night before found him tucked into bed with a cup of cocoa and listening to Sinatra on full blast. On this misty day in April, as he stood in front of the children, he searched for the missing piece of his jigsaw mind. He could neither confirm nor deny its point of origin or the fact that the piece was even missing. The only thing that he was certain of was that his cover had been blown somewhere along the way and that these kids were now fully on to his bullshit. The morning had started off normal enough – waking up with fuzzy Baxter sprawled out at the foot of the bed; there was no fried bacon smell wafting into his apartment from the next-door neighbor Manuel aka ‘the Frenchman’. It was no great mystery to everyone in Colfax Tower that Roop hated Manuel’s stinking guts. He despised the way the Frenchman walked and talked, his nonchalant ways and his long freshly buffed fingernails. The very same nails that Manuel would scratch upon Roop’s door with late at night. His pursed lips kissing the woodwork frame, mouthing Roop’s name between pecks. It would keep Roop up and fully gripped with terror for countless hours on end. However, here now in front of the class Roop was supposed to feel free – but Roop did not feel free. As a matter of fact he felt un-free or constrained by some unknown force that keep him feeling shackled and alone. He cleared his throat and began to address the class, "Let’s face the facts kids, we all wanted to have vampire teeth when we were young. It was just a matter of how many pairs we wanted and how much dough we had saved up to buy them with." That wasn't really what Roop was thinking about but that’s what came out. He looked at the confused faces of the children, the way that they sat there in complete wide eyed disbelief – a natural reaction to Roop’s bizarre proclamation. He fanned his face with an old copy of Newsweek and paced over to the window - briefly thinking about jumping out. Changing his mind he quickly spun around to face the class - and with a finger of certainty raised he said, "Tuesday is the best. You can never be on a higher level other than what Tuesday can provide you!" A surge of confidence overtook Roop. He felt like a supreme leader as he stood in front of the class. He imagined that these were his troops and that he was preparing them for a great battle in a war that deep down he knew they could never win. His senseless drivel canvassed a wide breadth of nonessential balderdash, that the once concerned students seemed now to be enjoying. Their initial shock had turned into a kind of sick form of entertainment – not unlike the way people like to watch reality TV stars come completely unglued. These kids were actually enjoying seeing their teacher fall to pieces before their very eyes. One student raised his hand in response to a question Roop put to the class concerning the dawn of man. Roop nodded as the boy asked, “Sir I was wondering if you could elaborate on your point concerning the enlightenment of mans senses... would you mind going into a bit more detail on what you meant when you said we are all made up of space dust?” Roop lowered his eyes and fired back at the young boy, “I said, if you were listening, that the sum of all things is based in a world of laws that do not govern over me. I am exempt from these ‘laws’ and you can be too. Because I firmly believe that we are all just galaxy dust. The leftovers if you will from a great cosmic bust-up that happened at the center of the universe eons ago. Therefore it is my great theory that we are the same space dust that was here when the first humans walked the earth - the same dust was floating through the air as when King Arthur pulled Excalibur from the stone.” The boy nodded and seemed to follow Roop’s line of thinking. Roop went on, “I said it because it’s true – and someday you will understand. You will see that any attempt at finding a ‘true path’ in life is essential yet futile. So next time you order a burger and a shake from the local diner, know that it is made up of the same cosmos dust which you and I are also made up of, therefore my theory is that you are basically just eating yourself – yes constantly breathing and eating yourself - and that your magical life is just an exercise in recycling - so to speak.”