Chapter 39

39

The weeks came and went quickly for Abraham Lincoln Panim.

The end of the school year was nearing, and his class was getting more rambunctious and out of control by the day.

He did what he could with his class, but it was clear that they were not in the same learning mode that they were in right after he had lost his rat face.

But he persevered, did everything he was doing before when the class was listening to him, and he dutifully took each day as “a new day,” but the class continued to act up on him on a regular basis.

With just one more week of school, the class was acting even more out of control than they had been during the previous weeks. As he was trying to teach, the class was laughing while his back was turned, and as he turned around, he saw Melissa toss a ball of paper to the back of the class in the direction of another student.

“Melissa, this is not the gym. What did you throw back there?”

“Oh, nothing. It’s really nothing.”

“Mr. Abraham” went to the back of the class, and picked up the ball of paper, which had fallen short of its destination. He started to unroll the ball of paper.

“’Mr. Abraham,’” Melissa said in a giggling voice. “You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to.”

Abraham Lincoln Panim ignored what she said, and fully unrolled the ball of paper. In big block letters, he read it to himself:

‘HE’S GONE. HE’S GONE. WE DON’T HAVE TO LISTEN TO HIM ANYMORE. MR. RAT FACE IS GONE!”

“Mr. Abraham” looked up from the unrolled paper.

“What does this mean, Melissa? What do you mean ‘He’s gone?”

Melissa started to laugh out loud, and the class followed her lead, laughing until the bell rang for lunch. The students got up from their desks and ran out of the room, laughing all the way out.

Abraham Lincoln Panim stood where he was, pretty much not moving, and once again, he never received the answer he was looking for.

After a minute or two, when he looked back and forth at the unrolled paper, he rolled up the paper himself, threw it in the wastebasket, and hurriedly got his lunch and walked directly to the teachers’ room. He sat down in his usual spot, and ate his lunch, gulping it down faster than ever.

As he ate, he once again looked around for Mrs. Meyer, but she was nowhere to be found. Instead, he saw the usual group of teachers talking as they normally did. Among them was Mr. Sedall, who had not said a word to him since he lost his rat face all those many weeks ago.

Abraham Lincoln Panim finished his lunch in a flash, and then took out some more papers to grade. This time, Mr. Sedall broke away from the other group of teachers and sat next to him on the couch.

“Hey, ‘Mr. Abraham,’ bad break.”

Abraham Lincoln Panim looked up from his papers. “What do you mean, ‘bad break?’”

“Well, I thought you knew,” said Mr. Sedall, smiling and seemingly holding back a full laugh. As he did that, the group of teachers that had been talking together gathered around the couch, also with big smiles on their faces.

“You sure you didn’t know?” Mr. Sedall asked.

“Know what?” Abraham Lincoln Panim asked.

“I don’t know if it is my place to say this,” Mr. Sedall said.

“Say what?”

Well … Praeger is better, He isn’t sick anymore. And like I told you a long time ago, we wanted him back.”

“So, what does that mean?”

“You are gone, you are out of here, you are history when the school year ends in a few days,” Mr. Sedall said with a big smile on his face. “Praeger is coming back, and you are gone!”

The other teachers let out a big laugh as the bell rang to end the lunch break.

“What do you mean?” Abraham Lincoln Panim asked again and again, but Mr. Sedall and the other teachers filed out of the room, laughing all the way out.

Abraham Lincoln Panim sat there motionless. The bell for the afternoon period rang, but he was still sitting there. He finally realized that he had to get back to his class quickly, got his things together, and ran back to the locked door of the class.

He was met by Melissa and the other students.

“Hey, ‘Mr. Abraham.’” Melissa said. “Why are you running? Did a cat catch your rat face … err, your tongue?”

Abraham Lincoln Panim ignored what she said, and the class filed into the room, giggling and laughing from the moment they entered the room until they left school at the end of the day.

During the afternoon, very little work was done, and the students seemed to be in almost a festive mood. “Mr. Abraham” tried to teach them, but again, he was constantly thinking about what Mr. Sedall told him, and he had a hard time concentrating during the afternoon, which seemed to go on longer than it really did.

When the afternoon bell finally rang and the students left the classroom, Abraham Lincoln Panim was happy to see them all go, but he called over Melissa before she left the room.

“Who told you about me?” he asked her. “How did you know?”

Melissa was still giggling. “Look, I have to meet up with the other kids, I have to go.”

“Please, just answer me one thing and then you can go. How did you know?”

“About you losing your job?” she asked, as an even broader smile broke out on her face.

“Yes, please tell me.”

“Well, OK … I heard about it a few days ago from Mr. Sedall.”

“Why is Mr. Sedall telling things like this to you behind my back?”

“He’s my uncle. I see him all the time outside of school. He’s my uncle, my Uncle Joe. He told me, so I told all the kids—

“Listen, I have to go—“ and Melissa ran out of the room, giggling and laughing all the way out.

Abraham Lincoln Panim just sat at his desk, and continued to sit there as the janitor came in to tidy up the room.

“Anything wrong?” the janitor asked him, but he did not answer.

The janitor, sensing that something was wrong, came closer to the front desk where Abraham Lincoln Panim was sitting.

“Believe me, I know all about it,” the janitor said to him. “I have been doing this for 40 years at the school. You would not believe some of the things that the kids have said to me here.”

Abraham Lincoln Panim barely heard him, and the janitor saw that he was upset.

“Listen, I have seen it all and heard it all for the past 40 years, but let me tell you, I have said this one thing over and over to myself when things seem low, and it has helped.

“This is what I have said:

“Do unto others as you would have the do unto you … treat other people the way you would like to be treated yourself.”

Upon hearing that, Abraham Lincoln Panim abruptly looked up, but the janitor, who had been right at the desk when he uttered those words, was gone. He looked around the room, but the floors were still dirty, as if the janitor had never been there.

After looking out at the classroom, Abraham Lincoln Panim got his things together and left the room.