Poor Little
A stifled sniffle comes from the middle of the classroom. The room is filled with more than twenty boys all wearing bleach-white polos and black slacks. Every single boy turns their heads toward the sound expectantly. The sniffle is the beginning of the end for a particular boy, and that boy is named Poor Little Jimmy.
“Why are you crying?” Mr. Reagan hollers at Poor Little Jimmy from his podium in the front of the classroom. Poor Little Jimmy continues to smother his sniffling as Mr. Reagan marches toward the small child. Poor Little Jimmy cowers behind his desk, which is easy because of his small stature. The child wraps his arms around his shaking knees and tucks them close to his chest. Mr. Reagan stomps down the row of desks and stops directly in front of the sad child.
“Why are you crying?” He asks calmly this time.
“I’m n-not cr-crying,” Poor Little Jimmy stammers between gasps.
“You’re disrupting my class, Poor Little Jimmy.” Mr. Reagan kneels down to lock eyes with the scared and small child. “I don’t like disruptions or the troublemakers that cause them.”
Poor Little Jimmy’s eyes dart away from the instructor. He looks toward his classmates who all share the same smirk and stare at the scene before them with delight.
As you might have gathered, this child is not popular amongst his fellow classmates. He’s not liked. He is, in fact, hated by everyone in the classroom. The classroom is their collective world and it is all they know. The collective world hates Poor Little Jimmy. You might even hate him, too, and no one would blame you.
Poor Little Jimmy sees the excitement and hatred in his classmates’ eyes. He has been holding back his tears admirably, but he can’t any longer. The crying is piercing. Some of the boys cover their ears, but some breathe in the distraught noises. A small few become aroused at the mere sight of Poor Little Jimmy’s comically large tears as they roll down his red cheeks one after an- other. The aroused boys grip their wooden desks tight and press their pelvises against the bottom of the desk to suppress their erections. They slam their feet into the ground to stop themselves from leaping out of their plastic chairs and licking the tears and sadness off of him. They thirst for this and for what is to come.
“Can you tell me why you are crying?” Mr. Reagan asks Poor Little Jimmy. The boys be- come rowdier. The ones who reside on the far sides of the classroom begin to climb to the tops of their desks so they have a better view of the show.
“I-I’m s-s-sa-sad,” Poor Little Jimmy finally gets the words out. The classroom erupts into joyous laughter. The boys begin to pound on their desks. Poor Little Jimmy covers his face to the delight of the rest of the boys.
“You’re sad, Poor Little Jimmy, but your classmates seem so happy. Why can’t you just laugh along with them?” Mr. Reagan places his hand on the top of the small boy’s head gripping his dirty blonde hair.
Why is Poor Little Jimmy crying? His name was given to him by his world, so in a way it was always his name and will always be his name. But why is he crying? Poor Little Jimmy is crying because this is all he knows, and he will never know anything else. This is his life. This is his world. There is nothing outside of this classroom for these boys.
Poor Little Jimmy swings his head around trying to release the grip of his teacher. He’s been ridiculed before, laughed at, called names, but this is the first time anyone has put their hands on him. Poor Little Jimmy starts to cry more desperately as he begins to panic.
“Just give me a laugh and we’ll get back to the lesson,” Mr. Reagan tells the boy. He tightens his grip on his hair.
Poor Little Jimmy lets out a few gasps as he tries to collect himself. The boys begin to quiet down and they all sit back down in their seats. The room becomes silent around Poor Little Jimmy. The small boy sits up slowly in his desk.
“Just a little laugh, a little chuckle,” Mr. Reagan encourages him.
Poor Little Jimmy looks at his teacher and lets out three pathetic chuckles. The child retreats back into his desk and keeps his eyes glued to the floor. The silence is so heavy they can hear the clock on the doorway click through the seconds. Everyone waits for Mr. Reagan.
Mr. Reagan has a decision to make at this moment. Does he leave the poor, little child alone and go back to teaching? Does he continue to make fun of the child? Does his decision even matter? These are blood-thirsty, aroused, angry, hateful boys that want nothing more than for Poor Little Jimmy’s humiliation to continue. These boys could take it upon themselves to hurt the small boy. However, if Mr. Reagan gives the child mercy then maybe the boys might also. All these are possibilities, but I feel like you know it’s only going to get worse.
“That was a poor, little laugh,” Mr. Reagan says with a mocking chuckle. The class responds with a bout of laughter of their own.
The calm is gone.
Mr. Reagan laughs hysterically. He slams his hand down on the desk three times as he attempts to catch his breath. Each slam of his hand makes Poor Little Jimmy jump back in fear. He grabs the back of Poor Little Jimmy’s head once more and laughs directly into his face. The spittle and hot air of his breath engulf Poor Little Jimmy.
The boys are animals now. They pound on the desks with their fists as they hop up and down in their seats. Their fists begin to bleed and bruise. Either they are on top of the desks look- ing down on the poor child or squatting next to his desk on the ground looking up to him. They spit on the child. Some begin to play-wrestle amongst the madness. They inch closer as each moment passes.
Poor Little Jimmy resembles a rag doll as he is ripped back and forth by Mr. Reagan. His hair stretches out from his skull and his neck looks like its made of rubber. Mr. Reagan pulls his head back so the child’s face is pointed at the ceiling. Mr. Reagan grips the hair again and pulls it with all his strength back down toward the desk. Poor Little Jimmy’s face slams into the wooden desk and Mr. Reagan falls to the ground. Mr. Reagan looks at his hand to find he is still holding the poor boy’s hair along with a chunk of his scalp.
A look of horror appears on the teacher’s face. He throws the scalp to his side where one of the boys catches it with his mouth. Mr. Reagan collects himself and rises. He turns his back on the bloodied child as the pack of wild boys are moving in closer. Mr. Reagan walks back to the front of the classroom, takes a seat at his desk, and picks up a book. There is nothing more for him to do.
The boy who has the scalp in his mouth is tackled by another boy. They each bite down on the scalp and pull against the other like dogs fighting over a chew-toy. The original scalp biter tugs it away from the other boy and takes it to the corner to play with.
The boys surround Poor Little Jimmy completely. The child is still dazed from the hit to the face and can barely lift his head to look at the pack. He cries softly, a cry of a wounded puppy, as the largest boy of the group moves to stand directly in front of the desk. He puts both hands around the small head of the child and lifts it off the desk. Poor Little Jimmy’s head looks like a red dodgeball in the large boy’s hands.
The large boy keeps the head raised and examines his peers. They all bark and screech. The large boy smiles as the pack becomes restless. The scalp biter has spit out his toy and left it under one of the back corner desks for later. The large boy decides he’s waited long enough. He takes Poor Little Jimmy’s head and slams it down onto the desk. He grunts loudly as he does it. He picks it up again and slams it again. He slams Poor Little Jimmy’s head over and over again. Each time the sound of his head hitting the desk becomes duller as his small head deflates.
The large boy is done. He backs up from the body and allows the rest of the boys to poke at the corpse. They soon become bored. The large boy grunts at a few of the boys to his side.
They rip the small boy from his desk. Behind the desks are a row of lockers. A boy in the back of the classroom opens up one of them and the boys that carry Poor Little Jimmy stuff him into the locker.
The boys are quiet once more as they return to their respective desks. Some of the boys begin to wipe the blood from their hands onto their black slacks, but ignore the blood stains on their white shirts. The scalp biter kicks the piece of scalp he had been playing with into the corner. They all direct their attention to their teacher except for one boy who can’t remove his eyes from the desk where Poor Little Jimmy sat.
“Now, where were we?” Mr. Reagan asks rhetorically while putting his book down on his desk. He stands up to his podium.
The staring boy still keeps his eyes on the bloody desk. He quietly begins to weep at the scene. He doesn’t understand why he is crying when no one else is, but he can’t control it. He looks at his shirt where the trickles of blood of his classmate seem to be growing. He cries louder and rips his shirt off.
“Oh, now, who is making all that fuss back there?” Mr. Reagan asks from his podium. The staring boy throws his shirt onto the ground and cries into his blood-stained hands.
Mr. Reagan walks back down the aisle to the boy. He stops in front of the staring boy and waits for him to look up.
“Tommy, why are you crying?” Mr. Reagan asks the child.
Tommy looks up slowly at the teacher. Tears stream down his face that is now red from the blood on his hands. Snot begins to spill from his nose. He wipes at the snot and looks at his palms after. The sight of his red palms makes him cry harder.
“Oh, you poor, little boy,” Mr. Reagan puts his hand on the boy’s dark black hair. He looks around the classroom at the bloodied boys with a smirk on his face. “What are we going to do with you, Poor Little Tommy?”
Benjamin Peachey is a graduate from Columbia College Chicago with a double major in Creative Writing and Contemporary, Urban, and Pop Music. Currently, Benjamin is pursing his Masters of Education at DePaul University while serving as a Resident Teacher in the Chicago Public School system. As he continues his career in education, he hopes to bring his passion for the arts to his own classroom.