Devonne Brown

Let the games begin. 0-6-32, I opened the lock on the magic cabinet with its characteristic “bump-boing” ; it always gets stuck at the bottom. I kept all the good stuff in there. Puzzles, prizes, my purse with the valium, everything. The amusement park of cabinets held it all.

Kids aren’t that excited about word games unless they’re on a computer screen all the time these days. Once in a while they like the opportunity to touch and move tiles and letters, and do less than computer skills.  Boggle, Scrabble, and my personal favorite Upwords were housed in that cabinet, and the kids’ eyes always got big if they thought they had to play with word games. I could see their little hearts beat every time I put an Upwords game out on a desk. 

Boggle‘s game pieces were encased in a plastic bubble, a perfect game for a class of boys. Nobody touched it.

Upwords and Scrabble were word games with free range letter tiles that made good projectiles. Definitely couldn’t play those in the third period. Jaxon and Malik would change Upwords to Upwarz and Scrabble to Scramble.

Those were the very games third period were bound to play. I passed out my good Upwords games to groups of good kids, they asked for it. Checkers to the rest, they asked for Uno cards. No one played Uno on Upwords day. It was a quiet thinking game day.

Some complained it wasn’t fair. Of course they did.

They weren’t about to get my 3-D action hero puzzles. It should work out fine. Tactile and kinesthetic learning experiences, “games and puzzles,” are good things. Kids take care of good things. Ha!

Jaxon grabbed a yard stick before I could shut the cabinet. Malik looked around the room with glassy eyes, overstimulated. He’d just wait for orders.

Little Jaxon became incensed as he wandered around the room hitting desks and chairs with the yardstick he’d grabbed out of the cabinet before I could close it. He could play these games, nobody wanted to play with him, not even Malik.

Jaxon was a little prick and he knew it, so he went into Ninja mode. Jaxon didn’t like to be disturbed in his Ninja moves. I rolled my eyes. It was always something. Yesterday it was Covid, today it was Ninjas. I preferred Covid, and started the write up. Maybe he’d get called to the office before the damage started.

“Look, you got a word,” I heard him say before the sound of a crashing board and a hundred plastic letter tiles hit the floor.

“Looks like you got one too!” Crash. Another board.

So much for game day.

Like magic, everyone picked up their pieces in silence, put them in the boxes, and brought them to me. I nodded my thanks and gave each kid a sticker of their choosing. I have ten thousand stickers, it’s the least I could do. 

The room was eerie, quiet. Usually, when someone does some stupid maneuver like this for his amusement, there’s lots of chaos, but not today. Jaxon’s amusement became his albatross. Everyone was sick of him and let him burn down the day. 

Shame flamed his face.

They saw me write him up, all we could do was wait and hope the admins had a special place for kids with ninja complexes.

“Jaxon, come to the office,” said the voice over the intercom.

The class cheered.

I would have, but that would have been unprofessional.

Anna saw my silent fist pump, grinned about it, but buttoned her lip so no one could see. I was her favorite teacher.

We let the games begin anew.