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turn their heads; flocks of crows fly out of the trees; the deer feasting in Sue’s garden bolt. They know something very bad is about to happen: an earthquake, a tornado, a tsunami. We humans miss the signs; we sit here until it is almost upon us but even we can hear this before we see it. Suddenly it appears. It makes the turn right onto our dirt road and heads straight at us. The concussion waves are so powerful dishes start to shake and the plaster rattles. It is a 2001 blue Chevy compact driven by Spike, the nineteen-year-old son of one of the neighbors. To call it a car is silly. It is a giant speaker on wheels.
    Spike’s head smacks the back of the headrest over and over as he drives past us. The only sound that escapes the car is a booty-shaking bass. What must it sound like inside that tiny car? The sound may be so powerful in such an enclosed space that his chromosomes may actually split apart, making it impossible for him to father children. So there could be an upside.
    We are eighty miles in any direction from what anyone could properly call a city. We live on a dead end road, there are only five houses on the road past ours, and the space is so vast you can’t see one house from the other. How could you possibly get more peace and quiet?
    By living on a NASCAR track, that’s how.
    Spike listens to gangsta rap. There are very few gangstas in our little town of twenty-five hundred people. There is the guy who got arrested for stealing the large capstones from old stone fences and using them to build a backyard patio. And there was the obstetrician who left his wife and ran off with a nurse. And Monday’s paper always lists a few DUI violations but I’m pretty sure that’s not the kind of crime that gives you the street cred that Lil Wayne and 50 Cent are rapping about.
    Besides, Sue and I know Spike; we know he’s not a problem kid. He calls me “Sir” and her “Ma’am.” He’s about as scary as a Muppet. You couldn’t meet a nicer, more polite young man.
    That’s why we feel so bad about wanting to have him killed. We have long discussions on our front porch about how to make it look like an accident. A gun seems so, well, traceable. Poison mushrooms, too imprecise. He may hate mushrooms and the rest of his family may like them. Tamper with his brakes? He might hit our house. Tie him up in the basement and make him watch The Sound of Music over and over? Please, we’re not that inhuman. Still, we watch CSI now hoping against hope to find a murder that even they can’t solve.
    He makes ten or twenty trips a day, spreading his musical message. He needs a job, that would solve his problem and ours. So we made a few phone calls. Today a new car made a trip up and down the road. It was the Army recruiter Sue called to give Spike’s name and address.

Is Our Children Learning?
    W elcome back, class. I hope you all completed your Spring Break reading assignments, Who Moved My Cheese and The South Beach Diet . We’ll be discussing those and the other classics during English Lit this semester. We’ll try to get through The Secret before the ten-day “Pre-Summer-Holiday Student-Stress-Relief Break” which starts in one week.
    There has been a change in the History curriculum: we’ll be studying the third season of Glee this year, not the second as it says in your printed class schedule. In the two weeks between the Pre-Summer Holiday and the April break we will be covering That 70s Show so if you haven’t been watching that, you’d better get started. There will be a quiz on the fashions of the ’70s as well as the decor.
    Those of you who had Mr. Grunion for remedial Tivoing last semester should know what he did on his Spring Break. I suppose the easiest way to explain it is that he’s Miss Grunion now, and in addition to Tivo, she will be coaching the girls’ softball team. Go Redheads! As you know, the Redheads had a dismal one-and-fourteen season last year and Miss Grunion thinks they’re