There is a huge fly buzzing in this room somewhere and I can’t find it. It’s not driving me crazy (it’s far too late for that) but it’s bothering me that I can’t pin it down and murder it in cold blood. It is VERY loud.

It reminds me of an instance years ago, when I was very young and had just started teaching 8th grade.

There was no air conditioner and a smallish classroom with no ventilation system, full of sweaty teenagers in close proximity, mixed with the odors of chalkdust and furniture polish and those weird beads the janitors throw on the floor and sweep up with the dust, really makes for a stench. We had opened the tiny little windows and I had brought in a square fan to blow the smells around.

The three kids (out of nearly forty) who had actually done their homework were sitting in front of the fan. It was a reward.

The flies were buzzing into our room from outside, in HORDES. It was disgusting. But it was worth having the flies, to have the windows open. Occasionally a little breeze came in with the flies.

The kids were also enjoying trying to catch them by the wings and throw them.

And most unbelievable of all, they were all quiet. This was no big deal; it was a fact of life in this building. Amazing.

But I was going nuts.

I kept hearing this incredibly loud buzz, right in front of me, but I couldn’t find it. I noticed the kids in the front row elbowing each other and giggling, but I didn’t associate that with the source of the buzzing.

Finally I saw it. The biggest fly I’d ever seen in my life, sort of hovering like a heliocopter, right in front of my desk. Hovering. In mid-air. Like a spider does, on its web-strings.

An immense fly. The buzzing sound was amazing.

I asked a boy in the front row to come up and swat it for me. (swatting flies for sissy teacher was a big treat.) He came up eagerly, with a rolled-up paper in his hand. (it was his test, but I was used to grading spotty papers.) He started to hit at it but stopped short. He looked closely at the huge thing, then back at the class, then at the fly again, and then at me.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

He seemed embarassed. This was unusual for him.

“Could I do this in about a minute?” he asked.

“Why wait?” said I. “Clobber it now! Before it flies away!”

“Well. . . . .” he didn’t seem to know how to say something.

“Well what?” said the stupid teacher with the poor eyesight.

“It’s just that I hate to interrupt such a tender moment.” he finally admitted.

I got up and walked up to the fly. Or, rather, as I saw on closer inspection, flies.

It wasn’t one big fly. It was two big flies. Mating.

Two absolutely huge flies, mating in midair, in front of my desk, in front of my class.

They were enthusiastic, too. That’s what all that buzzing was about.

The whole class burst out laughing. Including me. It was hilarious.

And when they were through mating, he bashed their horny little heads in with his test.

And then he turned the test in to me, and I graded it.

The gross spot covered two of his answers but I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

The end.