"...you'll turn that dirty old ground into a great new life, like our mushrooms."

“Did you have a question, Emily?” Of course, she has a question.

“Mr. Brooks, can you explain what this experiment is supposed to teach us about science?” Emily was the kind of seventh grader who took notes on everything. She waited anxiously for my answer with her pencil resting under the word ‘Goal’ on a blank sheet of paper.

“Sure.” I took off my glasses, rubbed my eyes, and stepped in front of the projector screen.

“And is there going to be a test?” Julien interrupted from the back of the class, clueless and disruptive, as always.

“We’re going to grow mushrooms. So, to answer your question, Emily, we’re going to learn about the different parts of mushrooms, the conditions under which they grow, and the role they play in ecosystems. That’s science.”

“Hmmm,” she said, unconvinced, looking down at her blank paper. “But our next section in the textbook is supposed to be about the scientific method.”

“Yeah, well, textbooks are schools’ way of making sure you don’t enjoy what you learn anyway.”

“But I read the textbook,” Emily said.

“I’m sure you do,” I said with a smirk. “But you can put it away.”

Julien gave a quick “woohoo, no test!” from the back and slammed his book shut.

I could tell the class was a little surprised at how miserable I looked. My eyes felt like sad drapes from a deserted house, and my five o’clock shadow made me look like I had been in an asylum against my will. Rogue strands of my short, curly hair stuck out at random around my head and ears, but I didn’t care.

“Another thing you should know is that these aren’t just any mushrooms. College kids and phony spiritual healers call them magic mushrooms. They have a chemical in them called psilocybin, which makes you hallucinate when you eat them.” Julien eyes grew big—I could tell he was paying attention for the first time this year. “We’re going to grow them, and then I’m going to sell them because they’re worth a lot of money. So, if it helps, it’s a lesson in science and economics. And it’s really important that if anyone, either in school or out, asks about what you are doing, you don’t tell them. Just say you’re learning about the environment.”

The class was silent, expecting me to back out and rethink my decision. Fat chance. “Ok, Darius, can you come up and grab the bin here so we can prepare the compost? We’re going to go over the different parts of the mushroom, then plant our spawn. Once they’re planted, we sit back and watch them grow, which will take about a month.”

“And they just pop up out of nowhere?” Julien said.

“Not out of nowhere, they grow because of their environment, and their environment grows because of them.”

The class thought about what I said. I noticed Emily in the front row writing, “Because of the environment,” then I turned around to get the Ziploc bag of mushroom spawn off my desk.

***

A month before I kicked off the experiment with my class, my wife Casey left me. We had only been married a year when I came home from getting club soda and bread at the store on New Year’s Day. She was holding a glass of wine, standing beside her champagne-colored rolling luggage bag, and biting her lower lip. “Well, Marshall. You just aren’t…you aren’t ambitious enough,” she said as if she was describing a regrettable liver condition. She told me that one of her New Year’s goals was to be more comfortable—comfortable meant rich. She patted me on the shoulder, worried that too much affection might give me the wrong idea, and then told me I had until the summer to move out of our house. Since that day, I’ve felt like I imagine most men in my position do—ashamed and alone. I wished I was charismatic enough to go out and fill the void with sex. I’m also furious at her for letting us waste our twenties (and all my money) on a relationship she obviously felt was wrong from the beginning.

“Ok, everyone, today we’re going to check on our mushrooms and talk about their role in ecosystems,” I told the class. A diagram of the water cycle hung behind me on the blackboard. A poster pinned to the back wall had the word “Science” written in letters made from the periodic table. My voice hung low as I spoke. My depression had turned into a newfound nihilism—luckily, they couldn’t feel my hangover.

“What is a substrate again?” Julien asked, kicking off the lesson for me.

“That is the soil where the mushrooms grow. They need a nutrient source just like we do.” I turned around and picked up a small leaf-shaped Rye Berry on my desk to hold it up. “Does everyone remember this?”

“Uh huh,” Emily said. “It’s what we planted a couple of weeks ago. It’s the mushroom spawn.” Emily sat up a little straighter, confident that this was the correct answer.

“That’s right. If you all remember, these little grains were injected with mushroom spores so the mushroom could spawn and colonize. Then we added the colonized…does anyone remember the word?”

“Myclum?” Jackson, a reserved boy whose voice cracked when he spoke, said.

“Mycelium, right? Remember all the little white threads we saw when we put it in the compost? Pretty cool. Why doesn’t everyone grab their notebook and gather around our garden tub up front? We’re going to document our observations like good scientists.”

I unzipped the indoor growing station I bought from the hardware store. Inside were two clear tubs of compost with at least fifty different mushrooms sticking out—some just a quarter of an inch, some closer to three—above the dark bottom layer. The caps were burnt orange and brown with thin stems—like tiny umbrellas for a caterpillar.

“If you look closely, there is a caterpillar with a hookah underneath,” I said dryly.

No one laughed. The kids in the back stood on their toes to see while the whole class leaned in. There was a chorus of “ahhhs.”

“I thought plants needed sunlight,” Jackson said.

“Not the case with mushrooms. They like the dark. They are kind of like the friend that does nothing but hang out in his parents’ dark basement, eating Cheetos and playing video games. Then, one day, he comes out and starts a biotech company.”

“Cool,” Julien said, no doubt because of the reference to video games.

Emily stepped forward first, touching the top of one of the mushrooms to see if it was real, while Jamie looked over her shoulder. The class took turns checking them out from the front of the rough circle. I checked to make sure the piece of blue construction paper was still covering the window into my room so my principal could not peek in.

“Get a good look. Notice all the tiny white hairs that have grown in the compost. The mushrooms above the ground are only one part of the fungus. They are the fruit.”

“I don’t like the word fungus,” Emily said. Julien and Darius laughed in the back.

“Mungus!” Darius yelled, and the class all chuckled.

“Alright, everyone, quiet down. Does anyone know why mushrooms, actually fungi, are so important to ecosystems?”

Emily looked at Jamie, but neither knew, so they stayed silent. I beamed with mischievous pride—a genuine teaching moment. Too bad I had stopped caring about my job.

“They are a part of a class of living things called decomposers. The decomposers don’t typically get much attention—you’ll never see them at a zoo or on a postcard—but they’re vital to life on Earth. Does anyone know why?”

“Sounds like a band.” Julien half-yelled from the back, clueless but sometimes endearing.

“Sure, nice observation, Julien. They aren’t a grunge band, though. Anyone else want to venture a guess?”

“They take stuff apart?” Emily said, looking up at me from the front row.

“Kind of. Decomposers, like our fungi, find dead material like leaves, plants, old trees, or even animals, and they recycle all the matter those things have into nutrients for other plants. The other plants suck up the nutrients through their roots, like a milkshake.”

The class looked at me with blank stares. Outside, a whistle from a gym class blew.

“They take something that has died and help create a new life.” Suddenly, I was struck by the thought of my recently dissolved marriage. I got distracted by kids yelling for the soccer ball outside.

“I don’t understand,” Emily’s hand went up.

I explained further, going into detail about what nutrients fungi usually provide. Then, I gave them examples of how many fungi there are on the Earth. The class could tell it was a rare moment of excitement for me in the middle of what had been a string of apathetic lectures lately. What surprised me most about the conversation was that the kids were the ones who made the connection between fungi and humans’ knack for reinvention—I didn’t prompt them at all. It was Jackson who spoke up and said, “Huh, kind of like people,” after I commented that nothing really dies because of fungi when you think about it. They all loved it—their eyes were as wide as dinner plates. Emily even knelt and tried to peer up on the mushrooms from below the tub. The willingness to be amazed is such an admirable quality; adults really should look into it.

***

One day, I got an email from Casey with a subject line that read, “Just letting you know…”.

Before reading it, I walked to the kitchen to get an old Coors light out of the fridge that now held only condiments. There wasn’t much furniture left in the house except for my old college recliner with a hole in the arm and my hand-me-down desk, which had ornate wooden legs like something from Victorian England. I cracked the beer, took a long gulp, and sat at my monitor to read.

“You’re going to find out eventually,” it started. “…so I figured I might as well tell you. I moved in with Owen. Don’t tell any of my friends. Not like you talk to them anyway. But things are just so easy, you know. It’s nice not having the drama we always had—me always on your case about going back to school. Anyway, now you know. Oh, that feels so much better. By the way, this doesn’t mean I don’t still want you out of the house. Please don’t take it the wrong way.”

Owen was a rich, entitled, blowhard acquaintance from high school who lived nearby. He worked part-time as a Tennis instructor, living off his parents’ money, because he wasn’t sure he had found the career fit—what an asshole. How could I take it the wrong way?

Back in class, it was time to harvest.

“Alright, everyone, it’s a big day. Today, we harvest our first batch of mushrooms.” I said, bringing my lanky arms together with a clap. The class could tell that my excitement was a poor attempt to convince myself I wasn’t depressed, but I pressed on undeterred.

I looked the room over. Jackson sat at a desk on the side of the class, drawing mushroom sketches in his spiral notebook with his head down. Emily rubbed her hands together in anticipation—it made me laugh that she was excited about something illegal.

“What are we going to do after we harvest?” Julien said from the back.

“We’re going to dry them with this industrial fan over here that I borrowed from the school.” I held out my hand to show an old metal clunker to my left. “Then we’re going to package them up in Ziploc bags.”

“So, what do these things do again if you eat them?” Jamie asked.

“Well, it depends on how much you eat. For some people, it makes them hallucinate—that means to see things that aren’t really there.”

“Whoaa,” Jackson said, looking up from his drawing.

“Like, could I hallucinate Alicia Silverstone naked?” Darius yelled.

“Eeeewwww!” Jamie screeched.

I ignored the comment, then waved my hand to tell everyone to get out of their seats and come up to our bin. I walked back to my desk to get the tiny scissors.

“Who wants to do the honors?” I held them up for everyone to see.

Emily took a step forward, and I handed them down. The kids all huddled around her as she walked up to the tub. I lifted the plastic lid as she peeked in—it was covered with our little seventh-grade experiment in subversion. Emily looked to me for direction.

“All you have to do is snip the mushroom at the stem, right above the compost. Then take it out and put it on the drying rack over here. Don’t worry everyone, you’ll all get a chance to do it.”

One by one, they took turns while I watched with the satisfaction of sharing something authentic—way better than memorizing the scientific method.

A moment later, my principal poked his head into my room. I jumped when I turned around to look at the partially open door.

“Marshall, a word, please. In my office,” he said with his eyebrows raised.

“Uh, yeah, sure.” My palms began to sweat. “Just go ahead and read the next chapter, everyone.” They laughed, not even bothering to leave the circle around the growing station.

I arrived at the frosted glass door that led to my principal’s office, which read “Franklin’ Frankie’ Thornbloom, Principal” on the front—no one called him Frankie.

“Come on in Marshall. How are you today?” he said, reclining in his tall leather chair as I stepped in slowly.

“I’ve been better.” I sat down, preparing to recite all the content from the standard seventh-grade science curriculum I was teaching.

“Well, everyone has bad days,” Frank said dismissively. “Look, it has come to my attention that you are teaching some sort of experiment that isn’t in the curriculum?”

“It’s a science class, Frank. Experiments are pretty standard,” I said, hoping a short answer and a bit of bluster would scare him off.

“Huh,” he said as if pondering if my statement had merit. “Yeah, well, it shouldn’t be interesting or fun or anything like that. Teachers always think they can outsmart the system and make learning fun. Just make the little maniacs learn so they can take their tests.”

I hated this guy. “I will, don’t worry.”
He looked at me and thought for an awkward moment in silence. I straightened my short-sleeved, plaid, collared shirt and readjusted myself in my chair. He was trying to decide if he could trust me.

“I’ve got it, Frank. Don’t worry about it.” I said, surprising myself at how confident I sounded.

“Well…if I found out you were doing something like going off and teaching them how to grow pot, I would have to come down on you. I can’t have that on my school’s record. Even though you seem like an ok teacher.”

“Of course. Nothing like that.” I said, nodding in complete agreement. I looked at him as he sized me up. He tapped his Bic against the table, looking at a sheet of paper with a list of the recommended seventh-grade science topics. I understood then how this would end and why it was necessary. Difficulties give us the nudge we need to rethink our lives, which is what I had to do, even if it meant starting over.

“Says here they should be learning about the scientific method. Then atoms and molecules?”

“We will, Frank. Can I go now?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Walking back to my class, through the halls with spirit day flyers, I had a strange expression. It came from that self-destructive impulse that makes you want to jump off a ledge that you know is just a little too high to be safe. I also just wanted to prove to myself I could be interesting.

***

Casey and I met at a party in college. I loved her laugh; that was what did it. When she heard a joke, she would blurt out an awkward, ‘Ha!’. You could never tell if she was making fun of you or laughing sincerely. I hadn’t heard that laugh since college, though. We got out, and both got jobs: she opted for a high-powered finance role working fifteen-hour days, and I chose to be a middle-school science teacher. She lost the ability to see past the self-inflicted, masochistic pressures of adult life—the constant nagging voice telling you need a bigger house, a new car, and a professionally manicured yard to be happy. I wonder if Casey’s child will have that laugh. That would be great; the world needs it.

Weeks after the harvest, I was eating my cold pasta from a Tupperware in the faculty break room when I heard whistles and hollers from the hall. Our gym teacher, Ben Stickler, went out first. I didn’t think much of it because he was always first to try and keep the kids in line, so I kept chatting with our music teacher, Melissa Grey, about how they needed a Tuba player for their recital. Then we both heard a loud crack, like a door had been busted down, and our heads whipped toward the door.

We left our meals and walked out to the locker commons. The locker commons had an open space in the middle, with rows of lockers forming the perimeter. There was a barricade in the middle where the lockers stopped. Desks had been piled high on top of one another to give the kids in the center a space where no one could get to them. They were playing electronic music really loud from a portable speaker and dancing. Mr. Stickler was trying to remove the desks and chairs to extract the kids.

This wasn’t even the most surprising thing I saw. As I looked across the commons, I noticed all the kids wandering around without any real direction. Some were lying in the middle of the floor. Jason Lewis and Dave McCaferty had removed their shirts and climbed the steel supports over the lockers like they were on a playground. Jess Burndon, a cerebral girl who usually walked around with her face in a fantasy novel, was sitting, legs crossed in the middle of the hall, tearing pages out of a textbook and making paper airplanes. I watched two girls with a lighter start a campfire with branches they had found outside, which triggered the sprinklers. A group of eighth graders led by Chad Middlebrow were encouraging another boy to rub icy hot on his penis.

The whole school had eaten our mushrooms. Ben ran up to me and frantically asked if I was going to help. I didn’t respond. All I could do was watch in awe as the chaos unfolded. After a moment, I strolled down the hall toward my room to find the evidence I needed. I passed a group of theater students in a circle singing an almost unrecognizable version of Phantom of the Opera while sprinkler water drizzled down on them. I got to my door and confirmed that the Ziploc bags were empty. It had to have been Julien and Darius.

I took my time packing the belongings I wanted to keep from my desk: an old science fair pin from college, a book with frayed edges that described the human-like behavior of animals, and a few holiday cards the kids had given me. I returned to the commons and pulled up a chair to watch. Then, I heard a voice on the loudspeaker.

“Hello, Elmwood Middle School.” The voice said, hesitant but excited. It was Emily from my class. I could hear a giggle behind her.

“We’re here with the afternoon announcements,” the other voice said, obviously waiting for Emily to take over. It was Jamie.

It was them. I shook my head in disbelief.

Emily jumped back on. “We locked the door to the office, so while Principal Thornbloom is having an aneurysm trying to find the key, we have something we want to say.” The loudspeaker gave off the high-pitched squeal that happens when you hold the microphone too close to the receiver, and the students wandering the halls looked up.

“Our teacher, Mr. Brooks, he’s not a bad guy.” Emily started.

“Not bad at all,” Jamie chimed in, the Ed McMahon to Emily’s Johnny Carson.

“Earlier this year, someone hurt him. Then he started coming into class tired, like he didn’t care anymore. You can tell when a teacher doesn’t care—it’s kind of sad, right Jame?”

“Oh yeah, like all the time.”
“Right, he stopped teaching from our textbook, and we started this experiment.”

I hung my head, expecting to hear next how irresponsible I was—how no real teacher would have his class produce drugs and how much material they had missed as a result. Emily paused her speech for a moment to let me think about it.

“It was awesome. We learned so much.”

I perked my head up and smiled wide with pride as the sprinkler water rained down on me.

“So much,” Jamie added.

“But mostly, what we learned was how little school teaches you about things that matter a lot. Like, let’s say you have a best friend. Don’t worry, Jamie, I’m not talking about you.”

“Oh good, haha.”

“Let’s say you have this best friend. You’ve known her all your life. You’ve slept over at her house, played soccer together, talked about boys, all that stuff. Then, one day, you overhear her insulting you to some other, cooler friends. She said you were lame and that she wouldn’t even let you borrow her shirt if you were freezing. This is when you go into the vortex…”

I couldn’t believe I was hearing this. These girls didn’t even want to miss class to go to the bathroom. It felt like she was talking only to me, although I could feel other teachers around me listening. Frank banged on the door in the background, trying to get them to stop.

“You go into a vortex where you can’t see. You can’t see that sometimes bad things can be good because you’re just so mad and sad. But they can. Because you aren’t hanging out with your friend anymore, you learn to play the guitar, and it becomes your lifelong passion. You find something you couldn’t imagine living without. All because your friend insulted you. That’s what’s going to happen to you, Mr. Brooks—you’ll turn that old dirty ground into a great new life, like our mushrooms.”

“That’s what we’re saying,” Jamie said, a bit confused at Emily’s point.

“When did anyone learn any of that from algebra? Oh, here comes Mr. Thornbloom. He finally found the key.” The girls’ voices trailed off.

I was almost in tears. I stood up, looked around, and saw the school was still in chaos. Julien rode by me on a skateboard in his underwear and yelled, “I didn’t do this, Mr. Brooks.” Giggles and loud belly laughs were everywhere.

I walked out to the front of the school and looked up at the overcast spring day.The girls were right:reinvention is our superpower; I should put it to use.I slung my backpack over my shoulder, like a student coming from his last day, and began walking home.I wanted the time to think, explore, and give myself permission to dream up something different for my life since I no longer had a job, a partner, or a place to live.