matching tracksuits

“They actually kind of make me dizzy.”

It wasn’t what I was expecting when  I asked Ms. Butler about how things were going in her newly-podded classroom with each student seated in a little box of plexiglass. Perhaps I was expecting something more like, “It’s even more difficult to hear students,” or “It’s weird seeing students through so many layers of plexiglass,” or even, “It’s just weird.” But not dizziness.

“What do you mean,” I asked.

“Well, with all these panels of reflective plastic,” she began, feeling her way through the explanation carefully as if she hadn’t really hadn’t tried to put it into words before. “There’s just all these weird reflections that shift and move as you move around the room.”

“That sounds awful.” I get dizzy easily, and it had me a little concerned about how I might react to it myself.

When I got into the classroom this morning and started placing name tags on everyone’s seat, I saw immediately what she meant. The clear plexiglass that divides students into little almost-self-contained cubes reflected images from around the room. These reflections were, in turn, reflected off the black plexiglass bases on which the whole dividers sat, and the play between these reflections and reflections of reflections had me feeling a little woozy within seconds. It was as if everything were somehow in the matrix film, with solid reality turning into liquid, flowing reflections of reality. What’s worse, the whole broad clear barriers reflected again their own reflections from the black bases and also refracted the images of other tables so that we had reflections of reflections of reflections, all moving and shimmering at different speeds and frequencies.

I felt like I was in a hall of mirrors, a corridor of reflections that caved in on themselves, like waves riding on waves that then crash into other ripples, transforming all of reality into a dancing mirage, a dizzying visual cacophony.

“Dear God, what if it’s always like this?”

As I walked around the room affixing the place holders to their right locations, I realized it wasn’t an issue if I didn’t pay attention to it or even think about it. Like baffles in a large gas tank, I thought that perhaps having people in those seats might draw more attention than the reflections themselves.

As the first period with students began, I apologized for some of the changes the new format necessitates -- no real...

Written in creative nonfiction class as students worked on their own accounts of the first days in the new pods.