Gibberish

“Gibber jabber babble gabble burble blah-blah twaddle drivel mumbo jumbo gobbledygook!” shouted the teacher standing before him at the front of the classroom.

“What?” replied the confused fifth grade boy.

“Blah-blah bilge bunk bull gabble bosh blather drivel gibber-gibber jabber mumbo jumbo gobbledygook!”

The increasingly bewildered boy considered asking for clarification again, but the reddening, angry look on the teacher`s face made him reconsider and sit there in silence. He looked around hopefully at the other students, but none of them would look up to meet his eyes. Unlike him, they were all dressed the same, in plain grey uniforms, and had the same short hair with the bangs cut straight.

“Bull warble bunk gibber jabber blather bosh twaddle tweedle gabble gurgle blah-blah bilge?” the teacher rambled on. “Burble bunk bull bilge?”

“Those sound like questions,” contemplated the boy. “But what on Earth does she mean?”

“Blather drivel babble bunk!” the teacher bellowed as she pointed to the door.

“What?” the boy asked again.

“Blather drivel babble bunk!”

“Wh_?” he started, but then figured another perceived insolent remark would only spawn further verbal abuse. He had no idea what the teacher was talking about or why she was so mad. She once again pointed to the door, this time with a much more insistent posture. Was she sending him out in the hall, or perhaps to the office? Maybe someone could explain things wherever he was being sent. Also, the sooner he was away from this irate teacher, the better.

He got up and headed for the door. He would wander the hallway until he found wherever it was he was supposed to be going. “Blather drivel babble bunk gobbledygook!” echoed the teacher`s voice as he walked into the hallway.

Wandering, unfortunately, proved more difficult than expected. He had never been in this building before. He was not even sure how he got here. The hall was long and narrow, with matte grey walls. As he walked past the doors of what he assumed were other classrooms, he noticed a lack of artwork, schoolwork, stellar test results, or any colours at all. There were class pictures of years gone by hanging on the walls; at least that seemed normal. But there was not one smile on any of the children`s faces in the photos. Not one. What kind of place was this? Here and there, there were words of some kind stenciled on the walls, but they made no sense to him.

About half-way down the hall, he came to a staircase, and there he paused. He looked back the way he had come and saw the angry teacher standing just outside the door, gesticulating downward with her finger. The finger seemed attached to some kind of stick, but, after all, was likely just her boney arm. He lifted his arm in a sign of confirmation, but she waited there, arms akimbo, until he began his descent.

The first floor was much as the second; all drab and dreary, with no evidence of joy or the presence of children anywhere. At the base of the stairs stood the doors to the outside world, all steel-grey, and forbidding, with that lined unbreakable glass. For a brief moment he pictured himself bursting through the doors and making a break for it across the yard, but an authoritative voice brought him out of his reverie.

“Bunk bosh babble gabble bull!” it squawked. When he looked toward the voice he saw a tall, thin man dressed completely in black. He had a long, gaunt face, unruly eyebrows, and a nose hooked like a bird. “Bunk bosh babble gabble bull!” the man repeated.

“What?” groaned the boy. “I don`t understand,” he ventured, hoping this scarecrow of a man would understand his language.

“Babble gabble bull,” the man said in a softer tone, while motioning the boy toward him with his long arm, skeletal hand, and warlock-like fingers. The boy sighed and walked cautiously to where the man was standing and stood before him. “Warble bunk,” said the man. When the boy did not respond, the man`s promisingly kind countenance dropped to one of great disappointment. The man then motioned the boy to follow him into a room, which appeared to be an office.

Once inside the office, the man tossed a set of grey clothes to the boy, saying “Blather blah-blah tweedle.”

The boy held out the clothes before him and saw a faded pair of grey pants and a long-sleeved grey shirt, with a brown patch where a front pocket might once have been. He then looked up questioningly at the man.

“Twaddle babble?” Blather blah-blah tweedle,” the man intoned.

The boy stood motionless, unsure of what to do. Was he supposed to change into these clothes right here in front of the man? The man gestured with a revolving hand for him to do something. He still stood motionless. He had never changed clothes in front of a stranger before, and he was waiting for the man to lead him to a change room, bathroom, somewhere with a little privacy.

The man yelled, “Gabble twaddle gobbledygook!” At this outcry a small woman dressed in a dark cape and hood burst in through a side door. Together with man, they grabbed the boy by the arms and began clawing at his clothes.

“Gibber jabber, gibber jabber!” they shouted in unison.

The boy resisted their efforts to undress him and was violently struck in the face by the woman. A stinging, burning sensation spread across his cheek. He was in complete shock. He had never been struck by an adult before. He stopped all resistance and his arms fell feebly to his sides. His eyes grew warm, and tears began to roll down his face uncontrollably. The man and woman continued undressing him until he stood there in nothing but his underpants and socks.

The next thing he knew, he was being pulled down the hallway by the little troll-like woman. They finally stopped at the end of the hall and went into a small room that smelled of ammonia and baby powder. In the room were two more women dressed in the same attire. They grabbed him and sat him down on a wooden stool that rocked noticeably on uneven legs.

Two of the ogres, as he now thought of these women, held him in place on the stool while the third picked up a hair clipper and began to shave his head. As much as he struggled, the two ogres were stronger than he was, and he had no choice but to sit on the stool and watch his beautiful hair fall in clumps to the annoyingly shiny floor. The tears continued to stream down his face.

“Warble tweedle burble,” they chimed. “Warble tweedle burble.”

When they were finished with his hair he looked at himself in the thin, dingy mirror that hung precisely at ninety degrees on the wall. He was aghast. They had given him a buzz cut so short that he could see his scalp and the contours of his head.

“Bosh bunk drivel bilge?” one of the ogres asked him. He would not have known what to say even if he had been able to speak their language. He just looked at her with an expression of extreme sadness and a growing sense of resignation. She smiled and said, “Blah-blah mumbo jumbo babble bosh bull.”

He was taken back to his classroom by one of the little ogres. This time the trip was somewhat gentler than the one to the barber room. He no longer had the will or the nerve to resist. The ogre left him at the entrance to the classroom and was gone.

The classroom teacher gave him a welcoming smile and said, “Gibber jabber twaddle bull,” while motioning him to the empty desk which he had recently occupied. He sat. He glanced around the room once again. Everyone sat there straight-backed and motionless, with dull, vacant looks on their faces. Nothing had changed, except that he was now one more body among their ranks.

The teacher droned on. He was no longer even attempting to comprehend what was being said. His mind drifted. The really odd thing was that he did not even remember coming to this school. How did he get here? Was he taken by someone? He could remember his whole life up until the moment he found himself in this class, but he could not remember a journey of any kind getting to this place. Had it been so traumatic that he had blocked it out?

“Gibber jabber,” he heard, and then “Gibber jabber!” more insistently. The teacher was now standing directly in front of his desk, glaring angrily down on him. “Gibber jabber!” she repeated. Only then did he realize she was talking to him.

“What?” he asked, exasperated.

The teacher bent down so that her face was only a few inches from his. “Now listen to me you dirty little brat, and listen well, because I am only going to say this once. If you ever speak that gibberish in this class again, I am going to slap you in the head so hard you will have to go across the room to collect your lips! Do you understand me now?”

The boy nodded his head methodically to indicate his grasp of what she had said. The teacher turned and walked back to the front of the classroom. As the teacher`s back was turned, a girl next to him made eye contact; and from that one, brief look he understood.

“Gibber jabber blather babble gabble drivel blah-blah mumbo jumbo gobbledygook.”