Over the Gymnasium Floor

Viola loved to play basketball, liked figuring angle and distance to the goal, liked floating through the air, liked feeling the ball perched on her outstretched hand, liked falling back down to the clean gymnasium floor.

Ricky the janitor liked opera, a sound bigger than gymnasium walls, liked to sing along with his jam box, as he muscled a dust mop from one goal to another over the unswept gymnasium floor.

Viola believed basketball grander, more graceful, than anything she could imagine until she heard Ricky belt out "Figaro," the notes rising higher than she had ever gone, floating gracefully to the clean gymnasium floor. She would anchor the basketball on her hip, listen to Ricky crescendo and diminuendo, lifting her past the rims, and gently bring her down when the last note bounced off the clean gymnasium floor.

Viola shot basketballs and Ricky pushed brooms to the sound of operas until one day, they marched to the strings of Mendelssohn and came together under the basketball goal, their feet barely touching the clean gymnasium floor.

This little ditty came to me when I was in college. I sat in the bleachers and watched as a janitor pushed a broom over the gymnasium floor, opera sounds shooting out from his boombox and echoing throughout the building. A young, high school girl practiced her shooting, stopping occasionally to watch the janitor. It was a bizarre scene that has stayed with me all these years. I thought I would share.