Detention

The grey sky stood over the city like an angry teacher assigned to detention. Thick arms of accumulating nimbus crossed themselves in front of me as I drove my car home. His voice purred, but it was the unpredictable, growling purr of a jaguar in the woods. The Grey was quietly asserting his power.

"I don't need to make you miserable," said the Grey. "I am satisfied with sullen weariness or numb solemnity. But if you provoke me - if you so much as smile - I will make you cry." As if to visually punctuate this thought, the Grey picked up a ruler and began to slap it against his open palm. Again. Again. The sound was distant thunder, to match the lightening  in his eyes.

I drove through town in silence.

Waiting at a red, I caught the eye of a girl in the next lane. She tipped her head to the ceiling, miming her subversive disapproval of the weather. I consented her opinion with the raising of one brow and the suggestion of the beginning of a comrade's grin.

I received my first warning in the form of a hailstone striking the windshield.
The chip was small, but noticeable in my field of vision.
I faced the front quickly.

The streets were a slurry of ice and sand and crumpled paper coffee cups. Traffic signals flicked green and yellow and red like the ticking of the classroom clock as it inches towards the end of day. I looked up from my dashboard in time to see an orange Volkswagen Beetle swimming through the slush in my direction. Without my permission, a memory flashed across my mind and jabbed at my sense of humour. At the last second I clamped my jaws around the laugh, cutting its potency from a burst of happiness to a pathetic sort of chortle, but the volume of mirth didn't matter much. The ruler came down hard against the roof of my car, commanding the vibrations to deafen my senses and abolish any amusement in my thoughts.

Then the rain came.
Strike two.

The trees wept and trembled as I passed them, like the kid in the front row who was refused a hall pass when he needed to pee. Grey stomped up and down the aisles called Centre and Main with billowing clouds like furrowing eyebrows and the ominous slap, snap, crack of thunder. Every tone of colour had fled the city streets, taking refuge from the storm in basement record studios and libraries and the country loft spaces where the artistic types tend to live. The whole world looked like it had been shaded over many times, with progressively darker and softer lead pencils.

The candle of hope in my head was struggling against the building wind; its little flame fought with every drop of water. "No fire in the classroom," said Grey as he quickly snuffed out what was left of my withering optimism.

Just as I thought the torrent was going to drown me out for good, as I watched Grey put down the ruler and pick up a yard stick, at the moment I thought, "Well, I'm done for! I'll be stuck in detention for the rest of my life!" and was about to let the tears fall right along with the rain, something happened.

There was a knock at the door.
Look to the east.

A thin shaft of light caught the sky by surprise. Where the sunbeam fell on the buildings, colours rushed back to their proper places. Rust-red brick, evergreen shutters, canary-yellow welcome mats, shimmering chrome towers of industry, the rich coffee-coloured small business signs, the royal blue of a school uniform: a sensational palate of texture and hue that blossomed with life as the classroom door was forced open wider and wider!

"Time's up," said this new bright spot of sky. "The bell is about to ring. Gather your stray thoughts and stack those negative emotions back on the shelf. Misery for another day. Detention is over. You're free."

The patch of glowing, streaming light exploded into a thousand rays of uncatchable brilliance. The Grey was dispelled and Light assumed authority's throne. I smiled broadly to the sun, picked up my attitude and drove down the highway in peace.

It was the end of day.
And the rainbow wins again.