The test was halfway through. It was time for lunch. The kids had slipped their answer sheets into the test booklets and given them to the teacher who stacked them on a table at the front of the classroom.
She was about to pass out their lunches when I walked in. I was her lunch relief. She was free to go. I passed out the sack lunches from the cafeteria: a sandwich, a baggie of carrots, an apple, and chocolate milk.
When they have lunch during standardized tests, they are absolutely not allowed to talk. Thirty minutes of silence. With lunch distributed, all I had to do was keep them quiet.
There was a girl in the middle of the room who was reading a book. She wasn’t going to be a problem. And there were several whose heads were down and others staring blankly into space. No problem with them, either. But there were four boys in the far corner who were already chatting.
“Guys,” I said in a low voice. “No talking.”
Thirty seconds later, they were whispering.
“Guys.”
After the third time I got up and walked over. I tapped on one of the desks. “Come on guys, that’s enough.”
And it was. Until they opened the baggies of carrots in their lunches.
Pop! One of them bit a carrot and it made a resonating sound.
About 30 seconds later. Pop! Another carrot. The resonant tone was different, and it came from a different part of the room.
Pop!
Pip! Pep!
Pip! Pep! Pop!
To my knowledge, there are no rules against resonant carrot popping. So I just ignored it all. And after about five minutes, the popping stopped.
I think they ate all their carrots.