Imondi's Late to Class

Imondi's Late to Class
(Story 2)


Some say he was looking for his girlfriend at the local pet store, listening to the harmonious chirping of the magnificently colored parrots in order to try to locate her, somehow trapped and encaged within the body of a bird. Other say he was down at the Bakery, using his deft fingers to carefully roll and shape the heavy dough to make his own exquisite creation of the infamous Pineapple Pizza a la mode. But I know the real reason. I know why Imondi was late to his undeniably remarkable 6th period Creative Writing class, and why my peers and I were deprived of his presence for a never-ending time span of 15 whole minutes.

You see, it started that morning when he was having breakfast.
“Ma, where’s the cheerios?! I need my cheerios Ma!”
“Michael, I told you for the billionth time, that damn Englishman stole it!”
Evidently, Mr. Imondi is quite passionate about his cheerios. So passionate that if he was to be deprived of a bowl of these honey-nut creations from G-d , he'd go ballistic and lose his marbles. It was basically his miracle drug.

Nevertheless, with an empty tank bereft of cheerios and a sad puppy face cuter than any other dog on the planet, Mr. Imondi started his routinely morning walk to school. On any other day he'd merely run to the Wal-Mart down the block, leaving the cereal isle cheerios-less in a matter of minutes. Not this time though- just recently, Wal-Mart had been bought out by Paris Hilton and had been turned to a store that exclusively only serves 'hot' walls. Many argue that this is an idiotic attempt by her to cover up the fact that she thought Wal-Mart was a place where they sell nothing but walls for constructing houses and office buildings, while others say that it is an attempt by her to make society more functional and a lot less complicated. Nevertheless, Mr. Imondi set out on his daily morning down Jericho Turnpike to Herricks High School with an empty stomach craving some scrumptious cereal on the side of a refreshing glass of cold, fresh milk.

The day started out normally like any other day would, with students racing down the high school's infamous 100 meter hallways against the grumpy morning bell and Mr. Cooper divinely splitting the vast sea of freshman blocking the doorway to his the math office. Sad and depressed, Mr. Imondi swaggered past the front office into the English wing, gingerly making a swift right turn into the dark classroom he had claimed as his during his first years at the high school. He sat down and slouched into the dark blue beanie bag his girlfriend bought him for Christmas last year, closing his eyes and quietly mourning for the sacred breakfast he was so dearly deprived of today.

Suddenly his old-fashioned crank phone, secured safely in an airtight Ziploc bag in the right pocket of his satchel, began to ring.
“Cause its all in my head; I keep thinking about her over and over again. I just can’t stand to lose her again.”
Groaning at the irony of the situation, he slid his phone out of the satchel and began to crank it, revealing a text consisting of brilliant colors and exceedingly appealing ethos.

“I have your cheerios. Meet me at the lake with a cup of tea with precisely three cubes shaped like a triangle in the middle of the cup and two tee spoons of Aunt Jemima syrup at precisely 11:30am if you want them back.”
With a rekindled look of hope in his eyes and the flight-or-fight response pumping hulk-like adrenaline throughout his body, Mr. Imondi hurdled over myriad students and teachers down the 200 wing to the English office. Using his legendary culinary skills, he skillfully heated the Golden Monkey herbs someone had bought from Teavana and left in the fridge with a note on it saying, “Property of Moose. For Emergency Use Only.” Seconds later, he artfully mixed the heated herbs with 57.2 mL of distilled water, 2 exact teaspoons of sugar, a touch of Aunt Jemima’s pancake syrup, as well as a touch of his own genius, half a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Dulce de Leche flavored ice cream. With the tea in tact, Mr. Imondi raced down the building past the front office and out the main entrance, defiantly punching Willy in the face upon his egression from the building and avoiding all of the booby traps he had set up earlier that day in an attempt to stop all upperclassman students without proper identification from leaving the building during their free or their lunch period. Amen.

Taking a slight left a few hundred meters down the hill, Mr. Imondi jumped over the ragged gate. Landing upon a mountainous heap of grimy, moist dirt, he started to kick and open his stride down the last 100 meters, just passing Aakaash and Tyson Gay at the last possible second before taking the second left curve on the high schools scenic, new red track. He swiftly cut across the imaginary line dividing lane 1 from lane 2, stopping short at the far end of curve. Catching his breath while feeling the cool wind blow through his hair, Mr. Imondi loosened his grip on the warm cup of tea he had been smothering under his intractable grip and stared over the vast lake that stood before him. In the middle of the track where there once stood a vast football field (in which the Herricks High School football team had humiliated itself countless times before) now stood a canoe with a small, petite figure rowing to shore, buoyantly floating over a lovely lake that no one ever expected the high school to be able to financially acquire.

“I have brought you your tea! Now give me my sacred honey nut O’s Mr. Englishman!” yelled Mr. Imondi.
“Did you put the lime in the coconut and shake it all up!?”

With a look of impatience and growing irritation, Mr. Imondi rolled up his jeans and yelled “Open Sesame!” Upon the touch of the pencil he had been carrying over his ear, the sea before him split to reveal a dry, narrow pathway. He marched straight down the pathway to the petite Englishman who was struggling to row away from him, but was failing due to the fact that there was no water left below him at the current moment. Lifting the mug he had been clutching, Imondi poured the scorching hot tea all over the besieged lad and grabbed his most treasured possession that was so humbly modestly sitting in the boat beside the Englishman: his delicious honey-nut cheerios.

After a quick embracement with his breakfast and a small sigh of relief, Imondi slowly swaggered across the lake and up the hill, tapping the edge of the lake on his way up to allow the walls of muddy water that had previously been cleared for him to collapse upon poor old Willy, who had unfortunately decided to continue his chase after Mr. Imondi but arrived at the scene a tad too late. He gallantly trotted past the front office and down to the computer lab, grabbing a cigarette from the awareness table in front and concealing it along with his precious breakfast in his brown briefcase mere moments before he walked into his 6th period creative writing class, nodding to Mr. Frisone and giving him consolation in the fact that everything would be ok now that order was restored in the Imondi family.

“Eric, get off DJ-AJ Run. Kara, please hand me those joints, they’re meant for awareness, not for actual usage. Now guys, I want you to write a little short story about why I’m late to class. Make it good, or else my beard will be on your case.”