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After-school activities were still in full swing at 4:30 in the afternoon. Us stupid fitters were gathering our tools and prepping our materials for a night's worth of pipe-laying misery. My stride was sure and true as I careened down the faux-marble hallway of North Junior High. A buxom young teacher was walking ahead of me with a seductive switch that only a male above eighteen would notice. She slowed her pace to ask a plump boy standing in the doorway of a classroom a quick question.

"How do you like the book so far?"

My ears perked up, my eyes opened wide and shot for the cover. There he was in large white block lettering over a blood-red backround-- Dostoevski.

"It's pretty good," the round little kid replied.

Pretty good? Just 'pretty good', man? Jesus, what was the world coming to? I halted that once-stable gait of mine to catch a glimpse of the title-- 'Crime and Punishment'.

My thoughts ran rampant in my head: Oh Lord, please don't let me fall to my knees right here in this hallway with my partner five steps ahead of me. Don't let Shakespeare go out like this. I promise to learn the Cyrillic alphabet someday.

Little Jimmy in the too-tight T-shirt had noticed my ogling. I had to say something to him to avoid being escorted off school property for staring inappropriately at a minor. But what to say? How would I be able to plug the waterfall of sheer joy and admiration for one of the world's best writers that'd spew forth from my mouth? My knees weakened, and that mouth of mine didn't make up for it with any form of brilliance.

"Dostoevski, huh?"

Chubby nodded his head of curly hair and squinted his beady little eyes. I could tell he's always last picked in gym class.

"He's a bastard," I emphatically declared. Chubs dropped his jaw and cocked his head in utter astonishment as I turned to catch up with my coworker again before he'd wonder what the hell I was doing talking to this kid about a book. Maybe Chubs wasn't expecting a dirty, sweaty construction worker to have such a strong opinion of a Nineteenth Century writer from Eastern Europe. If only he knew that I could spell Dostoyevky's name three different ways, or that I'd read all of the works of the good Fyodor Mikhailovich, and by my own volition.

But "He's a bastard"? Really, whom was I even referring to with that gem? Dos himself?, or that literal lady-killer character of his, Raskolnikov? I'm still not sure what I meant by my statement; it seemed like a good idea at the time, though. Most of the worst ones do. Even Dos and his Existentialist buddies could admit that.

The toils of work led me to and fro across the jobsite. I think by now I've spent more time walking in this school than I did during my entire junior high career. As I lept and bound up and down those flights of stairs I considered what I should've said to that poor kid. Things like: "Do you know Dostoevsky was sentenced to death during his young adulthood for his alleged involvement in a revolutionary group, and that they pulled the mask from his face and pardoned him at the last minute as the firing squad was loading their rifles?" Or maybe "He left his wife towards the end of his life and married a girl half his age who tended to the blinding old nut, even transcribed some of his last works for him." If I wanted to bring it home I'd say something to the effect of "Right up until his death at the age of sixty he was questioning the same things that you may be wrestling with now, like the existence and intentions of God, and the disappointing nature of Man." But I didn't say any of that. I had my chance to play English teacher and missed it. Again.

I made it a point to pass by that classroom twenty minutes later, but the lights were off and everyone had left. My potential Russian Literature Apprentice had gone home to eat Oreos and play video games until his mother made him walk the dog. I'd failed. Again. Second chances and I don't seem to get along.

But now, sitting here at this forgiving screen eight hours later, I don't feel so bad. Chubs'll figure all that stuff out on his own if he's worth a damn, or at least his weight in paperbacks. If not then he doesn't deserve to have those pieces of the puzzle figured out. For the sake of a rare happy ending I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

Good luck, kid. Sorry I couldn't help you. And stay away from pipes in general.