Canton Writes 2023: POP!

The Canton Citizen, a sponsor of the annual Canton Writes contest, will once again publish the winning entries as space permits. The selection below, by Abby Nelson, was the winning entry in the adult nonfiction category.

POP!

By Abby Nelson

Rebellion is perhaps the single most attractive thing to an eighth grader. I’ve always been a rule-follower myself, but witnessing rebellion against authority brings all 13-year-olds indescribable joy. I was no exception, and that’s why one of my favorite memories is the POP! heard ’round the cafeteria.

In middle school, small acts of rebellion occurred daily. If we saw a sliver of freedom, we snatched it. Whenever we had a stern substitute, a devious trickster would take the opportunity to whisper dirty things into the class microphone. There was nothing more giggle-inducing than watching him sneakily pass the microphone around to other heathens while the substitute stood fuming, unable to find the source. Sometimes I felt bad for the adults; other times the nasty ones deserved it. It was a matter of justice.

I had seen the mornings of strict teachers ruined by rowdy students’ hijinks plenty of times, but nothing compared to the beautiful defiance that I had witnessed one lunch period in eighth grade: the POP!

My class had a reputation for being trouble. Teachers loathed us. Sixth-graders feared us. We were made up of talented athletes, musicians, and students, but first and foremost, we were obnoxious 13-year-olds. We had a ritual during lunch: bag-popping. No one knew who started it, when it began, or how exactly it became so popular, but all of the kids were buying chips so they could pop the bags extremely loudly. The loud POP! would be followed by a chorus of “OOOs.” At first, it would happen once or twice per lunch, and the friends of the bag-poppers would shout “OOO” while everyone laughed for a moment. However, it soon became an infectious disease, spreading to every lunch table. Even the well-behaved kids relished in the satisfying explosions. Eventually, every lunchtime conversation was interrupted by a barrage of pops. If it sounds like I’m exaggerating, you’re underestimating how annoying we could really be.

The phenomenon may have ended on its own. But then teachers began patrolling the cafeteria, stationing themselves at any table with a chip bag. Thus began a rebellion. If there was a teacher on one side of the cafeteria, two bags would go off at the opposite end. Bag-popping had been fun before, but now we could harness its power to grind the adults’ gears. The POP!s were revenge for Monday’s surprise quiz, the three-finger spaghetti strap rule, and homework due the day after Halloween. I never popped a bag, but I couldn’t help grinning at the kids who wouldn’t give in despite threats of detention. The cafeteria was a bubble that existed outside of the teachers’ jurisdiction, and we wanted them to know that. We had 35 minutes of freedom each day, and it was ours.

The situation had definitely gotten out of hand. The vice principal cut our lunch period short to deliver a speech about our addiction to the rush of bag-popping. She said we were disrespectful, rude, inconsiderate, irritating, and other flattering adjectives. Maybe we would have taken her seriously if not for how much we despised her. She was the one who changed the dress code, stalking the hallways to catch any infractors. We couldn’t just look past that. She ended her lecture with the threat to ban chip bags if we didn’t surrender to her supreme rule, letting her words hang in the air so we bad, bad students could reflect on how disrespectful we had been in silence.

And then it happened.

A loud, deafening, beautiful POP! rang through the air. It was like a bomb had gone off. There was a pause, as if for dramatic effect, but the truth is, we were all in shock. Then, the students shrieked in delight and horror. Who was this martyr? What wonderful fool would dare pop his bag? How incredibly stupid, yet brilliant! It was traced back to a boy grinning from ear to ear like the Cheshire Cat at the table next to mine. We all watched in honor as he was apprehended by two teachers. The way I remember it from my second-row seat, they stood on either side of him, escorting him out by his arms like a criminal. But in that moment, he was a god. Even I sang “OOO” in salute to the hero who had sacrificed his freedom for a POP! with a clear message: “We win this round.”

When he got back from serving his sentence, a week of in-school suspension, he was worshipped. Even a decade later, if you pop a bag around anyone who was there on that historic day at the Galvin Middle School, you may see his face flash in their eyes.

Maybe there was a reason we loved that POP! sound so much. Being an eighth grader isn’t so different from being a chip bag. Adults kept us contained our whole lives and expected us to enter the world quietly and maturely when they decided it was time. But their pushing and pressing and prodding and squeezing turned us into caged animals. The only way to escape the pressure caving in on us from all sides was to POP!

I don’t know what happened to the notorious bag-popper; I don’t even remember his last name. But I do remember that POP! and the smirking face of the boy who dared to defy. His spirit is in the confessional graffiti on bathroom stalls, in the space between teenagers dancing too close, and in the laughs of mischievous students playing harmless pranks simply because we haven’t let life ruin all of our fun yet. My middle school days may fade into the fog of age, but I’m reminded of that boy whenever kids stoke the fire of youthful rebellion. I hear the POP! echo on their tongues, followed by the “OOOs” of the people who will never do more than just watch.

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