◉ 062 | Seven Thousand Metres per Second

Dad worked

at an open-pit

limestone quarry.

One day

he told me

about detonating cord.

“You wrap

a tree

with the cord.

Then you attach

a short piece

of slow-burning fuse,

light it

with a cigarette,

and walk away.”

“We chopped

massive dead trees

like that

just for fun.”

“The cord goes off

at seven thousand

metres

per second,”

Dad said.

I told

my classmates.

Seven thousand

metres

per second?

They laughed.

One of them

said:

“You light it

here,

and one second later

it is seven kilometres

away?”

Everyone

laughed harder.

So we asked

our Technical Education

teacher.

“Impossible,”

he said.

The class

erupted.

One of my classmates

kept teasing me

for days.

“Seven thousand

metres

per second.”

He repeated it

every time

he saw me.

I was

pissed.

I told Dad

the whole class

thought

he was wrong.

Even

the teacher.

“What teacher?”

Dad asked.

“Radanović.”

A few days later,

he brought home

an empty roll

of detonating cord

from work.

The sticker

was still

on the side:

DETONATING CORD

Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate (PETN)

7,000 m/s

I took it

to school.

Without saying

a word,

I placed

the empty roll

on the teacher’s desk

with the label

facing him.

He read

the sticker.

The classroom

went quiet.

His face

turned red.

I was walking

back to my desk,

carrying the roll,

with a single word

on my mind:

“Motherfuckers.”