Leslie's Journal - Allan Stratton [0]
Allan Stratton
for my students
Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
Forty-Four
Thanks
One
It’s only the first week and already school sucks. I’ve got Ms. Graham again for English.
Today she said every class is going to start with fifteen minutes of journal writing, which is what we’re doing now. This is supposed to train us to “reflect freely on our personal experiences.” Oh yeah? It’s to give her fifteen minutes with nothing to do.
Also, since our journals will be about personal feelings, she says she won’t read them. “Your journal is just for you. So write, write, write. As with everything in this world, you’ll get out of it what you put into it.” According to her, this is a “Life Lesson.” What it really is is an excuse for her to get out of marking.
A year of journals! Can I scream yet? It’s so boring I keep forgetting to breathe. And each day when it’s over she’s going to collect them and lock them up in her filing cabinet, like we’re a bunch of babies who’ll lose them or something.
But okay. Journals beat having her teach. Last year, she either read aloud to us or we read aloud to her, then she’d stop and ask us stupid questions about what we’d just heard. This last part was hilarious, because nobody ever gave her an answer. We just stared up at her like we were dead and watched her eyes go funny. No kidding, her eyes were like gerbils. They darted around desperate for a hand to pop in the air till the silence got so bad she couldn’t stand it anymore and blurted the answer herself.
Normal teachers would figure if students are passed out, maybe they should do something. LIKE, HELLO, MAYBE STOP ASKING DUMB QUESTIONS! But not Ms. Graham. She went from dumb to dumber. There’d be red patches on her neck and she’d be sweating and wiping the sweat from her hands to her dress. It was disgusting.
That’s when she’d tell us to read the next chapter silently and answer the questions on handouts she’d pass around for homework. Which of course we never did. We pretended we hadn’t heard her and the handouts didn’t exist. At the end of class, we’d crumple them into balls and toss them in the general direction of the wastebasket. It’s like, whole rain forests got clear-cut so Ms. Graham could stuff her filing cabinet with handouts that all ended up in the garbage.
Then, pretty soon, we pretended Ms. Graham didn’t exist either. We’d come in, put our heads on our desks and go to sleep. Which was fine by her, I guess, because at least if we were sleeping we weren’t throwing chalk. Or handouts.
It was sooo painful.
Near the end of the year, she went Missing in Action. They said she was away with chronic bronchitis, but we figured she was having a breakdown. Over the summer the story went around that she’d knocked over a shelf of light fixtures at Wal-Mart and ended up under a pile of lampshades babbling hysterically while trying to strangle herself with an electric cord till the ambulance came and hauled her off in a straitjacket.
Well, that’s the rumor. And even if it isn’t true, it should be, because obviously she’s back for more and she’s nutty as ever. Right now she’s floating around with this vague look, smelling kind of stale in a pale gray billowy thing. She looks like a human dustball. Wait. She’s just come to rest in front of the window. She’s looking out. Maybe she’s thinking of jumping.
It’s kind of sad, really. I mean, if she wasn’t a teacher, I’d feel sorry for her. Once upon a time she was somebody’s baby, playing patty-cakes and having everybody kissing her and saying she was a cutie. Then she grew up. I picture her all alone in some tiny apartment, surrounded by cats and stacks