Fifth period, farthest row to the right, against the cabinets, three desks back. The room smelled of a toxic mixture between a child’s daycare and a senior-citizen home. Looking back, God showed me great mercy by only putting me in that room for forty-five minutes a day, except that one day out of every eight that I was imprisoned for an hour and a half. Time seemed to be warped during those fateful minutes. The clock in that room malfunctioned so that the second-hand would move faster than usual from the twelve to the six, but would literally slow to a near halt as it climbed back up to twelve. Each day was the same: “Wordly Wise”, followed by a reading quiz on a 3 x 5 notecard and then a “discussion” of the reading for that day which always consisted of her asking a question, and then standing there in silence until some martyr filled the air with generic mumblings to pass the time.
Her voice flowed at a perfect frequency so as to lull even the most awake into a slumber so deep, drool would readily collect on any desk. Don’t be fooled with my kind words, kind comments rarely were spoken by this voice from she-who-should-not-be-named. The only entity more cruel than her words was that red pen that never knew a hand more scrutinizing. Even a paper overflowing in content and analysis, graced with perfect grammar and varying sentence structure, was no match for that mighty pen. A lack of material could not have been at the roots of her frustrations for she was given works like The Great Gatsby, Life of Pi, and A Farewell to Arms to educate the fragile minds she was bestowed. Maybe she didn’t possess the appreciation that the masters of literature like Mark Twain or the great Dan Williams had, maybe her passions focused elsewhere, or maybe she just didn’t like us, but, for whatever reason, her attitude ruined my junior year of high school English.
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