March 29, 2001
Geese and all that Jazz
My riveting existence continues today with Ryan's 18th birthday, man eating geese, and the return of Satan in choir. Good thing she didn't recognize me.
So Ryan has commenced into true adulthood. Now he can put pictures of himself naked on the internet and it will be legal. That's what he and Lindle and Hampton told me on my 18th birthday, at any rate. They, of course, also mentioned that I had been doing it all along but at least now I wouldn't be sent to jail. They're kind boys, really they are.
As for the man eating geese, I suppose I owe an explanation. This will probably somehow contort itself into some sort of commentary about how smart kids really aren't that smart, they're just good at lying and creating distractions and memorizing things long enough to take the tests, but I'll try to refrain from too much rambling.
So there we are, the priveleged and esteemed 16 students in Advanced Placement English, suffering under the grueling syllabus of Mrs. Shultz, having both revolting poetry and unitelligible prose spoon fed rather forcefully to us everyday, to no end; struggling to maintain some semblance of coherence during the forty minutes wherein we are her prisoners. O, the tireless jailer. Today we were given two poems to analyze (as if that is anything new), one of them being Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter by John Crowe Ransom. The poem consisted of this guy writing about this little girl who used to taunt and tame all these geese, and then she got sick (or something) and she died, and now everytime the townspeople see the geese they think of her. Our kind and gracious jailer decided to move around the room asking each of us to find some sort of literary device or insight into the poem. Not only did Matt have the brillance to announce that there were 49 letter 'e's in the poem (counting the title, without the title there were only 45), Jody and I came to the conclusion that in the end the girl became so disillusioned by her sickness that she could no longer tame the geese and they took their revenge by eating her. This launched a discussion concerning the fact that if the geese had eaten her, how had she been laid out in her coffin? So maybe the geese just ate her legs...or something.
It's best not to delve any further into the twisted logic of we AP students. I think, on some remote level, we used to be halfway intelligent, but now we just write the same essay for every book we read and simply change the title and/or the main character's name. Which reminds me, I better go read the Cliff's for Grapes of Wrath. That's due next Thursday and I'm only on page 39. What happened to my will to work? Has high school really destroyed my motivation?
Of Course.
Mrs. McCormick was in our choir class today. "Observing" as we fondly call it. Supposedly she is going to get the job next year when Mr. Carlisle leaves, but I'm not particuraly concerned as I'll be gone. At least she will no longer be able to crush the hopes and dreams of poor, defenseless grade school children.
See, Mrs. McCormick was my grade school music teacher. And I swear, if the woman made me cry once I cried fifty times because of her. She is a pillar of evil, empty of all sympathy, like Mrs. Trunchbull in Matilda, only more waif-ish and witch-like. She kicked me out of the children's singing and chiming group because I left the stage on one performance, bawling, because my grandmother was flying back to Boston without saying goodbye to me. Would she rather I stayed onstage, crying, disrupting everyone else? I was nine, for Christ's sake.
I've had a rather nice day, and if things go according to plan, it might even get better...
astera at after choir