MMV: der Seehund: Joe's vision of Hell

[vze422fs at verizon.net]

on 3/27/03 10:26 AM, Elainemmbell at aol.com at Elainemmbell at aol.com wrote:

In a message dated 3/26/2003 11:11:48 PM Eastern Standard Time,
vze422fs at verizon.net writes:

My vision of hell is teaching an eighth grade English class.

Joe       


An addendum to Joe's vision of Hell:

My first job after college was teaching drama and English to 8th grade girls
at a K-12 all girls all rich private school in Charlottesville, Virginia.
(Yes, your mental images of flowing serpentine walks, honeysuckle vines, and
white porticos fronting red brick edifices are all accurate.) You don't know
the hell of 8th grade until you spend every day with several dozen spoiled
southern maidens who have been bred to hate inferior people like 1) people
from inappropriate places like Massachusetts 2) people who have to work for
a living and 3) people who drive worse cars than their parents -- and I won
big contempt points in all categories, plus several more!

I had thought the low point in my brief 8th grade teaching career came when
I asked my little actresses to take their costumes home and iron them for
dress rehearsal of our spring show and they looked at me like I had asked
them to clean my bathroom.  One darling child just started laughing at me
and said, "Miss Bell, no one IRONS!  That's why we have Pearl!"

But no that was not the worst.  The REAL worst was when the maiden playing
Tigger in our little revue got stage fright and threw up--requiring me to
play the stupid bouncing tiger in her stead!  It was not one of my more
exquisite performances...

Elaine M.M. Bell, Writer
(860) 523-9225 

I'm laughing my ass off.

Have you ever suffered through a scheduled social occasion at Duke?

It's like being hit in the big toe with a ball peen hammer. 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20030328/c1d4a18e/attachment.html>