Teachers Who Taught

One lesson I learned before I dropped out of school was taking a shortcut is not always a good idea. We had this teacher back in the seventh grade who believed all students should read every day. And they should read good books. She would assign us a book and we had one month to read it and prepare a book report. I got Les Miserables and checked the book out at the library. After three weeks I had managed to read about twenty-five pages. One day I was taking a break and went down to the Harper News Stand to look at comic books. And there it was. A comic book of Les Miserables. And it only cost fifteen cents. I bought it, took it home, and read it in one night. That same night I prepared my book report. I was pretty thorough and checked my work several times for errors. It was perfect. Or so I thought. Our teacher, Miss Betty Glassblower, was pretty sharp. She beat us to the punch and bought a comic book for each of the books she had assigned. Then she prepared a test, not from the comic book, but from the real book. Every student except Margaret Buckburn failed. Margaret was always causing problems and had read the book itself. Today, it's hard to find a classic comic book, but they have Cliff Notes for students to fall back on. I overheard one of the kids down at the library where I volunteer say, "Thank God Cliff took notes." Is he in for a surprise. The seventh grade teacher at Harper School is the same Margaret Buckburn that gave us regular students such a hard time. Good luck, kid.

Tales of Harper, short stories and poems about the fictional town of Harper, Mississippi is available on Amazon Kindle