Surely, dear reader, somebody, somewhere, at some time, has sat beside you in a time of strain or crisis and advised you to stop pretending, speak your mind, “let it all hang out”. Now, I know that the people who utter such things in my presence intend them as words of comfort and support. But, for me, whose options as a model were severely limited in my best years, which are long ago and far away, the idea of letting any of it hang out, never mind all of it, is a guarantee of cold sweats and sleepless nights.

Besides, it’s always seemed to me that to let things hang out is an open invitation for somebody to come by and chop them off. I sympathize with Shakespeare’s melancholy Jaques, to whom all the world was a stage. With the dawn comes the rising of the curtain, and you’d better have your costume on, your greasepaint applied, ready to pound the boards.

Nowhere, I reckon, is the tension between performance and reality greater than in teaching, where every curse has a consequence, and there are thirty little tongues ready to wag about it. “Guess what I learned from the teacher today!”

For example: one fine hot day in Las Vegas, Quilly was running around her classroom, doing what teachers do in classrooms full of rambunctious fifth graders. And doing it in footwear that’s appropriate for a fine hot day in Las Vegas. Open-toed sandals. Now those of us who are used to climates like those of Maine don’t wear open-toed sandals. There are too many things that can happen to toes in Maine that prohibit the wearing of open-toed sandals. Frostbite, for instance. In July. But I am told, with some measure of confidence, that to wear shoes and socks on a fine hot day in Las Vegas is a recipe for disaster. You will either wind up without feet, or you (and the rest of the county) will wish you had none.

So here is Quilly in her sandals, working with a group of kids in her classroom. And another bunch asks her a question. One that half of the rest of the room hollers for an answer. “I can do that!”, Our Heroine proclaims, and she jumps up and makes haste for the whiteboard in the front of the room.

Whereupon her toes had a fundamental disagreement with an iron bar, belonging to a particularly obstinate and inconsiderate piece of classroom furniture. Her toes lost.

And the pain, Mr. Cosby, was tremendous. So was the urge to ionize the atmosphere. But … all those innocent children …

Perhaps you’re old enough to remember those dialogue balloons, when old-time cartoon characters like Popeye had had enough of too much and started cursing? You know, like this one? Anyway, if you can imagine those characters spoken out loud …

MMfrcktMMimmMMrcff!!

With a supreme effort, Quilly stifled the words that begged for expression, replacing them with sounds that conveyed the emotion but spared the ears of all those innocent children.

Or so she thought. Until she looked into her classroom and saw thirty pairs of eyes, looking up at her in shock and horror.

Little Gardenia spoke for the entire class:

“I know what you really said, Ms. Amsden. And it was bad.”

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2007 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.