The School

贡献者:IvyLee 类别:英文 时间:2020-05-14 00:14:14 收藏数:8 评分:0
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Well, we had all these children out planting trees, see, because we figured that...that was part of
their education, to see how, you know, the root systems...and also the sense of responsibility,
taking care of things, being individually responsible. You know what I mean. And the trees all died.
They were orange trees. I don't know why they died, they just died. Something wrong with the soil or
maybe the stuff we got from the nursery wasn't the best. We complained about it. So we've got
thirty kids there, each kid had his or her own little tree to plant, and we've got these thirty
dead trees. All these kids looking at these little brown sticks, it was depressing.
It wouldn't have been so bad except that just a couple of weeks before the thing with the trees, the
snakes all died. But I think that the snakes-well, the reason that the snakes kicked off was that...
you remember, the boiler was shut off for four days because of the strike, and that was explicable.
It was something you could explain to the kids because of the sttrike. I mean, none of their parents
would let them cross the picket line and they knew there was a strike going on and what it meant.
So when things got started up again and we found the snakes, they weren't too disturbed.
With the herb gardens it was probably a case of overwatering, and at least now they know not to
overwater.The children were very conscientious with the herb gardens and some of them probably...
you know, slipped them a little extra water when we weren't looking. Or maybe...well, I don't
like to think about sabotage, although it did occur to us. I mean, it was something that crossed
our minds. We were thinking that way probably because before that the gerbils had died, and the
white mice had died, and the salamander...well, now they know not to carry them around in plastic
bags.
Of course we expected the tropical fish to die, that was no surprise. Those nimbers, you look at
them crooked and they're belly-up on the surface. But the lesson plan called for a tropical-fish
input at that point, there was nothing we could do, it happened every year, you just have to hurry
past it.
We weren't even supposed to have a puppy.
We weren't even supposed to have one, it was just a puppy the Murdock girl found under the
Gristede's truck one day and she was afraid the truck would run over it when the driver had
finished making his delivery, so she stuck it in her knapsack and brought it to school with
her. So we had this puppy. As soon as I saw this puppy I thought, Oh Christ, I bet it will live for
about two weeks and then...And that's what I did. It wasn't supposed to be in the classroom at all,
there's some kind of regulation about it, but you can't tell them they can't have a puppy when the
puppy is already there, right in front of them, running around on the floor and yap yap yapping.
They named it Edgar-that is, they named it after me. They had a lot of fun running after it and
yelling, "Here, Edgar! Nice Edgar!" Then they'd laugh like hell. They enjoyed the ambiguity.
I enjoyed it myself. I don't mind being kidded. They made a little house for it in the supply
closet and all that. I don't know what it died of. Distemper, I guess. It probably hadn't had
any shots. I got it out of there before the kids got to school. I checkeed the supply closet each
morning, routinely, because I knew what was going to happen. I gave it to the custodian.
And then there was this Korean orphan that the class adopted through the Help the Children program.
All the kids brought in a quarter a month; that was the idea. It was an unfortunate thing; the kid's
name was Kim and maybe we adopted him too late or something. The cause of death was not stated in
the letter wwe got. They suggested we adopt another child instead and sent us some interesting case
histories, but we didn't have the heart.The class took it pretty hard; they began (I think, nobody
ever said anything to me directly) to feel that maybe there was something wrong with the school. But
I don't think there's anything wrong with the school, particularly; I've seen better and I've seen
worse. It was just a run of bad luck. We had an extraordinary number of parents passing away, for
instance. There were I think two heart attacks and two suicides, one drowning, and four killed
together in a car accident. One stroke. And we had the usual heavy mortality rate among the
grandparents, or maybe it was heavier this year, it seemed so. And finally the tragedy.
The tragedy occurred when Matthew Wein and Tony Mavrogordo were playing over where they're
excavating for the new federal office building. There were all these big wooden beams stacked, you
know, at the edge of the excavation. There's a court case coming out of that, the parents are
claiming that the beams were poorly stacked. I don't know what's true and what's not. It's been a
strange year.
I forgot to mention Billy Brandt's father, who was knifed fatally when he grappled with a masked
intruder in his home.
One day, we had a dicussion in class. They asked me, where did they go? The trees, the salamander,
the tropical fish, Edgar, the poppas and mommas, Matthew and Tony, where did they go? And I said, I
don't know, I don't know. And they said, who knows? And I said, nobody knows. And they said, is
death that which gives meaninng to life? And I said, no, life is that which gives meaning to life.
Then they said, but isn't death, considered as a fundamental datum, the means by which the
taken-for-granted mundanity of the everyday may be transcended in the direction of-
I said yes, maybe.
They said, we don't like it.
I said, that's sound.
They said, it's a bloody shame!
I said, it is.
They said, will you make love now with Helen (our teaching assistant) so that we can see how it is
done? We know you like Helen.
I do like Helen but I said that I would not.
We've heard so much about it, they said, but we've never seen it.
I said I would be fired and that is, was never, or almost never,done as a demonstration. Helen
looked out of the window.
They said, please, please make love with Helen, we require an assertion of value, we are frightened.
I asid that they shouldn't be frightened (although I am often frightened) and that there was value
everywhere. Helen came and embraced me. I kissed her a few times on the brow. We held each other.
The children were excited. Then there was a knock on the door, I opened the door, and the new gerbil
walked in. The children cheered wildly.
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