Lesson Unplanned

A Story by J.M.Kauftheil

Grammatical humor, I guess... Read closely.

Margaret tried to pay attention to the road as she drove to work. Her hair was messy, and she was wearing yesterday's clothes, picked up from the floor. The divorce was following through, to her extreme discontent. 'Why was he calling the shots here?' she asked herself. He was the one that had cheated, and despite her willingness to comply with moving beyond that, he wanted to end it anyway. She wiped away a welling tear. She had also decided to quit her medications.
"You're a professional, Margaret," she said to herself, as she pulled into her spot in the elementary school parking lot. "Hold yourself together." She powdered on some makeup in her mirror to hide her flushed cheeks, and walked out of the car. "Hold together for the kids."

As she walked into the classroom, she realized she had forgotten her lesson plan. She fought internally with herself �" there was no point in beating herself up now, she would have to wing it. She walked to the front of the room, and picked up a dry-erase marker. She hoped to find inspiration in the small black and white cylinder.
"Hello, class" she said, faking a smile.
"Hello Mrs. S." they replied. 'Mrs. S'… this was going to be harder than she thought. She turned around to face the long blank board, and hoped she could muster something, but her brain was somewhere else. She uncapped the pen, shut her eyelids, and hoped whatever came out would work.
She opened her eyes to a large "I". Fortunately, she had stopped before the words "still love you, damnit" had managed to work their way through her pen. Relief flashed across her face, as she found a lesson that would at least buy her a few minutes. She followed the single letter with "before E, except after C". She smiled, and turned around.
She began to explain this basic rule of the English language, and listed a couple examples as evidence: Ceiling, Lied, Pie. She asked the class if anyone else could think of more examples. As the room mostly filled with intellectually sub-average children racked their underdeveloped minds, one hand rose proudly.
"Yes, Anne?" Margaret said loudly. Anne was the student that always seemed to know too much, and had no qualms with flaunting it. She had started reading chapter books before any of her peers, and she made a show of having a new book to breeze through each week. Though Margaret privately hated the young girl, she knew that Anne, with her relatively extensive history of reading, would have a good store or words in her head that she would be unashamed to bombastically parade before the other students.

"What about 'Protein'?" Anne stated smugly. Margaret froze. She couldn't come up with any kind of response, and it troubled her. 'Maybe I just won't deign that with an answer,' she thought to herself. Before she could piece together something to say, the boy who sat at a neighboring desk shot his hand into the air, though he didn't wait to be called on.
"And EIGHT!" he exclaimed, enthusiastically providing another of the rules fallacies. She didn't have an answer to that, either. The class grew feisty, as if they had been suddenly caffeinated. It had become a game of disproving the teacher, and Mrs. S. was not ready to handle that. Had she the prescience of the dissolute that was now unfolding, she would have called in sick that morning, but unfortunately she was not capable of making such prophecies.

"How about we move on to Social Science!" she cried, desperately, trying to again seize the reins to the class. "Can anyone tell me what societies we've learned about that believe in polytheism?" She searched the class desperately. A tubby girl in the back of the room had her fingers wiggling in the air. "Jeanette?"
"'Weird' has 'e-i'!" the little heifer said. The teacher's face paled, to the point that it was noticeable below her makeup. She opened her mouth to tell the class to settle down, but got cut off by another voice, with a notable Indian accent.
"And 'reindeer!'" She leaned back against her desk. 'Oh my god,' she whispered to herself exasperatedly, 'even the foreign kid.'
Her breath became hard, as she began to freak out, feeling extremely paranoid. She completely forfeited any attempt at regaining reign of the class. She felt her heart beating, pumping adrenaline through her veins. She should have taken her meds today. She backed into a beige wall, and tried to control her breathing.
"Shut up! SHUT UP!" she lashed out. She was so far out of whack that screaming at the children didn't weigh on her conscience. She needed a way out of the classroom, but there were students, her perceived attackers, potentially blocking the only door. Maybe she could make a feint for the window to distract them, and then make a dash for the door, or she could-

As she opened her eyes, she found herself looking around a drab white room complicated by her fuzzy vision. She could make out what appeared to be flowers on a nearby nightstand, and noticed a man standing near her. Maybe it was her husband! She tried excitedly to rub the blurriness away from her eyes.
It turned out to be the school's principal. "You... had an episode and passed out," he explained. "Don't worry though, your class is fine and we're letting you take a sabbatical." Her head sank into her pillow, disappointed simply that her husband wasn't with her.
Acknowledging her unhappiness, though misunderstanding the reason, he held up a large piece of construction paper with a cut-out red heart. "Your class made this for you," he said empathetically. He placed it on her chest, and walked away to leave her in peace.
Inside the oversized card, the words "WE MISS YOU" were largely printed in the middle, and around it were the signatures of all her pupils. She truly didn't care about any of it, but one signature caught her eye. There, written in an immediately noticeable John Hancock manner was the statement:
"Hope your stay in the hospital is leisurely.
Love, Anne."