Up The Down Staircase

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Late Pass:

Admit to class: 8:36 A.M.

Unexcused: Claims IRT stuck.

JJ McH

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My Best Friend

My best friend is Miss Barrett, our English teacher. Although this is the first term I have met Miss Barrett, she is pretty, a good dresser, a good marker, and fair in her attitude. She is the type teacher every student likes. For the reasons above mentioned I choose Miss Barrett.

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DEAR (SIR, MADAM)

I AM (PLEASED, SORRY) TO INFORM YOU THAT YOUR (SON'S, DAUGHTER'S ) WORK HAS SO FAR …

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My best friend is a good book. I enjoy good books that are educational very much. Books help your grammer and spelling. Also increase your vocabulary. I am a great reader of books. My best favorite is 'Antony and Cleopatra' by Shakespear. In this book I like the part where the author tries to show love. Where Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton make love which I like. I like other good books too, mostly classical.

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Memo: Return English as a Communications Art.

I have some best friends and also some worst friends but its hard to write down, its hard to explain what I really want to say about friends and others its hard to explain to anybody I often wisht I had a friend thats understanding. But its very hard.

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Dear Dr. Clarke,

Since I began teaching, I have felt a lack of

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Please admit bearer to class—

Detained by me for going Up the Down stair-

case and subsequent insolence.

JJ McH

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My best friend

I believe my Mother to be my best friend because. She always listens to my troubles and trys to comfort me. She has been sacraficing all her life so I could be a credit to her and not a bum and all I did since born is cause her trouble by shooting pools and doing such things. I am apoligizing in this letter. Very truly yours.

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Dear Dr. Clarke,

16. JJ’s Lament

INTRASCHOOL COMMUNICATION

FROM: Paul Barringer, Room 309

TO: Sylvia Barrett, Room 304

Sylvia!

Where did you disappear after dinner last night?

Was I that blotto?

Must be the latest rejection slip. The tone is not only polite but patronizing: Why don't I write of something familiar to me?

The school system is familiar to me.

Am I to write of kids sprawling in classrooms? Yawning in assembly? Pushing through the halls? (You know I never venture forth in hall traffic.)

Am I to write of teachers marking papers? Of McHabe's circulars? (You know I have a low boredom- threshold.)

The only thing I can do with him is give him a song to sing. I call it J.J.'s Lament:

The ceiling fell? The ink ran dry? A student dared to smile?

Of every new disaster

I prove myself the master

By sending out more circulars, more circulars to file!

A missing kid? A kissing kid? A paper on the floor?

For every major crisis

One remedy suffices:

More circulars, more circulars to put into a drawer!

A crowded cafeteria?
A substitute's hysteria?
A visitor from Syria?
A missing Book Receipt?

I merely send out circulars
To add to other circulars
To add to other circulars
Numerical and neat!

I want him to star in the Faculty Show, but he has another commitment. I'd like to write him a splendid aria, entitled: 'It Has Come to my Attention That.'

Why do you refuse to be in the Show? You are wasting yourself in the classroom.

Why do you refuse? You are wasting yourself.

A girl who is patient like patient Griselda

Will find all she's getting is elder and elder.

Meet me for lunch?

Meet me at three?

Meet me this evening? I promise to stay sober.

Paul