Here I Sit With a Pasted Smile

Do you want me to play music? This is a teacher who obviously does not write much. I was giving them silent thinking time for the thinking-writing activity I had assigned to them. I am horrified, but it is her room. I am the interloper, and she has already asked. They have said ‘yes’. Funeral dirge comes out of her computer. I want to gloat; the kids look up, horrified. I am here fifteen more minutes in the bowels of hell with this woman. Who is insistent on everything a particular way. Perhaps that is why she has spent a year putting up no bulletin boards? Only borders. I would rather be wearing an orange jumpsuit, running from the cops. But here I sit with my pasted smile For twelve minutes. Glad I am not one of these fourth graders stuck here all day.