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My Chemistry Teacher
In her sixties, of Swedish descent, robustly built
and amply breasted, the girth of her thighs bulging
under her white lab frock like a Henry Moore sculpture,
her feet secured in high laced black shoes with brutish
square heels – the kind women wore in an earlier age.
Threads of blond hair still visible throughout her
gray hair loosely pulled back and coiled in a lazy
soft bun stabbed with a few pencils for easy reach.
Gold-rimmed oval glasses framed her pale blue eyes
that never stopped blinking like a faulty neon light.
And when she spoke or gave a talk as she did that
morning, a nervous tic appeared to a side of her mouth.
Yet nothing could have prepared the class that morning
when, giving a short talk explaining stalagmite formations
in a famous Kentucky cavern, she stopped abruptly to relate
an anecdote and with a perfectly straight face informed
the class that during the Civil War confederate soldiers,
for relief and recreation, would used the cavern – in her words –
God strike me dead – “to hold their balls there.” – What she
meant, of course, were “soirées” not soldiers’ testicles. The effect
on the class was like a lit match thrown into pure oxygen,
the class exploding into pandemonium of uncontrolled laughter,
the poor woman instantly realizing her wrong choice of words
and frantically pleading for calm in the ensuing mayhem, her face
pulsing like a dwarf red star near to exploding, her eyelashes
fluttering wildly like two moths trapped behind her glasses.
Copyright ©
Maurice Rigoler
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