OCR Text |
Show 52 NINE Parker! Mrs. Simpson had scrawled across the otherwise empty blackboard. Read note on desk and answer same. Now what? Hadn't he done a good job on her boards Friday? Parker sighed and rolled the collector bin against the wall. Maybe she wanted him to scrub desks, God forbid! Tonight he was up to his eyeballs in homework and it was already 4:30. He propped his push broom and walked to her desk. The note was neatly folded and his initials were on the outside. Dear Parker, Thanks for volunteering your efforts to procure a sound system for us. If the room at the senior citizen's center is the size Dyna says it is, we won't really need a mike, but it would be more "professional" to have one. Should we tape the background music, timing the segments to fit the poems? Think about it. I'm well aware of your aversion to public speaking and, believe me, I'm not mounting a campaign to eliminate "Parker's reticence." I enjoy some reticence in men- Parker stopped reading. He looked up, remembering how he'd found hi8 paper in the wastebasket weeks ago. She'd not only read it, she remembered it. He returned to the note, feeling his cheeks grow warm; "I enjoy some reticence in men." Some. She used the word "men," too . . . that was nice . . . did she think of them as "men"? Squirmy Glotz and Eccles, the talking terror? Or did she just mean him? Parker slid onto a desk and continued reading. On the other hand, your poem "Suspension" is one of the best written during the poetry unit and I eian't bear to leave it out. Could you read it: a) blindfolded? b) tranquilized? c) hand-cuffed? d) at the beginning, so you can relax? e) at the end, a piece de resistance, after which you can slip out the side door? f) during refreshments, while everyone's more interested in the cupcakes than in you7 g) disguised as Sir Edmund Hillary? h) or-horror of horrors-not at all7 |