The Pontificators

Oldie but… well, annoying.  Names changed to protect the guilty.

Mrs. Fitzpartridge-Bilgehorn
was my sixth grade literature teacher.
Piping hot from the college oven,
she had the distinct impression
we were all top I.Q.
scholars parading around
as twelve-year-olds.

If we learned to say her name right,
we were allowed to call her
“Mrs. F-B,” for short.
Oh the insults we came up with
from that acronym!
None of them were nice.

Mrs. F-B gave us maddening assignments
in the hope of stuffing our fat little bodies
full of love for The Classics.

Once, she wanted each student to read
eighty-eight poems in a month!
Not only that, but each poem was to
have a written report and an illustration.
All the reports and illustrations had to be
bound together in a little homemade book,
complete with dust cover.
In a month!

I couldn’t even find eighty-eight poems to read!
Not for a twelve-year-old.
I resorted to reading a lot of Jimmy Stewart’s poetry.
I had no notion of what it meant,
and it had a lot of cuss-words.

I remember my twin brother crying,
and my parents staying up into the wee
hours, gluing pages.

Moms and Dads everywhere sent tireless complaints
about Mrs. Fitzpartridge-Bilgehorn’s teaching methods.
Mrs. F-B said she didn’t care what the parents said.
She could treat us kids however she wanted–
she was Mrs. F-B!

Towards the end of the year,
she bloated heavy with child
I never saw her after that.
I always wondered how her baby turned out,
or if he had to call her “Mrs. F-B.”