The Trumpet of the Swan

Louis wrote cat.

"Well, cat is easy, too," muttered the teacher. "Cat is easy because it is short. Can anyone think of a word that is longer than cat?"

"Catastrophe," said Charlie Nelson, who sat in the first row. [Note: long break in reading while I hold my sides from that entire sentence, from the student's word choice to his seating arrangement. Also note: this is a first grade class.]

"Good!" said Mrs. Hammerbotham. "That's a good hard word. But does anyone know what it means? What is a catastrophe?"

"An earthquake." ... "A war." ...

In a very small, high voice, Jennie said, "When you get ready to go on a picnic with your father and mother and you make peanut-butter sandwiches and jelly rolls and put them in a thermos box with bananas and an apple and some raisin cookies and paper napkins and some bottles of pop and a few hard-boiled eggs and then you put the thermos box in your car and just as you are starting out it starts to rain and your parents say there is no point in having a picnic in the rain, that's a catastrophe."

*****

Back in his own room, Sam sat down in his desk, feeling very happy about the way things had turned out. The fifth-graders were having a lesson in arithmetic...

"Sam, if a man can walk three miles in one hour, how many miles can he walk in four hours?"

"It would depend on how tired he got after the first hour," replied Sam.

The other pupils roared. [Note: so did I.] Miss Snug rapped for order.

"Sam is quite right," she said. "I never looked at the problem that way before. I always supposed that a man could walk twelve miles in four hours, but Sam may be right: that man may not feel so spunky after the first hour. He may drag his feet. He may slow up."

Albert Bigelow raised his hand. "My father knew a man who tried to walk twelve miles, and he died of heart failure," said Albert.

*****

"And now, here is a problem for one of the girls in the room. If you are feeding a baby from a bottle, and you give the baby eight ounces of milk in one feeding, how many ounces of milk would the baby drink in two feedings?"

Linda Staples raised her hand. "About fifteen ounces," she said.

"Why is that?" asked Miss Snug. "Why wouldn't the baby drink sixteen ounces?"

"Because he spills a little each time," said Linda. "It runs out of the corners of his mouth and gets on his mother's apron."

"When it comes to money," he said, "birds have it easier than men do. When a bird earns some money, it's almost all clear profit. A bird doesn't have to go to the supermarket and buy a dozen eggs and a pound of butter and two rolls of paper towels and a TV dinner and a can of Ajax and a can of tomato juice and a pound and a half of ground round steak and a can of sliced peaces and two quarts of fat-free milk and a bottle of stuffed olives. A bird doesn't have to pay rent on a house, or interest on a mortgage. A bird doesn't insure its life with an insurance company and then have to pay premiums on the policy. A bird doesn't own a car and buy gas and oil and pay for repairs on the car and take the car to a car wash and pay to get it washed. Animals and birds are lucky. They don't keep acquiring things the way men do. You can teach a monkey to drive a motorcycle, but I have never known a monkey to go out and buy a motorcycle."