9486 in the collection
Losing It
This is an excerpt from Ask Ms Class.
Dear Ms. Class:
Misplacing things has become a serious problem for me. It happens so often that I worry that it's the first stages of Alzheimer's. Since it seems to happen more often at school than at home, I also worry that I'm "losing my grip" as a teacher.
--Lincoln, CA
Dear Lincoln:
Nobody loses things as often as ms. Class, and she has been doing this since the very first day in the classroom when she lost the roll book. She doesn't need to tell you that a teacher is not allowed to lose the roll book, which, as the secretary informed her, "is a permanent, legal document." That same secretary refused to let Ms. Class leave the building until the roll book was found (in the nurse's office).
The eminent philosopher-mathematician Alfred North Whitehead is credited with the materials disappearance principle: "Just because you eventually find what you've been looking for doesn't mean it didn't disappear for a while." Ms. Class would only add that you usually don't find it until you've replaced it.
Truth-in-advice-giving disclosure: Ms. Class has special sympathy with people who misplace eyeglasses, keys, test papers, and love letters. Ms. Class herself once misplaced a third grader. Please know there were extenuating circumstances Ms. Class's students considered it a special privilege to read in a private, dark place. The favored spot was a closet Ms. Class cleaned out for that purpose. Ricky went into the closet early one afternoon. Two hours later school was dismissed and Ms. Class went grocery shopping. With her cart half-filled and while examining boston lettuce, Ms. Class experienced one of those moments of pure terror that Emily Dickinson called "zero at the bone." Leaving the grocery cart in the aisle, Ms. Class drove back to school, raced into the building, and found Ricky sound asleep in the closet. Ms. Class woke him up, drove him home, and never told him he'd been forgotten. Third graders deserve to hold on to as many illusions as possible.
— Susan Ohanian
Ask Ms. Class
2009-08-20
http://www.amazon.com/Ask-Ms-Class-Susan-Ohanian/dp/1571100253/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1250769358&sr=8-1
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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