| IN GOOD HUMOR |
OLD SCHOOL by Doreen Rosevold
I
t was hard to imagine her career would end the way it did. There was no beauty or excitement in her life, but Miss Bowman was an icon as a history and English teacher for generations. When parents spoke of their fear of her to their first-born children who were about to enter high school, their voices cracked and their bottom lips quivered. For
generations of parents there was no time to warn about drugs, strangers and unprotected sex; Miss Bowman was the immediate threat. As children often do, they dismissed their parents’ dire warnings as “lame”. Those children entered the doors of the high school with heightened egos and swagger, confident they could bring down even the most veteran teacher. By evening on the first day of school, the children’s heads were bowed in defeat. The parents did not even have to ask why. They knew. Miss Bowman had given her “welcome back to school speech”. As a physical presence, Miss Bowman was undistinguished. The menace in her good eye (the one that pointed in your direction, while the other eye checked out the other side of the room) was
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