Mrs. Fletcher, Math Troll

Dear Dad,

 

I officially do not love Junior High School.

 

Big surprise there, I know. I didn’t expect it to be like Disneyland or anything, but you know, I thought it would be cool to hang out with only teenagers. Now all I do is school. School has taken over my life. I don’t think school should be that much of a priority. It seems to me that the whole school system is a bad way to learn. I mean, personally, I am much more excited about summer vacation than I am about school. And so is every other kid. So doesn’t it make sense to make school more like vacation and do away with all this annoying crap like teachers and classrooms and stupid posters on the wall about dental hygiene like the one in our homeroom with the worm coming out of the apple?

 

Now that vacation is over, I get up, get ready for school, get driven to school, then go from homeroom to P.E. to social studies to Bible to English to lunch to math to science and then to soccer practice (the school team!) and then home to do homework (from school!) and then to bed. Tell me one person who thinks that is a good way to live? No kids, for sure. And you know all the teachers would rather be on vacation, too. So why do we do it?

 

My math teacher’s name is Mrs. Fletcher and she looks like a troll. She’s about five feet tall with short, red hair cut like a boy, a red nose and tons of wrinkles and she talks like a troll, too, like she’s smoked too much or got punched in the throat. It wouldn’t really surprise me if she did get punched in the throat, because she is an evil woman and there are probably 10,000 kids who wouldn’t mind taking a swing at that saggy, wrinkly throat of hers.

 

Mrs. Fletcher doesn’t look interesting enough to be a smoker. When I think of smokers, I think of people like Aunty Iola, who holds the cigarette in one hand and the whiskey glass in the other. Aunty Iola is still around, by the way, meaning that she hasn’t died. She’s still really cool and actually really smart, too. I like how you can smell the smoke and whiskey on her breath when she kisses you. Man, she’s got an awful cough, though.

 

I can’t imagine Mrs. Fletcher drinking whiskey. I guess I can imagine her drinking something else, though. Something really awful. Milk that’s gone bad. Or maybe just plain old human blood. She so clearly doesn’t like kids. She said that anyone who got less than a C on the take-home test last night was what she likes to call a “math idiot.” A C? I swear, Mrs. Rommel didn’t teach us half that stuff last year, so I’ll probably be in that group, but at least I’m not a troll. She’s a math troll.

 

Why do people who don’t like kids become teachers? It makes no sense. Mrs. Fletcher should have got a job in a laboratory or the city morgue or some place where she wouldn’t have to talk to people. She’d get along great with dead bodies. Or she should be a guard in a woman’s prison. Then she could get punched in the throat every day.

 

You probably don’t know this, but there was this guy in grade school named Brian Haase. We used to fight all the time. His best friend from last year, Max Baxter, left to go to another school. Brian and Max were the biggest bullies of grade school. He is in almost all my classes and comes up and talks to me all the time. He actually seems pretty cool. Since Donnie is now always having lunch with his “girlfriend,” I’ve been eating my lunch with Brian. We talk about all the fights we were in over the years. I won most of them, by the way, even if he says he won his share. I don’t blame him for lying. I’d lie too if I lost fights. I don’t think I lost any. Maybe a couple. Anyway, Brian is a lot nicer this year.

 

I guess that’s another thing that’s different about junior high school. Everyone changes.

 

Your son,

 

Trevor

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