donât dismantle the margin control springs to use as bracelets or pick off the keys one by one till theyâve spelled their first, nick- and surnames in their pockets. Some of the students continue to mutilate the machines no matter what I do. Every day I find several Tab, Mar Rel and Back Space keys on the floor after I heard them pinging off the blackboard. Also, the large bolts and wing nuts that secure the machines to their tables and a variety of less familiar parts that Iâm sure come from inside the machine though I canât locate where. Even if several students in each class remain fascinated by the machines and type every lesson I give them, Iâve gradually become incensed with my inability to control the majority of students and reduce their vandalism, and during the last period today I accused two boys of maliciously destroying their margin controls and not even having the simple skill it took to do the job cleanly, though the only proof I had for either charge were the two margin control springs in their hands.
âThey were on the floor when we got here,â one of the boys said. I said âBullcrap and you know itâ and threatened to tell their homeroom teacher of their abuse of school property and hold up their final report cards, and right after school to phone their parents and demand they pay for the repair of the machines. I wasnât going to make any such calls or even see their teacher. All I ever do after school is hurry home, shower, snack, have a beer, change to street clothes and walk in the park and read and sketch there for a while or lie on my bed and sleep. Besides, the city has a cover repair contract with a typewriter service that includes everything but the replacement of parts, and what would a couple of margin control springs cost? I asked for the boysâ phone numbers. One said he didnât have a phone and lived with his oldest sister and her kids and the other said he lived on a roof of a building Iâd be cut up in if I was ever so dumb to step an inch inside and I shouldnât be trying to push them around as the only thing strong about me is my breath. Instead of hoisting him out of his seat and demanding an apology, which I felt like doing but which could end up with a corporal punishment charge brought against me, I said âAll right, maybe you didnât do it, but at the rate these machines are being mistreated there wonât be one left to type on in a week,â and went to the supply closet and pretended to be looking for something and came across a stack of old school annuals called Terminations . The teacher Iâm subbing for must have saved every issue of the annual since the school opened twelve years ago. To waste time till the bell rang I began flipping through the top copyâlast yearâs annualâand got caught up in the way the appearances of so many students and teachers I know had changed so radically in just a year. How one teacher with a full head of hair now was in the annual totally bald. How an attractive female teacher then had gained about a hundred pounds since the photo was taken and another teacher looked so different without his present long side-burns, mustache, ear stud and shoulder-length hair. I opened the Terminations of two years ago, expecting to see even greater contrasts and transformations in these and other teachers and from there to proceed to later issues till I had read in reverse order them all, when I saw in a photograph of a ninth-grade glass that one of the girls sitting solemnly in the front row looked very much like the young woman I see every day on my way to work. A few of my students were still typing the warm-up exercises. My prize student was copying from her lesson book the long business letter to a cement company about its basement construction costs. Most of the students were congregated around the phonograph in the back of the room, singing and dancing to their records
âThey were on the floor when we got here,â one of the boys said. I said âBullcrap and you know itâ and threatened to tell their homeroom teacher of their abuse of school property and hold up their final report cards, and right after school to phone their parents and demand they pay for the repair of the machines. I wasnât going to make any such calls or even see their teacher. All I ever do after school is hurry home, shower, snack, have a beer, change to street clothes and walk in the park and read and sketch there for a while or lie on my bed and sleep. Besides, the city has a cover repair contract with a typewriter service that includes everything but the replacement of parts, and what would a couple of margin control springs cost? I asked for the boysâ phone numbers. One said he didnât have a phone and lived with his oldest sister and her kids and the other said he lived on a roof of a building Iâd be cut up in if I was ever so dumb to step an inch inside and I shouldnât be trying to push them around as the only thing strong about me is my breath. Instead of hoisting him out of his seat and demanding an apology, which I felt like doing but which could end up with a corporal punishment charge brought against me, I said âAll right, maybe you didnât do it, but at the rate these machines are being mistreated there wonât be one left to type on in a week,â and went to the supply closet and pretended to be looking for something and came across a stack of old school annuals called Terminations . The teacher Iâm subbing for must have saved every issue of the annual since the school opened twelve years ago. To waste time till the bell rang I began flipping through the top copyâlast yearâs annualâand got caught up in the way the appearances of so many students and teachers I know had changed so radically in just a year. How one teacher with a full head of hair now was in the annual totally bald. How an attractive female teacher then had gained about a hundred pounds since the photo was taken and another teacher looked so different without his present long side-burns, mustache, ear stud and shoulder-length hair. I opened the Terminations of two years ago, expecting to see even greater contrasts and transformations in these and other teachers and from there to proceed to later issues till I had read in reverse order them all, when I saw in a photograph of a ninth-grade glass that one of the girls sitting solemnly in the front row looked very much like the young woman I see every day on my way to work. A few of my students were still typing the warm-up exercises. My prize student was copying from her lesson book the long business letter to a cement company about its basement construction costs. Most of the students were congregated around the phonograph in the back of the room, singing and dancing to their records
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