Local Domain

I wish this woman would just lay off. She keeps telling me about these doctors she’s so wild about over in Elmwood Place. It’s gotten to where I try not to sit too near her in the teacher’s lounge. She never stops! Yesterday morning I was walking down the hall to my classroom, my mind on a hundred different things as usual. Suddenly there she is, Cornelia of third-grade Room 114, looking like she gained another five pounds from all those candy bars she can’t stop munching on. She asks me is something wrong with my eye. For heaven’s sake, I was just rubbing sleep out! It’s eight in the morning, what does she expect? Then she won’t even let me unlock the door to my room. Listen, she says. I’ve got this really good deal on Lasik surgery for your eyes if you want it. She starts yapping about this Dr. Mann. Obviously she has a crush on Dr. Mann, because he’s all she ever talks about. Does she talk about him with her third-graders, too? I can just see it, they’re either laughing themselves silly or bored out of their minds. That’s all Mrs. Herbalus ever talks about is Dr. Mann, Dr. Mann, lives his life in a garbage can. I’ll bet they’ve already made up 10 or 20 nasty rhymes behind her back. Those poor kids. Oh, what the hey, I’m lucky if I can control my first-graders. I’m lucky if I can teach any of them to read. Sometimes I wish it was 1958 or 1965. They all call each other on cell phones all day long and they all have blackberries so they can watch cartoons or play video games during class. Yeeks! All except Jonathan, that is. His parents can’t afford any of that stuff. They live in a little old farmhouse out on Delhi Road.