The Life of Bon: Just a little mistake...

Thursday, January 05, 2012

Just a little mistake...

On the whiteboard I had written three words:

"A whore's vengeance."

(Not my own words, a direct quote from Arthur Miller's The Crucible, mind you.)

My class was riveted, alive with deep thoughts and intelligent insights.  Is Abigail deserving of the name whore?  Is this really all about vengeance, or is there something more lurking underneath the surface?  How does one person's desire for revenge infect the entire community? Oh, we were digging deep, we were.

Then the bell rang, my juniors gathered up their books and shuffled out of the classroom, and in pounced my sophomores.  Oh, sophomores.  So energetic.  So unsuspecting.  So dumb.

I dived into my sophomore lesson, completely forgetting about the words that were left on the board.  We read, we took a quiz, we immersed ourselves in a heavy discussion.

Out of nowhere I heard Gail's peppy voice from the back row, "What does 'whore's' mean?"
I realized at once what she was looking at- my forgotten quote on the board.  "Is that like a horse?"

The class erupted in laughter.

I, myself, could not contain my own giggles.

And so I answered the only thing I could.  "Yes.  Yes, Gail.  That's exactly what it is."

Because afterall, who am I to tell little Gail the difference in a whore and a horse?


Abigail Williams... a most notorious horse whore.