B4

So I hit my second grade teacher with a ruler and barely missed her eye. The story long, boring drenched in old school racial slurs and mordent postmodern spirituals. I often wonder the trajectory of my life, had I been a better shot, or a male child. Surely a stint at Spofford. My opponent, Ms. Burger a throwback of a woman, thought I to be a monkey swinging thru the African bush, and shared this freely with my six year old mind. Yet it was she who resembled a wart hog. Her slur though heard by one and all not grounds for a dismissal. Instead we were forced to rumble in cage match stillness dividing up macro fractions with my hands now folded "neatly on desk."

Thus began the arduous task of schooling Shorty left-hand. The teachers grew afraid of her complicated "airs" tried to package her intellect and ship the girl off to prep school with speeches of grandiose American dreams. Pint-sized Shorty left-hand could barely carry her rage-filled notebooks and had no time for dreams of any nationality, she pragmatic slide rule pitcher.... Legend grew when pops almighty entered the schoolyard with a length of tan leather wrapped in righteous indignation and beat her in front of the assembled - Ms. Burger spinning with delight. The lips did not quiver nor did she shed a tear, her legs bloody as a kill on the African savannah.

The story unfinished as Shorty would live to fight again, defending her young soul from project dope fiends, cracked-out perverts and assorted trenchant ills born of the urban jungle. She grew and prospered a lone reedy vine on parched desert plains. Silently thanking the rabid wildebeest for her awakening.