Bel Kaufman - Up The Down Staircase

I am tired.

I had set out to tell you exactly what happened. But since I am the one writing this, how do I know what in my telling I am selecting, omitting, emphasizing; what unconscious editing I am doing? Why was I more interested in the one black sheep (I use Ferone's own cliché) than in all the white lambs in my care? Why did I (in my red suit) call him a child? Am I, by asking questions, distorting something pure? The heart has its reasons; it's the mind that's suspect.

You've read my letters from the very beginning, from the first day of school. How callow I must have been, how impatient and intolerant and naive and remote and gullible and sure of myself. And how mistaken.

It is almost morning; the alarm is set for 6:30. I have been writing and writing. "Words are all we have," I once said. Wrong again. Whatever the name for love, and there are many, it can be as silent as an unspoken word, as simple as a touch.

I must try to get some sleep. Tomorrow is our topsy-turvy day, when teachers turn into kids, kids into teachers. A fitting climax.

All my love,

Syl

P. S. Did you know that 50% of the time I've been barking up all the wrong trees?

S.

INTRASCHOOL COMMUNICATION

FROM: H. Pastorfield

TO: S. Barrett

Dear Sylvia—

Isn't this fun?

Have you got a Teacher for a Day kid this period? I get a bang out of turning the classes over to the kids and pretending I can't spell cat!

Would you like to join the party in my room? Bring your kids! Wer'e having a "Tables Are Turned" ball!

Henrietta

INTRASCHOOL COMMUNICATION

FROM: 508

TO: 304

Dear Syl—

How are you doing? You looked awful this morning! Don't let the tumult in the halls rattle you. The wild giggles, the dunce caps, the screams for late passes are mostly high spirits.

But some of it is malice. This is the day for vengeance. I understand Loomis got a zero in Math. One of his kids had spent weeks laying the foundation: a tough question he got from someone in Graduate Math Dept. at Berkeley.

How did your interview with Ferone go yesterday?

See you at Faculty Frolic this afternoon!

Bea

Dear Miss Barrett,

Joseph Ferone of your official class is absent today, but you neglected to fill out Postal card #1 (Reason for Absence).

Sadie Finch

Chief Clerk

Dear Sylvia,

Do you happen to have an aspirin?

Please send it to nurse's office—they got me to cover it while she's lying down.

Mary

FROM: JAMES J. MCHABE ADM. ASST.

TO: ALL TEACHERS

DURING TODAY'S ABNORMAL SCHEDULE TEACHERS SHOULD KEEP DISRUPTION AT A MINIMUM. THERE WILL BE A SERIES OF THREE BELLS REPEATED FOUR TIMES TO INDICATE EARLY DISMISSAL.

FACULTY FROLIC WILL BEGIN PROMPTLY AFTER THAT.

TEACHERS MUST NOT PUNCH OUT BEFORE THEIR REGULAR TIME.

JJ McH

Sylvia!

May I borrow your phonograph? School phonograph doesn't work.

Also—stage curtain is stuck. Can you spare a couple of tall kids to be curtain-pullers?

I hope you like the show. All is madness down here. Music, lights, props, costumes—nothing works. Manheim forgot all his lines, Yum-Yum is absent, and there are hoodlums (not ours) lurking in the auditorium.

It augurs well—

Paul

FROM: JAMES J. MCHABE, ADM. ASST.

TO: ALL TEACHERS

DUE TO UNUSUAL CIRCUMSTANCES THERE IS NO ONE PATROLLING THE HALLS AND ENTRANCES TO CHALLENGE UNAUTHORIZED VISITORS. TEACHERS WITH FREE TIME ARE TO REPORT TO THE OFFICE FOR PATROL ASSIGNMENTS.

JJ McH

Sylvia!

Urgent! Can you get from one of your kids a Japanese fan and some hair lacquer? If no fan is available, a ping-pong racket will do.

Hurriedly,

Paul

(Will you come backstage to help with makeup?)

TO: ALL TEACHERS

Please ignore previous instructions about today's bell schedule. There will be a series of four bells repeated twice to indicate early dismissal. Three bells repeated four times indicates fire drill and we wish to avoid confusion.

Sadie Finch

Chief Clerk

Sylvia!

Can you spate two more boys (husky) to hold up backdrop? It got unglued. Also need an obi —ask around. We’ll be ready in a few minutes. Be sure to yell: "Author, author!"

Paul

(Or any wide sash)

TO: ALL TEACHERS

Please disregard bells. There has been a delay in the Faculty Show. Keep students in rooms until further notice.

Sadie Finch

Chief Clerk

TO: ALL TEACHERS

Please disregard previous notice about disregarding bells, since most students are now in auditorium.

Sadie Finch

Chief Clerk

FROM: JAMES J. MCHABE, ADM. ASST.

TO: ALL TEACHERS

BECAUSE OF UNRULINESS IN CLASSROOMS, TODAY'S EARLY DISMISSAL TOOK PLACE EARLIER THAN ANTICIPATED. TEACHERS ARE TO PROCEED TO AUDITORIUM AT ONCE.

JJ McH

December 22

Dear Ellen,

I'm writing this from the hospital, where I am bedded down with a fractured foot; nothing serious, but a nuisance, since I’ll be laid up during the busiest time of the term: the holidays!

I was wounded in the line of duty. I might even say above and beyond. I was felled by an unhinged door with a pagoda on it.

I was not attacked or knifed; I fought no issue; proved no point. I had merely gone backstage, in the auditorium, to help Paul during the Faculty Frolic.

That whole afternoon was as macabre as a newsreel Mardi-Gras bobbing towards its grotesque denouement. Harry Kagan, as Clarke, prissy at the lectern; teachers in blue jeans and sneakers licking oversize lollipops or ostentatiously pulling bubble gum from their mouths in an exaggerated attempt at playing the good sport. Remember what's-his-name at Lyons Hall—the professor who used to perch on the windowsill in shirtsleeves and suspenders, munching a sandwich to show that he was one of us? Here was the same kind of phony camaraderie—only it got wilder and wilder. Teachers with skipping ropes, balloons, yo-yos; teachers in Japanese kimonos, pencils stuck in their lacquered hair, singing and dancing in a kind of parody of a parody: the Barringer "Mikado," to the stamping and whistling of kids jammed into the auditorium; and a separate, desperate whistle from McHabe. That was during the garbage-throwing.

I must explain that some outside kids—from a neighborhood gang, or students on suspension, or dropouts—who somehow got wind of the fact that there was a show going on, gained entry into the auditorium with contraband garbage, which they proceeded to throw around. They must have aimed it at the stage, but it landed on the audience: our kids. Naturally, ours threw it right back; they threw it back at ours; and so it went, back and forth, for a few rank moments. The auditorium, being windowless, and overflowing with the overflow of both X2 and Y2 kids, was already stifling. Eventually, the visitors were ejected, the garbage was trampled until it got lost, and the show went on.

I'm sure the songs were clever; it was impossible to hear because of the commotion. By this time I was backstage—that's when the pagoda fell on my foot. Or rather, the backdrop, which was a door, painted black with a red and gold pagoda on it. I don't know where it had originally been hinged—possibly a bank; it was heavy as metal. It hurt like hell.