With my underwear engirthing my head and sunshine on my naked bum, I speak my truth to the ladies gathered for Mother’s Rotary Club, as I always do.
Again I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake. “Please do not parade through my meetings naked again,” my mother reproaches me. It’s almost as if she forgets that I stand up for the unbridled and native!
O’ empty day in the bore of my classroom. Today Miss Woolley asked me to remove my hat, and I reminded her that I will wear it as I please. I resume my usual position in the time-out chair.
The blueberry muffin in my hand, possessing of sweet fruit. There will never be any more perfection than this, or more lusty an eater than I. My mother says I eat like an animal. For my turn, I think I could live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d, I stand and look at them long and long.
Today Mrs. Wooley asked why I was drawing animals on my worksheets again. The question, O me! so sad, recurring.
I let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, the book unopened, and watch Mrs. Wooley’s face shrivel like a wilted plum. If I gaze long enough she resembles a hedgehog, and I like her more.
Mum says I must cease disrupting her Rotary Club meetings with my soliloquies in third person. What am I, after all, but a child, pleas’d with the sound of my own name? Repeating it over and over; I stand apart to hear—it never tires me.
Today Mrs. Wooley asked me to solve for the number of autumnal apples. The fruit is not ripe and red from the orchard, but waxed and laced with chemical. She insults my soul.
I recall that unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved, none ever after-ward resumes its liberty. So to my teacher I replied: “Resist much, obey little!” Now I’m forbidden to play with the hypnotic rectangle that commands my thoughts.
Today I kept my face towards the sunshine, habited myself to the dirt, and bequeathed myself to the grass I love. My pants are soiled and my face surrender’d to the mud.
Mother thinks I’m asleep now, ha! How can I sleep when I sing the body electric? I will slumber no more, but arise the oceans within me.
My teacher is a sordid, pugnacious toe. When Mrs. Wooley summoned us to put on outdoor gear and resume our place in line, I announced “Let the school stand! Mind not the cry of the teacher!” Then I let loose the eddy of warm, pungent wind from between my legs. Everyone laughed, and now I must scrub all the lavatory commodes until the end of the year. I despise her very marrow.
I loafe in my classroom, witness and wait for the detonation of the whoopee cushion I have hidden in my teacher's chair. Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next, I wait both in and out of the game, watching and wondering at it. Soon from under Mrs. Wooley’s derriere, it sighs and groans, a pale echo of nature’s trumpet.
My mother was not happy to learn I was suspended from school for the entire year. Maybe I’ll cheer her with some performance art and sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
My poor, plodding mother, she has so little appreciation for whimsy. However, it gave the neighboring children great joy to watch my wolf-devouring-hare impersonation from the top of my house.
Next perhaps I shall be a rabid raccoon. I too am not a bit tamed.