Miss Lydia Fairbanks and the Losers Club

by Duane L. Ostler

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  One of Miss Fairbanks' greatest challenges now was how to respond when her students asked about the mysterious man who had caused such a strange reaction in her. This was aggravated by the quickly spreading rumor that he was her father, since several students had overheard him say this to Principal Clyde.

  In the end however, the solution proved far easier than one might suppose. "He was not my father," Miss Fairbanks would respond, her face always a bit white whenever she had to answer this question. "He was the man who killed my father long ago, who's been in the penitentiary ever since. I don't know why he's coming around, and don't want to know." And then she would quickly change the subject and move on to something else, trying to encourage people to forget about the incident. When several students suggested she might be in danger from the man, she simply blew it off, assuring them she was quite safe and was confident the man would do nothing to harm her.

  And so, life carried on at Inner City Junior High School. By now Miss Fairbanks' students had grown used to her timid, quiet ways and respected them. They unquestionably treated her differently than any of their other teachers. While other teachers would rant at them until they were red in the face for their students to "sit down and shut up and get to work" (which rantings were mostly ignored), the students piped down as soon as they entered her classroom without needing to be told, and policed themselves the whole time they were there. When other jealous teachers asked the kids why this was the case, most students would merely shrug and say, "Gee, I don't know. We just do, that's all." But among themselves they were more open, and knew it was for two reasons. First, her classes were always fun and zany, in a squeaky clean 'Miss Fairbanks' sort of way. Second, unlike all the other teachers who hated Inner City Junior High School, they somehow knew she cared about them.

  Miss Fairbanks' next writing assignment for her students was to write a fiction short story. But she didn't just dish out the assignment then sit back and ignore them while they went to work. Like all her projects, she presented the assignment in a bizarre way that sucked them in and made them want to do it.

  Her first period class was the first group to receive the assignment of course. After the bell rang, Miss Fairbanks went to the chalkboard and drew a random squiggle on it, which made no sense. Turning to the class she then said, "Would anyone like to volunteer to come up and draw in such a way that this squiggle will turn into a picture of a man with a big nose?"

  Everyone just looked at her as if she had once more lost her marbles. "There's no way that mess can be turned into a dude with a big nose," said Armpit Arnold, voicing the thought that was in all her of their minds.

  "Are you sure?" asked Miss Fairbanks mysteriously. "Look closely, and see if there isn't a way to do it."

  Her students all stared intently at the board. Then most of them shook their heads. "Can't be done," said the kid with purple hair.

  "Maybe it can," said Slapface, surprising everyone. "That little squiggle part down there could be part of his beard, and that straight line over there could be his ear--"

  "That's crazy!" said Arnold, jumping out of his seat. He went up to the board and pretended to follow Slapface's suggestions, succeeding only at messing up the squiggles and random lines into an even greater mess.

  "No, that's not it at all," said Slapface, coming up to the board and snatching the chalk out of Arnold's hand. For a minute it almost looked like he would punch her, but at the sight of her upraised hand, he decided against it. Her slaps always stung like sixty.

  Miss Fairbanks smiled as Slapface leaned over and worked on the mess on the board. She was blocking the view so no one could really see what she was doing. But when she turned around, to everyone's amazement there was indeed a picture of a rather ugly man with a big nose.

  "Thank you Joyce," said Miss Fairbanks, startling everyone by calling Slapface by her real name. There were a few sniggers at the name, but all it took was a glare from Slapface to make them stop. They knew they would experience intense facial pain after class if they kept it up.

  Miss Fairbanks now went to another part of the blackboard and drew another nonsense squiggle. Turning, she held out the chalk and said, "Who would like to turn this into a dog eating ice cream while riding a roller coaster?"

  "You're kidding!" said several voices at once. But this time there were more takers, and after a few floppy attempts by some of the students, the mess did somewhat come to resemble a very lopsided-looking dog slobbering something that could maybe be ice cream while riding on some wheeled thing that just might be a roller coaster.

  "Fascinating, isn't it?" said Miss Fairbanks after everyone had taken their seat. "There are some people who make a living at this. You see them sometimes at county fairs. They challenge someone to draw a squiggle on a paper, then turn that squiggle into a picture of that person's own face! Usually the person ends up buying the drawing."

  "Well, ya gotta be a pretty good artist to do that," scowled Armpit Arnold. "That dog looks more like he's eating peanut butter and riding on a scooter."

  "It takes practice of course," said Miss Fairbanks, flinging her arms wide in another one of her needless dramatic gestures. "But as it is with pictures, so it is with writing. Give a good writer any subject and any sentence--any at all, mind you--and he can weave it into a story that will move people to tears."

  "Anything the people in this class write will move me to tears!" yelled the kid with purple hair, since he couldn't resist the temptation.

  Miss Fairbanks ignored him and quickly erased the chalkboard, then wrote the word "Door knobs" in the upper left corner. In the bottom right hand corner she wrote, "A million dollars." Then in the middle of the board she wrote the following sentence: "As he was coming down the stairs, Fred tripped over the cat and went flying, sending the paint brushes he had been carrying soaring in all directions."

  Miss Fairbanks looked at her class triumphantly while they all just stared back dumbly. "THIS is your squiggle. You will take these seemingly messed up, nonsense words, and turn them into a picture. Only your picture will be made out of words of course, in the form of a fiction short story."

  There were a number of groans, cursing and grumbling from around the room. Miss Fairbanks knew this particular assignment was one she could not have given earlier, since her students would have revolted en masse. But she believed they had enough confidence in her--and in themselves, based on what they'd done so far in class--that they could do it now.

  "I have given you a topic in the upper left hand corner of the board. Your story needs to somehow be about door knobs. In the bottom right hand corner I have given you the result of the story--someone at the end will get a million dollars. In the middle is a sentence you MUST use somewhere in your story. I don't care where you put it, but it must be there and it must flow with the rest of the story and make sense. You can't just toss it in where it makes no sense at all. It must be part of the story."

  "You can't be serious!" growled Armpit Arnold at her.

  Miss Fairbanks raised an eyebrow. "Is it too much for you then? You don't think you can do it, because it's too hard for you?"

  "Well no, I didn't say that," said Arnold, turning red. "It's just stupid to go to all that work for nothing! All you'll get are a bunch of cruddy stories about nothing."

  "But isn't that the purpose of life?!" said Miss Fairbanks grandly, throwing her arms wide again. "Just how much sense does life make? Just how 'cruddy' are the things that happen every day? Stories are life, and life is a story. And in a writing class you write about both, which hopefully helps make sense of both."

  Now everyone was looking at her in confusion. Sensing their lack of comprehension, Miss Fairbanks simply said, "Just do it, okay? Get started. If you don't finish today, we can work on them more tomorrow--but don't just sit and dawdle! And remember, no profanity or sleezy, sexual stuff or you'll get an 'F' and I'll have to call your parents or your juvenile parole officer."

  There were groans from man
y in the room. This was not the sort of thing they wanted to have happen on a Monday. Why couldn't she have something more fun, like she often did?

  But of course, Miss Fairbanks knew something they did not. She knew that 'fun' is relative, and is an ever moving target. Aim at it, and you're likely to miss, but try doing something else for awhile and it will likely come to you. And surprisingly, 'fun' often comes from doing something a little harder and more demanding than usual. When it's over, you can look back with a thrill of accomplishment and say in amazement, "Gee! I actually did that, and it was kind of fun!" And that's what this assignment was all about.

  In spite of Arnold's grumblings, Miss Fairbanks noticed he was among the first to get started, and one of those who worked most intensely on the effort. Watching his face when he didn't think she was looking, she often noticed him smile in delight as a new, weird thought hit him about what to put into his story that would once again 'knock her socks off.'

  She smiled contentedly. Give students a mere assignment to 'write a story,' and most of them will flounder and moan that they don't know what to write about. But give them a theme and a direction, and that little problem is avoided. Then if the theme and the direction are bizarre enough, what otherwise might be a boring or tedious assignment becomes rather surprisingly fun in the end.

  And so it went throughout the day. There were the same groans and complaints as always from most of the students, but in the end they rose to the occasion and got to work. She knew they would, because she'd seen how they'd performed in the past. And as she watched, she could tell that most of them were enjoying the process in spite of themselves.

  Miss Fairbanks had one little surprise during the day however. Mr. Brek unexpectedly walked into her fourth period class, just after the first squiggle on the blackboard had been transformed by one of the students into a kangaroo wearing a bow tie. "Don't mind me," he said casually as he made his rumbling way across the room and took his accustomed seat by the window. For a moment Miss Fairbanks felt completely flustered, her mind having gone blank. Why did his sudden presence have that bizarre effect on her? She suddenly felt rather angry at herself, and told herself she was being silly and to just ignore the big oaf. If the crazy man wanted to join an hour of creative fiction writing rather than sleep, that was his business. Using all her willpower to drive him from her mind, she continued with her lesson.

  But to her amazement, when the assignment had been given and all of her students starting writing their stories about door knobs, he joined them as well! In fact, he wrote as fast and furiously as they did, causing Miss Fairbanks to shake her head in amusement. This was truly bizarre.

  When fourth period ended, he folded up his paper and put it in his pocket. "I'll be back to finish it tomorrow, along with everybody else," he said casually as he walked out the door. She just frowned as he left, determined to NOT get flustered when he showed up tomorrow.

  Like Mr. Brek, most of her students had not finished their stories either. Not that Miss Fairbanks was worried about it. She knew that in THIS school assigning homework made about as much sense as asking a brick wall to do the tango, so she always made sure her students did all of their work during class. She figured if they were sufficiently inspired, they might do more writing on their own time, at home.

  And so the week went, with crazy stories about door knobs, soaring paint brushes and a cat stupid enough to sit on the stairs where someone could trip over him. And what Miss Fairbanks had told her students proved to be true. Every one of them was able to come up with a door knob story that used the sentence and ended with a million dollars. And yet, every one of their stories was completely different. They had each turned mindless scribbles into something that made sense. And some of the stories were pretty amazing!

  For example, Armpit Arnold wrote how an alien from Venus had zapped all the door knobs on earth, making them disappear. When an artist working in his attic heard about it, he rushed downstairs carrying all his paint brushes because he wanted to paint the panic of people trying to cope without door knobs. Unfortunately he tripped over his cat on the way down, and had to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance. But the rear door of the ambulance wouldn't close (because the door knob was gone), so his gurney slid out onto the street. Because the gurney was on wheels it kept going down the street, then zipped into a bank and into an open bank vault (which was open because it no longer had a door knob). A million dollars in the bank vault fell on the artist, causing him to both be rich and nearly die from money suffocation at the same time.

  Other stories were equally bizarre. One told of an inventor who created a spray that made door knobs grow bigger than watermelons, and made them start spitting out money. Another told of a door knob thief who melted down all the metal from the knobs and sold it to earn his million dollars. And Mr. Brek in his story told how a bouncer at a bar got a tip for a million dollars from a drunk who owned a door knob factory. He had some trouble working in the paintbrush-cat-stairs thing, but finally solved it by making his bouncer visit an artist friend at the city museum, where a stray cat just happened to be sleeping on the stairs.

  On the day Miss Fairbanks handed back the graded papers to her students (she was a very generous grader, giving them mostly A's if they made much effort), Mr. Brek was there during fourth period to receive his. "This is crazy," said Miss Fairbanks as she handed him his paper with a frown. "You don't need a grade!"

  "But I do!" he replied casually, smiling with pleasure at his 'A' grade. "I never wrote a story about door knobs when I was in school. In fact, I never wrote about nothin'. I hated writing. But now it's not so bad."

  Miss Fairbanks gave him a critical look. "I'm glad to hear that," she said slowly. "And if the reason you're coming around is because you've decided I should pay you that money I promised, then--"

  Mr. Brek instantly pulled out his wallet and lighter. "No, no!" said Miss Fairbanks quickly. "Don't do it! Okay, so you're not coming around for the money!"

  Mr. Brek put his wallet back and smiled. "I come because life is more than standing outside a bar all night, and lying in bed sleeping all day." He didn't expound, and Miss Fairbanks didn't press him on it. Indeed, she had to admit, there was a lot of truth in what he'd said.