What I've Been Trying To Do At Work

I'm not finished. This is a first draft with a quick run through MS Word's spell/grammar check.

I just thought I share.

It doesn't have a title, either.

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Herbert sat in the classroom hating. He hated his classmates. He hated how they could all get together in pairs or small groups and he was stuck without anyone. He hated the teacher for letting them ignore him. He hated the school for having a few too many students for the third, fourth, and fifth grades and creating a class for the extra. He hated that his only friend, Anne, was in that other class. He hated that the other class had recess at a different time because the third graders were just little kids and needed it earlier. And he hated his name.

Herbert.

To the kids he hated his name meant he was either a sort of ice cream, even though there's no "r" anywhere near the "t", or dry, green things sprinkled over a chicken before it's roasted. After the movie came out, he was a car. There was just no way for him to win with his name.

He once asked his mom if he go by his middle name, Arthur, so that no matter what other thought and said, he'd know that his name was one shared by a great leader. She said that he couldn't. She said that his name was his grandfathers and then asked him if he'd like to disappoint his grandfather by choosing to be called Arthur rather than Herbert. He just hung his head and mumbled no before shuffling off to his room.

Herbert was stuck with his name just like he was stuck with his classmates. There was nothing he could do about it.

"Take out your readers," said Mrs. Janowski, lifting up her copy and opening it. "Turn to page 173, please."

Herbert lifted the top of his desk, pulled out his book, and placed it on his desk. The rest of the class seemed to have trouble because there was talking between students and clunking in desks and Alex fell out of his seat. Herbert sighed, rolled his eyes, opened the book, and wondered what was wrong with everyone else.

"Settle down, class," said Mrs. Janowski. "Settle."

Mrs. Janowski was old, but not that old. Not as old as his last teacher, who was about the same as Herbert's grandparents. She was older than his parent's, though. She had short blonde hair that was sort of puffy. He liked to imagine that the way she got it cut was by sticking her finger in a light socket so it stuck up everywhere then made a force field around her head in a perfect bubble which cut all the hair poking out, but he knew that's not really how her hair was cut. She also had glasses that she only needed when she read something, so when she would ask the class a question, she'd move them to the end of her nose and look over the frames or she'd put them up in her hair, where they never seemed to move, not even a jiggle, like she had some creatures with sticky fingers and sticky feet living in there who were only there to keep the glasses on her head because she always seemed to give her glasses a sharp tug to pull them out. He also knew that there weren't any creatures on her head, unless she had lice, like Jamie did last year, but those didn't have anything to do with glasses.

"Class, settle down," she said.

Herbert didn't know how long she had been teaching, but even with his few years in school he knew that saying "settle" wasn't a way to calm kids down. He thought that a bomb dropping in the room probably wouldn't settle these people down. He knew, though, that no bomb would be dropped on the class and it was silly to even think it.

He sighed again and started to read the story on the page. It was a chapter from a book about a boy and his dog, like too many of the stories in the reader. He rolled his eyes at the story because he knew how it would end: either the boy would start to grow up and leave the dog behind because the older he got the more he just forgot about the things he liked as a kid, or the dog would do something heroic, probably rescuing the boy from a bear or mountain lion, and die which would make the boy sad, but losing the things that were important to a kid is part of growing up and the boy will be a better person because the dog died.

Herbert hated stories about a boy and his dog. He wished he could read a story about a kid who was normal. A kid who lived in a little town and went to a little school. A kid who had a pet lizard that was magic and would make the day more fun by changing erasers into tiny pigs and pencils into little men that liked to wrestle the eraser pigs. And they'd go on adventures in the playground by shrinking and trying not to get squashed by the other students or by encouraging the trees to get up and block the doors so no one could get in or out.

"Class," said Mrs. Janowski in her no-more-nonsense tone.

The class quieted.

"Open to page 173," she said. "Today, instead of splitting into our usual reading groups, I though it would be nice to read out loud together. Who wants to go first?"

Jamie's hand shot up and started to wiggle around. She sat right in front of Herbert and always came to school in light colored (today's was a light purple), fluffy dresses. She had really short hair that was almost black and freckles all over her cheeks and arms. Jamie was always the first to volunteer to do something or answer a question for the teacher. She was like a little yappy dog, too. She couldn't be still when she was excited. Her hand shivered when she put it in the air. At recess, while waiting in line for the swings she'd start shaking and the shaking would get worse the closer she got to it being her turn. Sometimes, Herbert thought that she could shake herself apart if she had to wait too long for the swings, but he knew that people didn't shake apart. He figured that if Tinkerbell was real, she'd look and act an awful lot like Jamie.

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For the record, even though she hasn't appeared yet, I created Anne during my last year of college in a short story I wrote for my only creative writing class. I don't want anyone to read into her character when actually does appear.