Dear Teacher Who Brings Doughnuts,
Her arms are carrying plastic bags filled with everything a student needs to be successful on the statewide writing assessment: nine gallons of chocolate milk and 23 dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts.
Kids are happy. Life is good, and if it ain’t, well it’s not the doughnut’s fault.
After all, if licking caramelized sugar off your fingers twenty two minutes before espousing riveting claims on uniform policies is wrong, then show me a teenager who wants to be right.
Without question, the Over the Top Oreo doughnuts are the crowd pleaser. At $14.99 per dozen, they better be.
Recently, I heard a rumbling that Florida’s governor is considering a $1,000 bonus for teachers who have gone above and beyond with extra COVID responsibilities, but I think we all know it’s really reimbursement for the doughnuts teachers didn’t have to buy but did.
Cheerful givers are always rewarded. It says so in my all-time favorite book.
In talking with the teachers hosting this breakfast soirée, I asked how many kids they were expecting before school. “Anywhere from seven to 340,” they rationalized.
And wouldn’t you know, when all was said and done, 827 of those heifers showed up. Not really, but when you’re feeding teenagers, it always feels like a thousand.
Because of the slightly skewed projections, each kid was relegated to 1/9th of an Over the Top Oreo delight. This begs the question, should the flavor of the month name be changed to Under the Bottom, which is where Nathan’s essay will end up if he tells his teacher one more time that he wants to learn to write a betterly conclusion.
She has tried. God knows she has. Her organizers and pneumonic devices have failed her. She knows because when she tells him to remember his acronym for how to write a betterly conclusion, he asks, “What’s an acronym?”
Instead of grabbing her purse and fleeing the premises, she grabs an Over the Top Oreo delight and holds it up in front of the class, not 1/8th or 1/9th of a piece, she holds up the whole doughnut and like a goddess of victory declares, “Do you guys see this? I’ve earned every last bite of it.”
She relishes with delight, licks her fingers, then further adds, “Listen, if you haven’t learned to write a betterly conclusion by now, I can’t help you anymore, but please, please remember whatever you do, do not end with a question.”
“Do you hear me?”
-CDB