/ Letter

Arthur Green
Carthage Middle School
21986 Cole Road
Carthage, NY 13619

Dear Mr. Green,

First off, you are probably retired, or may have even passed on, your crusty soul floating up even beyond the cirrus clouds due to its much lower density, much as your Earth Science lectures consistently hugged the linoleum, their density challenging the very foundation of the school building itself. You should have been the helium in my balloon of self-esteem, and yet you somehow left me deflated with a steady stream of negative particles and C minuses. Moreover, much as we once referred to a molecule as a compound atom, sulfur as brimstone, I am unsure if your name was, in fact, Arthur Green, though I can see your face in my mind. You were a wee, pasty man, the one teacher I could look square in the eyes. I was what? Twelve years old? It was difficult for both of us, Mr. G.

Still, I have a complaint, and it is this: you ruined for me what should have been my absolute favorite subject! I realize we intersected at a time when my classmates were still trying to fit developing breasts into pre-tweener clothing never meant to contain anything more pronounced than a bicycle scar, but we are talking volcanoes and fossils and clouds and minerals! I mean, come on, this is softball material, innit? I can imagine your spirit looking over my shoulder on any given workday, shedding an earnest tear as I conduct web searches for aquifers and moraines, fumaroles and lahars.

But you can bottle your pride, Mr. G., because these pursuits are those of an amateur. On our first day of class, you told us the tale of the Yeah-but, an imaginary pet that apparently each of us kept hidden in our Trapper Keepers, to release whenever a distraction was needed at homework time. An unlicensed animal.

You carried the analogy so very far that for awhile, we were convinced that such a creature did exist, that you kept the skeletons of these animals hidden underneath the bizarre cabinet with the sink, upon which you set your thermos. I tell you this, every one of us now knows the recipe for Irish coffee.

"Leave your Yeah-buts at home," you said.

We did, Mr. G. You know what else we left at home? Our burgeoning love of earth science. You were like the first girl we ever kissed, the one who chipped your front tooth and told all her friends that you smelled like Funyuns.