WANTED: Love of my Life

04. The Momentous Announcement

“Tomorrow, we're going on a school trip to a homeless shelter,” Miss Ellis announced. Disappointed? No? Not even a bit? Liar!

It was two classes later, in social studies, my favorite subject. And no, I'm not mental. In my defense I have to say that my preference didn't spring from the subject itself, but rather from our teacher. Miss Ellis was as tight-lipped and terse as a teacher could get. She handed out detentions more often than the postman letters and was the only one of the teachers at school that didn't try to be kind and forgiving to her students – probably because she was the only teacher at school who didn't think much of Christian forgiveness if it involved her having to forgive her students for being lazy.

In short, she was a bitch. But at least she was an interesting and honest bitch.

The first day I met her, she had come into the classroom, slammed her suitcase onto the table and said: “All right. I guess none of you really want to be here. Can't blame you. Social studies is more or less useless if you're thinking of getting a job some day. But on the other hand, I'm not here to teach you how to get a job. I'm here to teach you what happens if you don't.”

The rest of the day, she had bombarded us with deadly dull employment statistics. The next day, she had brought a drunken, unemployed mechanic into school. He told us how much life sucked if you didn't have booze and then vomited out of the window. It left a lasting impression on all of us. For the next two or three weeks, our working morale had improved significantly.

After a while I realized that there actually was a connection between those boring statistics and the window-vomiter. The realization didn't help me get any better in any of the many subjects I had problems with, but it made me try. And it made me made to listen to Miss Ellis, which was more than any other teacher had so far been able to achieve.

I snapped back to the present. Miss Ellis was still talking about the homeless shelter she was going to take us to. “It is an institution here in San Francisco, so it isn't far,” Mrs Ellis continued. “But you will need to bring me a signed permission slip from your parents. I strongly suggest you do so. The trip should be educational for all of you. Some of you might even want to have a look at their future home.”

She let her eyes wander over the assembled students, as if trying to detect the future good-for-nothing slackers with her special x-ray vision. Who knew, perhaps she could?

“This will not be a normal field trip. You will be participating in the running of the homeless shelter. I have made arrangements with the staff there. You will cook, scrub floors, and make yourselves useful in any other...”

Her voice drowned in a sea of protest shouts. But Miss Ellis would brook no opposition.

“Silence! Silence I said!” She slammed a wooden ruler on her desk and the room went quiet. “Valuable lessons are never pleasant to learn. If I've not managed to teach you anything else up to this point, I had hoped to have taught you at least that much.”

She had. At least I had gotten it. It's not pleasant to clean up a puddle of half-digested beer from the school yard as a school project, even if I did get an A for it.

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

When the bell for lunch break rang, I and my three best friends were the first out the door. I was the first to reach the stairs and started down, taking two steps at a time. On the first landing, I noticed that somebody was missing. Looking back, I saw that Sandra had halted at the top of the stairs.

“Hey Sandra,” I called. “What's up?”

“You... you know that we're supposed to eat in the cafeteria.”