Secrets

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The bell rang to mark the beginning of classes, which I'm partially happy to say that both Holly S and the children who had been watching her performance, made it to their perspective rooms with seconds to spare, able to escape the terrible punishment of having to eat food with their hands tied behind their backs.

However, if you have read my research on the Baudelaire case, which I highly discourage you not to do, you would recall that the education system at Prufrock Preparatory School was far from what one could consider satisfactory, a phrase which here means particularly interesting or useful in any sense of the word.

The teacher in Room One, where two of the four children from the auditorium were assigned, was a man named Mr. Remora, who had a dark thick moustache, which looked as if someone had chopped off a gorilla's thumb and stuck above his lip. Additionally, like various ape-like creatures, Mr. Remora also enjoyed eating bananas; which was fine and a rather healthy choice for an occasional snack, except that the teacher of Room One ate them continuously without stopping. I have recently become aware that an excessive amount of this yellow fruit can cause unpleasant side effects including poor absorption of any other foods and possible toxicity of the body, which need I remind you is an extremely unpleasant experience. Nevertheless, this risk did not seem to worry Mr. Remora as he would shove multiple bananas into his mouth during the entire class, drop the peels on the ground and smear banana pulp on his moustache, much to the disgust of his students. In between bites of this snack, he would tell tedious and fairly pointless short stories that seemed to have no academic value in which for the children in his class to learn anything useful or meaningful and every so often there would be a test about details of the boring stories.

Across the hall in Room Two, which housed two more of the children who had listened to Holly S in the auditorium, and the class was run by a woman by the name of Mrs. Bass. Mrs. Bass could also be seen to vaguely resemble a gorilla herself as she had thick black hair that was piled very high on her head. She was a poor teacher, a word that for this particular situation was someone who was considering a life of crime in order to obtain more money and she was obsessed with the metric system. Every day, she would bring in various objects including a mustard jar that she had found in her garage, a teacup with an extremely ugly pattern on the outside and an old flip-flop that had long since been broken and flattened due to it being run over by a train. Once all the objects were handed out, Mrs. Bass would should out "Measure!" and all her students would take the length, width, height, depth, radius, and circumference of each object, to which she would write them down on the blackboard, then the class would switch items, and every once in a while there would be a quiz on measurements.

As unpleasant and tedious as the lessons in both these rooms were, my research has been particularly difficult in finding the kinds of lessons which took place in Room Three, Holly's room.

As the girl rushed to the room, she did not even bother to knock which was often the polite thing to do when entering a room. However, when you do not want to be late for class and be forced to eat with your hands tied behind your back, such exceptions for rudeness could be made. Still, as Holly entered the room just as the bell rang, she was greeted by multiple pairs of staring eyes as the girl stands in the doorway, huffing and puffing as well as carrying a rather oddly shaped case with her.

"Cutting it very close on your first day Miss...uh..." the teacher at the front of the room said rather loudly. He looked down to examine his attendance.

Attendance is often known as a slip of paper that every teacher carried with them in order to ensure that the same number of children showed up to class every day. The list contains all the names of the students and the educator would then put a checkmark next to those who were present and an 'a' next to those who were not. After this, he or she would send a student down to the office with the marked list, so it could be recorded in the school's database.