Once upon a time, there was a teacher in the strange land of Spanish Fork.She assigned her 7th graders to write a thing called a Poem for Two Voices, but because they had never heard of such a thing, she offered examples for them to read. She passed the examples out, but she didn't reread them beforehand, and so missed the fact that there was a Word in one of them. A Word most horrible and distasteful.
That word was Hell. Used as a noun.
(Pause for dramatic emphasis)
And lo, when the 7th graders came upon the Word, they gasped and shuddered, just as I am sure you are doing right now.
And they said, "Miss Winegar, do we have to read this word out loud?" And their benevolent teacher looked at them with dismay and said, "Of course not, dear children! I am so sorry for exposing you to anything so depraved!" And so they replaced it with "Heck" and all was well.
But behold, one of the children was a bad child. He had no problem with the Word and read it OUT LOUD for all to hear. And the children gasped louder and shunned the child.
But a good little child read the poem next and substituted the word "Heck" for the horrible word and everyone told him what a good thing he had done by not swearing.
And the teacher winked and gave a thumbs up to the bad child for not being afraid of a word that is in the BIBLE and has been said in multiple sessions of GENERAL CONFERENCE, especially when used as the name of a place and not as a curse.
But she secretly prayed that she would receive no horrified phone calls from shocked parents, because you never know what can happen when you are in such a strange land.
Note: This is how I told the story to Nate Kartchner and I thought I was so funny I decided to post it. I think I was inspired by the Vidal Sassoon writing style.
6 comments:
Oh Megan. You just spout funny-ness all over the place. I loved this. I loved it because I used to be that seventh grader that would have freaked out at saying "hell" out loud (though my father and ALL of my grandparents say it rather often, place or not...) and I appreciate the whole situation so much. It was so funny. This is twice in a day that your blog has made me laugh so hard that my sides hurt. (I liked the one about the plug too...)
awesome. gotta love utah.
Megan! I'm offended by your flippant use of a certain Noun-That-Shall-Not-Be-Typed! But the damage has been done... the acrid Word has been seared into my memory. I hope you're happy.
Expect a phone call from my mother.
Megan, "hell" is a bad word, and you shouldn't say the word hell in a classroom, you shouldn't say "hell" in church, you should NEVER say "hell". Ever. It is a bad word, and you should never say "hell" in any kind of context.
Ok, kidding of course, but after I wrote that several times, it started to look severely awkward. You know how words do that sometimes? It looks weird.
Honestly, someone needs to roust up J. Golden Kimball from the dead and bring him back. One of my all-time favorite Mormon jokes:
What do you get when you cross J. Golden Kimball with Spencer W. Kimball?":
"Do it, damn it."
Google Reader blinds me to the constantly changing look of your blog so it's nice to stop by once in a while and see what new identity it has taken on. Great story; good luck with those kids.
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