It was early on a Monday morning, the kind of morning when you wake up and want to hide under the covers because you catch a glimpse of the outside world, where all you see is clouds and rain and you know the day is going to be miserable, and so you hide under the covers for another nine minutes when your alarm clock buzzes you back to reality, and it was precisely this kind of morning that our heroine, Miss Julia Brown (a �Miss� much to her dismay and that of her parents and friends, all believing the men had missed out on her, and not the other way around, and yet happily a brunette, so that one part of her name became an inept and dissatisfying description and another quite apt and appealing) woke up to this Monday, and so having gotten ready (showered, dressed, breakfasted, and the like), she cursed her frugality (�Why don�t I just buy a cheap used car?�) while walking through the empty garage, with an umbrella in hand, which she fumbles with trying to get it open, and again reprimands herself for being too tight with her money (�Really, Julia, a new umbrella doesn�t cost much�), but on her teacher�s salary, which is barely enough to buy her food, pay her bills, and pay off her student loans, she can�t afford new things if she wants to save any money, but on this gloomy morning Julia tries to think of other things, to dispel the foul mood the weather is trying to force onto the world today, as she walks to the high school (thankfully only a block away, since her umbrella and the rubber soles of her boots are both leaking) where she teaches advanced history (�Like history could ever be advanced, and I wonder about those students� she said to a fellow teacher just last week) to a classroom of students, who all in all could care less, but take her class and do well, because that�s what advanced students do: they achieve, they get good grades they can all take home to their parents to prove how perfect they are, and deserving of the love most parents desperately want to give, but have no idea how, and while Miss Julia Brown has been thinking all these thoughts, wondering about her students, their parents, and the general properties of a parent-child relationship, she has successfully made it to her classroom, not too wet, where the bell rings, students trickle in, and her Monday begins
neb 1/26/04
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