Topical Guide 127
Mark Dorset
School
Reality, Real and Fictional
THE SCHOOL was an old one. I had begun attending it in kindergarten, and for a long time I had thought that the people who had gone to the school years ago must have been much bigger at my age than I was or than any of my friends were. Everything in the school seemed taller, wider, higher, or heavier than necessary. My friends and I struggled to climb the stairs, stood on our tiptoes to use the water fountains or the urinals, sat on the sinks to look into the mirrors. I had grown accustomed to seeing the building as too big and the boys and girls as too small.
Little Follies, “The Girl with the White Fur Muff”
Foreshadowing
On Mrs. Graham’s desk was a large vase made of milk glass, and in this vase were flowers, lots of flowers. I don’t remember what kind of flowers, but there were always flowers in the vase, sometimes so many flowers that, if Mrs. Graham sat at her desk, I couldn’t see her at all from my seat at the back of the room. …
She closed her book emphatically and tossed it toward her desk. It struck the vase, which tipped and rocked, and looked as if it might fall to the floor, but a boy in the front row leaped from his seat and steadied it. Before he sat down, he shook his head a couple of times and smiled indulgently. Mrs. Graham never noticed any of this, since all her attention was focused on me.Little Follies, “The Girl with the White Fur Muff”
(A word to the wise: Keep your eye on that vase. MD)
I knew from that moment that I would do anything she asked me to do, told me to do, or even hinted that perhaps I should do. And I knew she’d make sure that I got through the fourth grade all right.
Little Follies, “The Girl with the White Fur Muff”
(We shall see. MD)
See also: Reality, Real and Fictional TG 27 (Free Sample)
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