On the first day of school, all of my English classes were required to write an essay that required them to reflect on their last year's English class. Here are some of the more memorable passages.

"She thought flash cards was the ultimate in learning fun."

'English class last year was light weight fun."

"I love it when people crack jocks"

"I really look forward to my shopmore year."

"What I disliked about her is that she was a lesbian, but it didn't bother me completely because I love lesbians. The thing was she didn't look right being a lesbian. Otherwise, she was not much of a problem. She was a lovely teacher."

"She was also very nerdy she loved and talked about nerdy stuff like Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean and many of the video games where you have to kill people with magic."

"I also want to learn to write this much without being intimidated by a hammer in a teacher's hand."

"In contrast to my English teacher's 'exceptional' way of teaching, her classroom smelled. It wasn't exactly bad, but every morning it was something different, which added to the uneasiness. Most concluded that it was what the teacher had had for breakfast, but I, for one, do not jump to conclusions so quickly. She had always claimed there were mice. Well, what happened to them? Did they all move to the new building when the old one was destroyed, or perhaps their little mousey ghosts haunt the building with an odor. I may not know, but the nose does not lie."

Sunday, September 10, 2006

"A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows." O. Henry

O. Henry was the pen name of American writer William Sydney Porter (September 11, 1862–June 5, 1910), whose clever use of twist endings in his stories popularized the term "O. Henry Ending". His middle name at birth was Sidney, not Sydney; he later changed the spelling of his middle name when he first began writing as a journalist in the 1880s.

Read Heart of the West, a collection of short stories by O. Henry, one of 15 of his works available from Project Gutenberg.


William Sydney Porter in his thirties.