Part 1, Part 2   I like to imagine Mr. Gray grading our essays in the evenings in his bachelor pad over a bowl of Top Ramen. Of course he had a pad; this was the 70’s and he was a bachelor. They all had pads. I imagine him laughing over mine. I imagine him laughing so hard that he had to stop and clean up the Top Ramen that he inadvertently snorted though his nose. Thirty plus years has brought me not only a great deal of retrospect, but also a softening of the edges and a greater understanding of human nature. I don’t think he was really Mr. Haw. He was just Mr. Haugh, doing a job that, perhaps, no one else wanted to do. Clearly he was stiff and strict and “by the book,” but these days I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps he was… [Read More]

Part 1 Part 3 Mr. Haugh was someone with authority over everyone, liked by no one. He was a large man, as wide as he was tall. And he was quite tall. Which made him quite wide. He had fleshy hands, droopy jowls, was mostly bald, and extremely out of shape. The poor man probably hated his job and was at high risk of cardiac arrest but we didn’t think about those things in the 9th grade. We were just scared of him. He was usually scowling except for times like now, when he looked down at us past his ample nose with a grim self satisfied smirk as he turned the key in the detention hall lock. We were incarcerated. No innocence until proven guilt. Never mind that we had been caught red-handed. Never mind that the school janitor was probably, at that very moment, mopping up bucketfuls of water… [Read More]