Image from the Internet.
The opening poem contains all the words (or variations of them) from today's Jumble.
Comments are welcomed!
Do not explicitly reveal any of the actual answer words until after closing time, but embedding them surreptitiously in comment sentences is encouraged.
16 comments:
A basic education is the goal of all our schools.
And infractions such as tardiness are against the rules.
But when little Charlie came in late today, because --
Well, the story that he told may have had some flaws.
You see, he said, the gossip was his teacher was out sick.
A substitute would take her place, but lessons wouldn't tick
Because Mrs. Hagood, the pedagogue in question,
Hadn't left behind her instructional suggestions!
So Charlie sought her home to be a special courier
Of her lesson plans, but that's when things got curiouser.
For over her address was a canopy of cloud
That covered just her lot, like a gloomy shroud!
Quivering with dread, Billy knocked upon the door,
And a butler answered, who stood full six-foot-four.
In a voice sepulchral, he said she wasn't home.
She had gone to school, the gossip had been wrong.
And so when Billy got to school, a full half-hour late,
That was the sob story that he did relate.
The principal, he sat bemused, then ruled,
The time was spent creatively, so it would count as schooled!
Little Charlie seems to have morphed. Maybe quivering beneath that cloud canopy would turn anyone into a Silly Billy?
In all other respects this poem of his good luck in obtaining academic credit may restore a little faith in our ElHi education system--or point out what's wrong with
I wouldn't be surprised these days to learn that the driver of a truck loaded with new door handles, a knob lorry, would refuse to deliver his cargo unless each end-recipient promised to disinfect them after every use.
~ OMK
Er, wrong with it.
Dang! I started out with Billy, decided to change it to Charles (as in guess who), and missed changing it in those last two verses. Thanks for correcting me, so I can change it in my files anyway.
So who's it finally going to be , Owen, Billy or Charlie? And who is Charles?
Anyway. Let's cut to the chase or rather, let's see how the chase under the mountain is going.
The dwarves sped hastily, under canopies of stone
Not so far behind, orcish shouts meant they were not alone
Bilbo rued the day he'd followed dreams of dwarfish glory
He feared that his fate would become an Hobbiton sob story.
Yes Gandalf had arrived at last to save the day
Like a warrior brave and hardy.
And much like the gossips of old told of the wizards way
He was basically just quite tardy.
WC
Not to speak of Alice who crept into Charles, er, Billy's story
It reminds me of a story from sophomore year of HS. See, I "Lived Three Lives"* in those days. Honors, Sports and...
I was in the gang that terrorized the school**
So, the VP of the Pack suggested we skip school one day. We did, I got a note forged-by Leader of the Pack- and all seemed well. But...
Several days later, gossip had it that the School AVP was out for the day. LoP said "pretend sick, call my home number, pretend you're speaking to your mother, and hiako outta here."
And it was done, but..
LoP,VPoP and the rest had vamoosed before I could vamoose. So...
As I was leaving I spotted a car full of kids smoking in a car. They were merely skipping a period. I sat in thinking when they left I'd head home. But...
Who should show up but none other than School AVP, Mr. R. He rounded up the miscreants and I mumbled something like "er, I'm sick and I was on the way home".
So he calls mom, she knows nuttin and..
On a hunch mentions my truancy. The jig was up.
The rest of the story? I get detention for a week, can't make baseball practice and get kicked off that team. So..
Now y'all know why I never got to play CF for the Redsox.
WC
* Remember that FBI program?
** We weren't that bad, just loud, obnoxious etc. I was just tagging along
Wow! I hope I'm not being sexist or cliched, but reading this reminds me of some sort of male huddle / bonding confab, etc. Seems like fun.
Anyway ... the jumble clues were really easy, the solution not quite as much, but with all the letters, I saw the second word. The first one puzzled me til I realized what the cartoon was implying and the V8 can hit me in the head. D'oh!
Enjoyed both your poems, guys. Owen's made me think of the Addams family; it was intended to, yes? Wilbur, I always thought Gandalf was much too self-possessed to be tardy, or am I being influenced by the films?
Sandy, glad you enjoy the guy talk. Gandalf wasn't tardy, it just seemed that way when Bilbo was next on the troll's spit or about to be spitted by goblins. eg, Gandalf, what took you so long!
WC
My goodness, what creative poetry, stories, glosses, comments, discussion in just a few hours! If nothing else, this stay-at-home virus is sure firing up creativity! But it helped that this was an easy Jumble. Only the third word needed a bit of work, but the solution popped right up for me--and cracked me up. So, funny. It helped that we figured the car was going to be Swedish.
Charlie, as in Charles Addams who originally created Lurch. I liked the Addams Family sooo much better than The Munsters! It still amazes me to find the Munsters were actually created first, and Addams was the copy-cat, and not the other way around.
Miss Virginia Hagood was my favorite teacher, about 6th grade. Had to change her to Mrs. in the poem to fit the meter. Wish I'd kept track of her after I went on. She was a major influence in my life, turning me on to Science Fiction. And come to think of it, also my own ability at poetry.
Ok, Owen, here's the way I got turned on to sci-fi. (Hope I haven't told this before.)
My oldest brother was the one. He went into the army and then Korea. When cleaning out his things, he brought me a big stack of magazines. Sci-fi. "Here, kid. You want these?" Of course I did -- anything with printing on it! Devoured them and later moved on to books and more magazines. Contributed strongly to shaping my whole outlook.
What did Miss Hagood actually do to turn you on to sci-fi?
She recommended the novel The Twenty-One Balloons, by William Pène du Bois, because I had finished our normal reading assignments early. I just looked it up on Wiki, and my memory of it is much more like Verne's Around the World. She probably made other suggestions, too, but that's the one that stands out.
So all you needed was the introduction and your interest took off from there. Pretty much like mine. The magazines my brother gave me notably included many issues of Astounding Science Fiction, when John W. Campbell was editor. Wish I'd kept them.
All -- see https://www.facebook.com/groups/n3flist/permalink/3385229358159609/?comment_id=3504089542940256
That's really nice, to promote Wilbur's poem story.
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