Tibbs

The beginning of a story, I don't know where it's going yet. Right now in my head it's heading toward snarky smart teenager saves the world.

            As anyone who has sat through high school will tell you there are many chances in a day to make a fool out of a teacher.  They are after all human in many regards, and humanity lends itself to a sort of implausible stupidity.  It was such a day of implausible stupidity that I found myself dozing in an English class, generally my favorite subject.  This particular English class was being taught by none other than Ms. Agnes Carothers, a veritable gumball machine of mindboggling ignorance.  Normally Agnes would be happily teaching distracted pubescents how to bake a cake or sew a button, however the home economics class had been removed to make room for more “academics.”  Namely memorizing lines of academic scripture to recite later like perfect robotic clones to prove that we are “Star Students here at Numacher High School.” 

            Agnes began attempting to refresh us all on what a diphthong was used for in grammar and the room slowly filled with stifled laughs and holier than thou sighs of disappointment.  I remained with my pen scratching paper-writing tales of adventure and woe and romance that would make a soldier blush and your grandmother laugh.  She was getting the whole concept wrong too.  She kept trying to say that a diphthong was when two words were joined by a dash.  A diphthong was of course when two vowels come together to create one sound like in the word feat.  I added another bullet point to my page titled “Things I was taught wrong in high school.”  I tried to shut her out.  At this point listening to her try to fumble her way through cobwebby rememberings of ancient belief systems was making me stupider.  I doodled some drawings of my heroine whom I had named Lola Blaze.  It was right around the time that I was drawing the head of the alien she had defeated when I heard a throat clear somewhere back in the real world.  I withdrew from my drawing and saw Agnes hands on hips above my desk looking down disapprovingly at me.

            “Well Ms. Tibbs it appears you have no interest in learning the art of English.”

She sneered at me, a piece of something green caught in her yellowing archaic teeth.

            “Well Ms. Carothers I guess I just don’t have faith in your teachings when you don’t even know what a diphthong is.”

She looked at me stunned, like the insolence that had escaped from my lips was a snake attempting to bite her greasy little nose.

            “Well Ms. Tibbs why don’t you enlighten us, and then take a nice little stroll to the principal’s office.”

I stood up and gathered my things into my backpack.  Then I walked to the front of the room and calmly announced,

            “A diphthong is when two vowels come together to create a cohesive sound like in the word headache, and dead.  Google it.”

I then walked calmly out of the room as 45 smart phones came out from under the desks and proved me right.  Today was going to be a great day.

Author's Note

Any ideas on where it could be heading? I really have no set ideas. And also just general feedback.