She Likes Old Things
A middle school teacher stuns her students
Not with harsh, punitive grading;
She wants them to learn, not be frustrated.
Not with a gentle slap upside the head;
She internalizes her frustration when they misbehave so.
No, she stuns them with devices we lived with
In the 70s, 80s, and 90s,
Our formative years when our teachers
Most likely stunned us, too, in some way.
In her classroom, this teacher
Has her dad's old rotary business phone,
Push buttons along the bottom no longer able to glow
Indicating calls on different extensions,
The red one now unable to hold everything.
She also has two typewriters, one big manual clacker
And one smooth operator, sounding different clicks
Before the carriage glides back to the start–
As long as it's always plugged in.
The telephone and typewriters are small potatoes
When compared to this gem–snail mail,
Downright confusing at the students' age
In this time of instant gratification,
With laptops and handheld keyboards,
The world wide web and video meetings,
Technology that makes communication
Nearly instantaneous with a few dozen clicks and taps–
It's absolutely inconceivable to kids these days.
She makes us write letters, one student moans,
And write out envelopes and put on stamps,
Says another, shaking his head, as the others in the room
Back him up with the same movement of their noggins.
But then there's this: "I write to my grandma every week."
And there are smiles everywhere around the room,
And I think, because I'm old, too,
Before the computers, tablets, and cellphones,
I wish I wrote to my grandmother that much.
Author: Edward Dzitko
Photo: Josh Withers on Unsplash
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