Week 3, Theme 4

Prompt: a) Create an exchange between two people in which one or the other misunderstands what is said on the basis of sound-confusions or punning. Or, b) Describe a scene by creating a particular aural environment, using (but sparingly) onomatopoeia.

Mrs. Primmel sighed and paced in front of the whiteboard lodged on a wall in the library. Sometimes she wondered why she took the time with these coddled delinquents. If it were up to them they would use these pages as toilet paper, or, have a book-shredding party set to the tune of Nirvana or whatever God-awful clanging they were obsessed with these days. As communications and public relations manager of the Worcester Library Cooperative Learning Association Foundation, Mrs. Primmel was in charge of wasting the district’s fine resources on exposing these students, if you deign to call them that, to a real research environment. This was the third visit of a class from P.S. 139 over on Briarbush Ave., and Mrs. Primmel had already had enough of their intellectual lethargy for a lifetime. She approached a problem child from previous sessions, ready for a confrontation in defense of academia.

Arriving at the table, Mrs. Primmel decided to just launch into it: “Sabine, I’ve read your previous essay on, ahem, Frederick the Great’s clothing choices, and would like to discuss it with you.”

Sabine, who had been drawing black and blue hearts on her forearm skin, looked up. “Good morning to you too, Mrs. Primmel,” she said with a mischievous smile burbling up from her teeth and mouth.

Unfazed, the old librarian went on, “Ahem. Aside from the fact that the King’s clothing choices were at best only tangentially related to his reign, you also failed completely to cite any of your sources. Did you even open any of the books at the library sessions?”

Sabine looked around her, confused but not letting the old bag on to it. She had sighted all of her sources; she only had to rotate her stare the library to see that. She gazed up at the intimidating, frumpy form standing over her and asked to be excused.