Read Online The Trouble with Polly Brown by Tricia Bennett - Free Book Online Page A

“This could turn out to be a good day after all,” she declared as with a rarely seen smile on her face she hugged her books tightly to her chest and proceeded to march most determinedly toward the biology classroom.

    Polly entered the noise-filled classroom long before her teacher and so quickly made her way toward an empty desk near the back of the room. Then, dropping her schoolbag down beside the chair, she slumped wearily down into her seat and found the time to ponder just how good a mood her unpredictable teacher would be in on this fine Monday morning. She did not have to wait too long to find out. Mrs. McGillicuddy entered the room in her usual frantic manner and shuffled toward her desk with the purpose of dispensing with her two heavy, stuffed-to-the gunnels carrier bags.
    Polly observed the bags and immediately began to play the game that she always played, which was to attempt to guess quite what was in the overloaded bags and therefore absolutely necessary if her harebrained teacher was to safely make it through another day without any sudden, unexpected catastrophe. “Here we have a pair of matching candelabras recently valued by Sotheby’s to be worth an astounding six thousand pounds. Do we have a buyer? Going…going…gone. Yes, sold to fellow classmate George Edgebaston for a modest forty-six hundred pounds. And what do we have next? Ah, yes, a metal cage. This cage comes complete with drinking receptacle and a seriously rusty hamster wheel that promises to keep the flab off your hamster’s hips and so could easily be considered the ideal home for a mouse, hamster, or pet rat. This prized possession will cost you a mere two shillings and sixpence. So, do we have a taker? Next we have a rather splendid cracked cereal bowl, still encrusted with the remains of this morning’s bran flakes. Oh, dear, what a mistake. For she clearly didn’t mean to bring this in; rather, it was intended for the washing-up bowl!”
    Polly could easily play this stupid game for the whole lesson and often did, as she automatically switched off as her teacher droned on and on about dreary things such as lymphatic systems and epithelial tissue. I mean, what was the purpose of learning all about the functions of the human body, and from such a hysterical woman, when everything else in Polly’s life lay on the floor in tatters.
    Did she need to know what her kidneys did or didn’t do when all she wanted was to survive another day without a beating or further unjust punishments? No, it was settled. Just coping with all the anxiety and torment raging inside her daily was more than enough to keep her totally occupied without being forced to learn hundreds of challenging names of body parts as well as their bodily functions. These tongue-twister names were obviously made up thousands of years ago by a number of very bored professors who could have put their talents to much better use by making up a variety of new board games. Instead of which, all over the globe poor, desperate schoolchildren were gnashing and grinding their teeth as they struggled to get their tongues ’round words that would put most people into an instant coma and were absolutely ghastly, if not impossible, to spell correctly. There were words like subcutaneous, mitochondria, cardiovascular , and other terminology that might as well be Polish or Greek as far as Polly was concerned, for it was all gobbledygook to her. So with Polly’s anxious mind already in overdrive, it was time as usual for it to go into total shutdown.
    With her shabby, old-fashioned, fur-lined coat now hanging rather sloppily over her chair and the blackboard thoroughly wiped down, Mrs. McGillicuddy turned and ordered her pupils to stop all unnecessary conversation, for the morning lesson had now begun.
    â€œPay attention, everybody! Kindly unwrap your eyeballs and then proceed to place them carefully on the metal trays sitting in front of