Story of the Day 9/20/2011 #2

I was sitting at the computer, and Sarah was sitting in the dining room and opening her mail. I hear a “What?” and a “No Way!” in her distinctive deaf voice, and I rush over to see what had elicited such a response.

She was holding a letter and a look of horror was on her face.
Luckily, I was wrong and it wasn’t a look of horror, although, it could have passed as one. It was really a look of confusion.
Sarah was…dumbstruck. And I mean that with all of its weird little secondary meanings- except, obviously, the deaf had spoken, so maybe I didn’t.

The letter was from the principal of her high school.

It informed her that she had been named student of the month
In physics.
By the physics teacher whose class she just dropped.
Because she was flunking it.
Okay, she wasn’t flunking it, but she was struggling….

And she didn’t drop it; she transferred to another section, taught by a different teacher.

The teacher she’d had, the one who named her for the award, was very nice, but he lectured at a rate that makes my speech look like I have a severe thyroid deficiency.
He speaks so quickly that neither the typist nor the interpreter could even try to keep up.
In fact, the entire time that the speech to text woman was using the mask to speak into, Sarah was petrified that the woman would suffer a heart attack from trying to keep up with the teacher.
The teacher would be lecturing and lecturing, and the speech-to-text lady would be gasping for breath and her face would have turned bright red.
This is the same lady that Sarah said appears to be about my age- so we know she is some sort of a haggard old coot who has one foot in the grave, and this, of course, upped Sarah’s concerns about her suffering a heart attack.

Meanwhile, the interpreter would be furiously signing away at such a rate that the interpreter had no idea what she was signing or if she was making sentences, and the interpreter herself described what she was doing as “gibberish”.

And still the teacher would keep on talking,

So Sarah sat in class, day after day, unable to get the lecture information.

After 4 weeks of this, and an actual D on a test (this from a girl who had straight As, last semester), and in order to spare the speech-to-text lady and the interpreter nervous breakdowns, the school allowed Sarah to transfer to the other section.

Well, they certainly didn’t allow her to transfer so that she would know what was being taught in class, since that has never before been a concern of theirs.
Oh, wait, maybe that is why they let her transfer, I keep forgetting that BH has been deposed and it is a kinder and gentler administration.

How could I have forgotten?

But, at any rate, two nervous breakdowns and a potential heart attack were averted, and, a week ago, Sarah was moved to the other section.



We are assuming that this award was set in motion before she changed sections, while she was still firmly ensconced in that class and flunking.
Which is why Sarah asked me how it was possible that she had been named for this in a class….

The only thing I can think of is that her D on the test may have been the highest grade in the class.