buffalo bill

It was break time between classes, and a boy got up from his seat.

“Oh, I just have to show this to the teacher!” The boy told his friend euphorically, rushing from his desk to the front of the class, with a piece of paper in his hand.

“Ma’am! Ma’am! Take a look at this poetry!” he shouted.

Miss Willows looked up from her thick dusty book, and took the paper. The boy stood at the side, gleaming.

After a while, Miss Willows put the paper on the desk, and asked, “Did you write this?” Not really expecting an answer back, she started fuming.

“This thing is horrible! Spelling and rhyming are practically nonexistent, and you still call it poetry!”Miss Willows complained, “And what’s with this line justifying! The lines are all over the place. Don’t get me started on the words strung together. “

The boy hung his head down. With the face barely visible, one can see him to be slightly agitated.

“Grammar! Syntax! Subject-verb agreement! I don’t know what I’m saying, really.” Miss Willows crushed the paper, and threw it in the direction of the trash bin. It landed cleanly in the bin. “But nevertheless, don’t write this kind of stuff and call it poetry ever again.”

There was a long pause. The boy tilted his head up and smiled at the teacher. She felt something was amiss.

“But Ma’am, this was written by E. E. Cummings, the famous American poet!”

Miss Willows did a double take while the boy ran back to his desk, shouting “I told you so you owe me two bucks” to his friend.