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Message-ID: <62164asstr$1336734602@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
From: Uther Pendragon <nogardneprethu@gmail.com>
Subject: {ASSM} "Practice - F" -- Uther -- MF wl work
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Date: Fri, 11 May 2012 07:10:02 -0400
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If you are under the age of 18, or otherwise forbidden by law to read
electronically transmitted erotic material, please go do something else.

This material is copyright, 2011, Uther Pendragon. All rights reserved. I
specifically grant the right of downloading and keeping one electronic copy
for your personal reading so long as this notice is included. Reposting
requires previous permission.

If you have any comments or requests, please e-mail them to me at
nogardneprethu@gmail.com.

All persons here depicted, except public figures depicted as public figures
in the background, are figments of my imagination and any resemblance to
persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.


Practice - F
by Uther Pendragon
nogardneprethu@gmail.com

MF wl job


In January '78, Marilyn Trainor was suddenly not a student but a teacher.
She hadn't graduated, although she could have taken her degree in English.
The last requirement for the Education major was Practice Teaching. She
spent the day with Mrs. Daniels, an English teacher at Urbana East High.
Mrs. Daniels had two classes each in the 10th, 11th, and 12th grades.

At first, Marilyn couldn't see what use she was in the class rooms. She sat
in the back, just as she had done during her observation time, while Mrs.
Daniels took one class after another through a section on literature. Even
the jumping frog lost much of its interest the second time through in the
same day.

If her life was focused on teaching, or the hope of teaching, being a
student still had its pleasures. The dean's list at the U of I was
published as an actual list, though mostly you heard that a particular
person was on it. The list was by class and then alphabetically. The list
for the previous semester included:
   Trainor, Andrew
   Trainor, Marilyn
Marilyn got several copies and sent that page with their names circled to
her parents, Andy's father, Molly -- who was at school -- and April.
Linda, a Zate who had a position on the *Daily Illini*, even wrote them up
in a short paragraph. She managed to mention Zeta Tau Gamma twice in the
story. Marilyn sent a clipping of that story to Mom, too.

She and Andy attended the annual party that Zeta threw to honor the new
actives. As the married couple present, they were minor celebrities. Half
the pledges brought their dates up to introduce them to Marilyn, and to be
introduced in their turn to Andy. In the sorority language the girls were
her sisters; in feeling, it was almost *in loco parentis*.

The other upper class sisters also had dates. She noticed that Trish had
invited Barry. That gave her a warm glow because Andy and she had made the
introduction. Robin was with Dave, which was a surprise. She got Robin
aside.

"Dave?" When they'd hosted the two of them, Dave had mentioned a girlfriend.

"He broke up with Sophia. He called me up."

"And Warren?"

"I'm not going steady with either one of them, after all. A woman can have
dates with different guys."

"Well," she told Andy when she got back to him, "our brief career as
matchmakers seems to have panned out. I hadn't heard about Dave."

"Yeah, we talked after class. He wanted Robin's phone number. Should I have
told you?"

"Not necessarily." She would have been happy to know that the meal had had
some effect, but Robin, rather than Andy, should have let her know. Not
living in the house cut her off from all sorts of gossip.

On the other hand, she reflected after they had returned and gone to bed,
living in an apartment with Andy had benefits far more valuable than access
to gossip.

Then she was suddenly a real teacher.

"Well, Marilyn," Mrs. Daniels said one Thursday, "the next few weeks in the
10th grade will be on grammar. Why don't you prepare a lesson plan for two
weeks. Her's the book; I've marked the section you'll cover. You can start
off next Monday." Mrs. Daniels might prefer lit to grammar as much as she
did. Maybe she had just wanted Marilyn and the class to get used to each
other first. Maybe she believed in throwing the new teacher in the deep end
of the pool to see if she could swim.

She spent most of her free time preparing the lesson plan. Andy cooperated,
eating leftover chili for lunches all week and only kissing her after she'd
got up from her books. Then Monday morning came. She wrote the first
sentence to correct on the board.

"Mrs. Trainor," Dave asked, "why do we study this stuff anyway?"

"Well, Dave, is that a question because you want to know why? Or is it
because you don't know how to correct this sentence?" The class stirred.
"Because, if you answer my question, I'll answer yours." Dave was no more
proficient in grammar than he had been in literature. "Who does know?"
There were several hands. "Martha!" She'd have to be careful about Martha.
Otherwise she'd find herself teaching only one student. On the other hand,
she wanted the right answer to start off the session.

"It should be, 'He gave the present to George and *me*.' To is a
preposition, and the object of a preposition is in the objective case."

"Very good."

"And, Mrs. Trainor, since I did answer your question will you answer mine?
Why do we study this stuff, anyway?" She glanced back at Mrs. Daniels, who
shrugged. She sang what she could remember of *Waltzing Matilda*.

"That's a fun song, and many of you have had the terms explained to you."
If they hadn't, tough luck. "But you'd have a hard time holding a
discussion with some Australian who talked that way.

"Well, there is standard English, and there is non-standard English --
dialect or slang. Really, though, there is one standard English, but there
are hundreds of dialects, hundreds of slangs. It would be convenient if
everybody else spoke their own dialect and also learned mine. They don't.
They speak their own dialect and also learn standard English.

"So, if you want to communicate with people who didn't grow up around here,
you have to use standard English. You can be absolutely sure that President
Carter grew up speaking a slang. If he still used it, you wouldn't be able
to understand what he was saying. Sometimes, I know, it's a little hard
now, but that's just an accent.

"So if you want to be president, to have the chance to be president, you
have to be able to speak standard English. And, if you want to understand
the president when he speaks, you have to understand standard English. But
it's not only that. We're close to the University Campus here; I drive back
and forth every day. And many of those professors come from other parts of
the country, some from other countries. They don't speak your slang, but
they do speak standard English. So, simply to pump gas, you have to be able
to communicate in standard English." Then for the girls. "And secretaries
have it worse. One of their jobs is to put what the boss says into standard
English when they take dictation.

"And, since that's necessary for so much of what people do, employers want
somebody who can speak standard English. Maybe you'll apply for a job where
it isn't necessary, but your boss would rather hire somebody he could
promote -- and the higher positions might well involve understanding
standard English.

"You'll say it isn't really that bad, and it isn't. There are two reasons.
In the first place, people do move around, and -- even if you don't meet
people from other sections of the country -- you hear movies, television,
and radio which include dialects from elsewhere in the country and often
from England. The other is that the adults whom you hear speak your dialect
have, themselves, been educated in standard English. The way your parents
talk is partly the way their parents talked and partly the way they learned
in school, and the way your grandparents talked to your parents was partly
the way your great-grandparents talked to them and partly the way they
learned in school.

"But the two most immediate reasons for learning English grammar are, one,
you are going to be graded on what you learn of English grammar, and, two,
*I* am going to be graded on what you learn of English grammar. So, I've
answered your question once, and we're not going to have that break from
studying again." They laughed, and she went on to write the next incorrect
sentence on the board.

When the same question arose in the next class, she said, "The same kids
who told you that I wandered down that path in the last class can -- if
you're really interested -- tell you what I said." On her way out after the
last class of the day, though, she treated a repetition of the question as
honest. After all, Nancy wasn't avoiding any class work then.

"I'm not going to do any of the stuff you talked about," Nancy told her.
"I'm going to be a simple farm wife. Why do I have to know all that stuff
-- predicates and adjectives and such?"

"Well," Marilyn told her, "you're in 10th grade, right?" Nancy nodded.
"There are two honest answers to that question. First, we -- your teachers,
the school authorities, the State Board of Education -- aren't going to
allow you to make that decision this early. Maybe you're sure that you're
not going to go anywhere, but we aren't going to allow you to shut yourself
off from the chance to go somewhere. After all, even if you have chosen the
boy for whom you will be a farm wife, he hasn't stopped growing -- mentally
and emotionally. Maybe he'll choose to go into the army. That would leave
you having to deal with people from all over the country -- maybe traveling
all over the country, yourself.

"The second reason is that farm wives have children. You may want to limit
yourself, but do you really want to limit your future children's future? If
you have kids in 10 years' time, they'll graduate from high school in 28
years' time. Who knows what the world will be like then? And, again, the
people who have power over you right now will *not* allow you to decide
that your child can't be a lawyer, a scientist, or a doctor. So we won't
allow you to keep yourself so ignorant that your child won't have heard
standard English until he hears it from a teacher." Nancy nodded. Marilyn
figured that any girl would be unwilling to write off her child's future.

"Is English so important then?"

"Well, yes. Standard English is the language of books. You'll read a lot of
fiction which has dialogue in slang, sometimes quite outdated slang. If you
want to read nonfiction, read about the world, you'll read about it in
standard English. My husband is going into Engineering. You'd think that
was as far removed from English as anything. But he reads books
incessantly. While his books have a special vocabulary -- transistors,
resistors, ohms, what have you -- it's built on standard English."

"There's lots in life that's not in books," Nancy said. Marilyn doubted
that there was much which somebody hadn't put in a book. She thought of
Andy's marriage manuals. But that didn't seem the sort of thing for a
student teacher to mention to a 10th grader.

"Yeah. Books aren't everything. They are, however, necessary for some
things. You wouldn't want to go to a doctor who hadn't worked on real
patients. Before they do, however, they have to read mounds of books. Even
farmers, if they don't learn from books themselves, learn from county
agents who get their information from print. Ask one of the old farmers
around here how procedures have changed in their lifetimes."

Driving back, she remembered Jim Trainor's abortive suggestion about
counseling. Maybe dealing with Andy's sisters had been more important
practice for teaching than the class today had been. As she knew from her
own high-school experience, it was damn hard to force learning into a kid
who was resisting it. The real problem was to get them to want to learn.
Maybe Nancy would want to learn, now. And, if so, it wouldn't make one whit
of difference to Marilyn's practice-teaching grade. It would, however, make
a difference in what Nancy took away from her time in high school.

"And how was the first day actually in front of the class?" Andy asked her
when she got in. He'd looked up from his book immediately. While she put a
dinner together, she told him. She'd done the recipes often enough now,
that she could talk and cook at the same time. He listened without
commenting. She could not yet cook and carry on a two-way conversation at
the same time.

"Well," he said when they had their food in front of them, "that's as good
an answer as any. Really, each circle has its own branch language, and
standard English is the connecting trunk. Regions have their own language;
professions have theirs; age groups have theirs. Look at Dad's lame joke
about impartial differential equations, and that's analysis. Electrical
engineering may be a specialty, but analysis is the whole ball of wax, a
trunk of its own."

"You think everybody should know differential equations?"

"Everybody should, at least, know the most important vocabulary of math...
and of other fields. I know what a gerund is. The wife of an EE should know
what the reluctance of a circuit is." Which she certainly didn't know.

"Could I take a pass until I graduate?" Andy was what the kids in her
classes should be. His challenge to the demand to learn something off his
career path was that others learn more about his career path. They resisted
learning English, and she was quite suspicious of how enthusiastic they
were about learning the finer points of farming.

"Sure. Right now, we both have enough to learn." Andy was as permissive as
always. He even studied in silence while she revised her lesson plan for
the next two days based on what the students had actually learned that day.

Andy had fixed priorities. The first was that she must sleep in his arms
every night. What would happen if she tried to pull an all-nighter, she
wasn't eager to find out. Really, though, she didn't have the least desire
to face classes having had no sleep the night before; all-nighters weren't
all that productive even before tests.

Andy expected -- Hell! she expected -- that the sleep would be preceded by
sex. When there seemed to be a good reason to skip that, Andy wouldn't
argue. So long as the exception had a reason, he didn't try to force her.
Indeed, she sometimes wished Andy were a bit more forceful about sex.

She didn't want to be married to a rapist, but he'd been most male, and the
sex had been most psychologically fulfilling, when he'd dumped her over the
back of a chair and had her there. Andy would do anything sexual she asked,
but he couldn't dominate her if she asked him to. That was logically
impossible.

Christine took her aside after Chapter on Sunday.

"Could I speak to you privately?"

"Sure. Come to the car." Privacy was hard to come by in a sorority house.
When they were both sitting in the front seat, Christine took a deep breath
before beginning.

"Look, how did you get Andy to propose? Phil pinned me more than a year
ago. We've been going together forever. He doesn't look like he's taking
the next step, and we're running out of time."

"Andy? Honestly, nobody else is like Andy. I think, though, that lots of
other couples are like us. Sure, he proposed -- kneeling on the ground,
even. But that was just a formality. We were already discussing whether we
would be married in June '77 or June '78. Actually, it was July '77, but
that was others causing problems, not between the two of us. Anyway, Andy
was quite clear that he wanted the marriage and didn't care about the
wedding or the engagement.

"I don't know Phil well enough to advise you. If he really wants to be
married to you, he'll find the nerve to propose. If the thought scares him,
all that mentioning it will do is scare him more."

"Did it scare Andy?"

"Well, I never know how far to believe Andy. He keeps saying that I'm the
prettiest girl on campus. He can't really believe that! But the way he
tells it, he was scared of proposing because he was scared of my saying no."

"You're just trying to make me jealous."

"Not really. You have Phil, don't you? It's just that Phil and Andy are
different." Christine ran back to the house, and she drove home.

The church was planning another potluck. She had rather not cook for an
audience more judgmental than Andy, which meant any other audience, while
she was busy with practice teaching, but the other women managed, and some
of them had jobs *and* families of young children, Susy Jefferson came up
to her after service the Sunday before.

"Are you planning to bring greens again for the potluck?" She had been
considering it, but...

"I haven't anything definite planned."

"Roy has been pushing me to bring them since you brought them the last
time. Most of us, though, sort of bring the same dish every time." The
amount that had been left over suggested that two dishes of greens wouldn't
get any more takers than one had.

"Well, if you want to..." She could figure out something else. Chili?

"Actually, I *don't* want to. Roy is always after me to cook them, and then
he tells me that they don't taste as good as the ones his mother made.
Look, when you really like something as a teenager, it's not going to taste
as good 30 years later. But Roy will never believe that it's his tastebuds,
not the cooking, which have changed. If you cook them, I don't have to hear
his bitching."

"All right, I will." She did, and they were appreciated again.

After the potluck, Susy came up to her again.

"Look, how about trading left-overs?" She showed a pan half-filled with
chicken pieces. Her chicken had been baked.

"Well, I don't have that much."

"You would have more if Roy had taken something else on his third trip to
the serving table. Look, I'll take these two..." She pulled a wing and a
back from her pan and put them on top of the greens. "We'll return pans
next week. Trade with me, please. I promised Roy."

So they had baked chicken for Monday dinner and Andy had it for Wednesday
lunch.

Beverly called her that Wednesday and asked her to come to supper at Zeta
House that night. It crowded her dinner-prep and homework-correcting time,
but she went. When your little sister asked you for something, she got it.
When Peggy saw her, she raised her eyebrows, but she didn't say anything.
At the end of the meal, Peggy announced a candlelight.

She stood in the circle next to Beverly, who was halfway across from Peggy
instead of right next to her. As the candle went around, she handed it to
Beverly. Beverly blew it out. Beverly had been pinned! Marilyn grabbed her
and hugged her first.

"That's wonderful!" she said. "Terry finally took the plunge."

"I wanted you to be here."

"And I'm glad I was."

"Beverly has been pinned. We held a candlelight to celebrate," she told
Andy when she got home. Then she described what a candlelight was. "And
when we got engaged, I let the candle go past once and blew it out at the
second pass. That's what we do for engagements."

"Well, I guess that's good news for Beverly. Are you sorry I didn't have a
pin to give you? Do I know the guy?"

"Well, we might invite the two of them to dinner. We probably should. A
Saturday?" Saturdays were the easiest for her to schedule extra cooking.
"When one girl announced her pinning while we were deep in discussion about
whether we'd be married last June or next June, I did think that we had
much more commitment than the one she was celebrating. I didn't really miss
the first candlelight, though. I had a candlelight, and everybody already
knew we were a couple."

"Well, you handle the schedule. Give me a little warning, and I'll vacuum
the day before. Speaking of sororities and fraternities..." Had they been
speaking of fraternities at all? Well Beverly's Terry was in one. "Should I
join Phi Beta Kappa?" Andy didn't know the Greek world, but he should know
better than that.

"It's not something you choose to join." Although Andy deserved it. "It's
something you're invited to join."

"That's what I mean. I've been invited to join. Should I say yes?"

"Andy! Nobody says no to Phi Bate -- nobody. It shouldn't cost much, and
we'll get the money." She could write Andy's dad, if necessary. It wasn't
what he'd thought of as an emergency, but he'd be happy -- ecstatically
happy -- to pay for it.

That Saturday, she cooked greens again. When she returned Susy's pan, she
had half the greens in it. Susy returned her pan empty, but the chicken
they'd eaten had cost many times as much as all the greens -- including
what she'd served Andy and herself as well as what went to the potluck --
had cost her.

"Marilyn, you're happily married, aren't you?" Susy asked when she got the
pan.

"Very happily. We're in our eighth month."

"I'll tell Roy that. I don't want him making a play for you." Susy was
joking. Well, she hoped Susy was joking.

Beverly and she found a Saturday which suited them both. Terry was a nice
guy, and seemed devoted to Beverly. He was pre-med and had taken enough
science to be impressed with Andy's record.

"Yeah, we have to know that stuff as background, and get fairly high GPAs
to get into med school. Your sort of guys are real pains -- always busting
the curve."

"Well, we need to really know some of the stuff, and we don't know which
parts until we take later courses." Andy was being polite. He'd have aimed
at 100% even if he'd known that the section would never come up again. Andy
didn't accept a B in a course related to science. He'd mourned his only B
in a math course and his only B in an engineering course.

Two days after that meal, Mrs. Daniels told her that she'd be teaching the
juniors *Romeo and Juliet*. She read the play again as prep for the lesson
plan.

"Modern plays, especially movies and TV shows," she started her
introduction, "sometimes try to surprise you with what happens. Usually,
Shakespeare didn't. The characters in *Henry the Fifth* might have worried
about how the battle of Agincourt would turn out. The least educated man in
the audience knew that it had been a tremendous English victory. Well, the
plot of *Romeo and Juliet* might not have been quite shining new when it
was first performed, but it was a lot newer then than it is now.

"Not only have most of you heard something about this play, you've seen
countless imitations of it. Whenever a movie has a romantic plot or
subplot, that is the screenwriter's version of *Romeo and Juliet*. So, now
you're going to study the original. And, since you've seen the plot before,
pay attention to the words." Then she assigned the prologue and the first
act as their reading for the next day. Since there was lots of time left,
she had them turn to the first page of the play and all read the chorus's
prologue. She led the reading as the kids tended to stumble over the any
but the most common word.

"All right. Just in case you didn't know the plot going into the play, the
chorus lays it out for you. When you read the prologue and Act I at home
tonight, write down any word you don't know. If you think you know it, but
it doesn't make any sense in the context of the play, write it down anyway.
When you've finished the reading, look those words up in the dictionary.
Actually, you'll get some of them in the footnotes.

"Now, the two sides -- the two families who are quarreling with each other
-- are the Montagues and the Capulets. Let's get the Montagues from this
side of the room." She gestured with her right arm. "And let's get the
Capulets from this side." She gestured towards her left. "Brian, you'll be
Samson, and John, you'll be Gregory for today. Read their lines." She chose
them from the Capulets, her left.

They stumbled through the lines, obviously not reading ahead when the other
one was speaking. Brian blushed and stumbled when he read Samson's joke
about maidenheads. The class, including the boys, tittered. She didn't stop
them until the entrance of Abraham and Balthazar.

"Okay. The two speakers are on the same side in the quarrel, but not above
teasing each other. They boast of how they'll mistreat any servants of the
Montagues that they'll meet. Then they meet two of them.

"Now, Shakespeare's audience included what they called 'the pit.' This was
the cheapest seats, except there weren't any seats. The poorest, roughest,
least educated, and worst mannered of the people who watched his plays
stood in the pit. Shakespeare always put in some lines to keep the pit
amused. And, as we've seen, some of those lines still amuse the least
educated and worst mannered hearers of the plays today.

"Okay. Read the whole first act over at home. Try to understand what
Shakespeare was establishing. Figure out how to pronounce those lines,
because I may call on you to read them aloud. I won't criticize Brian and
John, because I sprang the assignment on them. Questions?" There could be
no sensible questions from anyone who hadn't read any of the play, but she
had two minutes left.

"Do we really have to read the whole first act?" Pete asked. Maybe it was a
coincidence that her lazy student had the same name as her lazy brother.

"The entire play is performed in less than two hours, and that includes
reciting all the words aloud, stage business, and scenery changes. The
first act is one fifth of the play. If you're smart, you'll read the entire
play, but I'm only going to talk about the first act tomorrow. The first
act is one thing -- a block which hangs together. You'll need to read it to
understand what is happening." And that nearly ran out her time. The bell
rang before the next question. "If there are any more questions, I'll be in
the hall until the next class begins." But, of course, there weren't any
questions when the alternative was talking with their friends.

"You're not planning to do an act a day?" Mrs. Daniels asked.

"No, I'll assign reading it again when I give the assignments tomorrow.
Most of them will read at least enough of the act to read the lines of the
first scene as if they'd seen the words once before. Sharon will probably
read the entire play, which won't strain her. How many others will?"

"It sometimes feels like casting pearls before swine."

"You know," Marilyn said, "all those boys who say they don't need to know
literature or grammar because they'll be farmers just like their fathers. I
wonder how many of them put their hearts into farming. And the girls who
will be housewives, how many of them learn a recipe a week?" She remembered
the previous summer, when she'd learned more than five recipes a week.

"Well there are Future Farmers. Some of them work their asses off raising
prize pigs -- not all that many, but some of them. And not half of the
students come from farm families."

"But the others have another excuse for not studying?"

"Oh, yes." And they went in to the next class, which was of seniors.
Marilyn was still sitting at the back of the room while Mrs. Daniels taught
the seniors.

The next week, after they got to Romeo's speech in Act II, scene ii,
Marilyn interrupted the recital.

"Students are always asking me why you have to study this stuff. Well,
boys, let me tell you. That speech alone is worth all the study you've put
into English this year. It's even worth all the study you've been
*assigned* in English this year. Have a girl whose heart you want to melt?
Change the words a bit and recite this to her. But wait until summer so I
don't get blamed." They laughed, and the class went on. She didn't mention
Andy, though she'd thought of him.

A letter came to both of them from Andy's father. After a brief enquiry as
to how they were getting along and a report that he and Mrs. Bryant were
both healthy, he went on.

   I suppose Andy will be able to find out much more about the chances
   of EE jobs than I will.
   On teaching, the Chicago Public Schools have a residency policy.
   While it is only enforced intermittently, I doubt that Marilyn would
   want to apply for a new job while violating it. You could, of
   course, work for CPS while living in Rogers Park, and many do.
   Evanston itself, of course, and several other suburbs allow their
   teachers to live in Evanston.
   The addresses and phone numbers of some of these school districts
   are enclosed, as well as that of CPS.

Andy laughed. "The old man is a conniver. 'I don't want to influence you at
all, but here are the addresses of the school boards you could work for
when living where I want you to live.'"

"Well, is he all that bad? Whether we want to live there or not, it's nice
to be wanted."

"The question is whether you want to live in Evanston."

"Well, it has its advantages. We know the area. I know and like the school.
We have friends there, and family. If you don't want to deal with my
family, you have only to say so. I'll arrange to deal with them mostly when
you're not around. And, after all, your dad has visitation rights with the
girls. You don't." Really, she'd pictured herself teaching at ETHS, but it
wasn't a major desire. She'd pictured herself teaching high school, and
that was the high school she had known. She'd pictured herself living in
Evanston because that was the town she knew about. There was nothing
repulsive about Champaign or Urbana, the only ohter two towns she'd known.
What she knew of Chicago was the Loop and the train station, neither
residential areas.

"Only visitation rights with April, technically. Molly can make her own
decisions. She'll come along with The Moppet, though."

"And April is the one you like best. Of course, there might be other
factors which outweigh that." They had no idea what sort of offers Andy
might get.

"Well, I said that the decision of location is yours. I'd try to persuade
you, though, if I got an offer from Bell Labs."

"Well, let's keep this list your dad sent where we can get to it easily."

"Yeah. We don't know what my chances are."

While she was in the midst of teaching an essay-writing class to the
seniors, they found out. Andy got lots of offers. It wasn't too surprising,
after all. He had an impressive GPA; he had taken a few more
electrical-engineering courses than most of the others; he had significant
work experience.

She realized that she had accepted Andy's estimates of his chances. After
every finals week, Andy had said that he could have done poorly, and -- of
course -- there was always *some* chance that he could have. It never
happened, though, and it had never been a significant chance. Similarly,
companies *could* have decided that they didn't want to recruit this year,
that for some reason they didn't want to recruit at U of I, even that they
wanted some mix of skills that Andy didn't have. The chances of any of
that, however, were vanishingly small.

Bell Labs wasn't one of the offers. They didn't even recruit on campus that
year. However, YKL Signal, a Chicago-area company made Andy a generous
offer. They did manufacturing in several locations, but their engineering
and design was at a 'campus' outside Des Plaines. That was no farther from
Evanston than the Loop was, less of a commute than Dad took every day. Andy
visited the engineering department, and he liked the men there and their
set-up. The visit meant another night when she didn't sleep in his arms,
this time because *he* was away. She was going to save up the reminder for
when Andy raised an objection to some deviation from standard. Instead,
Andy brought it up and mourned openly. It was also, as far as she knew, the
only time in four years that he'd cut a class.

"You're sure," she asked, "that you're not simply taking this job because I
mentioned living in Evanston?"

"Quite sure. They want me, which is more than the starting pay. Since they
really want me, they want the skill set I have now. That means that they'll
use me as an engineer immediately, not put me to some other task until they
need another engineer. Besides, the founders are still running the shop,
and they started as engineers. One is still running the engineering
department. That means that engineers count as much as accountants or
salesmen."

So she sent off applications to Evanston Township High School and several
other places. She really preferred ETHS, and they were willing to start her
as a sub. That wasn't as good as a full-time job starting out, but they
wouldn't be hurting for cash.

One of the senior classes went into revolt on a Wednesday. "Mrs. Trainor,
we'll never use this stuff. We're about to graduate, and we'll never write
an essay again." Well, up until that problem, she'd been about to graduate,
too. She couldn't let them ruin her grade in practice teaching.

"Okay! You all think this writing exercise is useless?" There seemed to be
no dissent. "Okay. Get out a pen and a clean piece of paper. Write me three
paragraphs on what the class should be teaching you instead. Start now!"

Luckily, the other senior class didn't think that essay was any easier than
the one they were working on. They didn't revolt. Reading and grading the
papers took much of her evening. She and Andy had cheese sandwiches for
dinner instead of the mac-and-cheese she'd planned, and Andy made her
sandwiches. He put mayonnaise and mustard on her sandwich; each of his was
a slice of cheese between two slices of bread. She handed the class back
their essays (on what should be taught instead of essays) corrected,
graded, and the grades recorded.

"You know, you're all agreed on what you don't want. You're all over the
map on what should be done instead. Well, we'll continue to teach essay
writing in this class until I, at least, graduate. You can run for school
board the next election and present your ideas for changing the curriculum.
Before you run for office, though, you'd better improve your ability to
communicate in writing."

Finally, she bade good bye to the classes. They would stay in school a few
weeks longer than she would. Her last day, every class had somebody who
said nice things about her. The revolts had either been forgotten or
forgiven.

Her parents and Jim Trainor came down to see them graduate. Pete, who was
coming up on finals at Greenville College, couldn't make it. The two
families sat together. She and Andy sat far apart; he got his degree nearly
20 minutes after she got hers.

Jim Trainor wanted to invite them all to a restaurant, but he was too late.
She'd already cooked dinner. It was chili, greens, a tossed salad, and
canned pears for dessert. They had a surplus in their food budget, and they
could afford the last luxury. They borrowed another chair and squeezed
around the table.

They had survived nearly a year of marriage; they were nearly employed;
they were solvent. If the first year of marriage had been practice, the
practice had been a success.


The end
Practice - F
by Uther Pendragon
nogardneprethu@gmail.com
2012/05/10


These same events from Andy's perspective:
http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Uther_Pendragon/www/Gjt/tra_12m.htm
Andy's experience

The first adventures of Marilyn with Andy:
http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Uther_Pendragon/www/Gjt/tra_01f.htm
"The Meeting - F"

Another story about another woman balancing work with a new marriage:
http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Uther_Pendragon/www/Gjt/bla_04f.htm
"In the Morning - F"


The index to almost all my stories:
http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Uther_Pendragon/www/index.htm
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