11 Write About a Time You Could Not Stop Laughing

7th Grade Truth

I never laughed harder

than I did in seventh grade

that time my best friend

Stuart Dunn and I

made fun of

our reading teacher

Mrs Dolson.

To this day,

I don't remember the joke

or why we laughed,

though it could have had

something to do with the corny stories

we read out of boring thick books,

or the reading machine

that made us track

sentences across the wall

without moving our lips

or turning our heads.

Laughter was release

from our 7th grade reading hell,

and our wild ,heaving, sobs

were the legs which fled

the dead questions

at the end of the chapter.

And decades later,

when I met Miss Dolson,

now a sweet old lady,

in the bank,

and told her I now was an English teacher,

she smiled blankly

and I felt a surprising shame creep

up my spine.

My life was a lie.

I should have been a comedian.