Who Would Put Up With It?

By Fred Gardiner

Author's Preface. November, 2013 Edition: Some years ago, never mind exactly how many, I set myself a course in life. Well, I didn't set it exactly so much as it was handed to me in the library of Merivale High School at the end of a rather wonderfully disastrous academic year. I had failed, or was about to fail, every single subject except English and Theatre Arts and had no idea how I was going to deal with the ignominy of returning the following year to retake a bunch of courses I had no interest in in the first place. I guess I didn't want to be prepared for life in the real world and thought that the boys in the non-academic section of the school were having more fun and learning far more interesting and worthwhile things than how to dissect yet another poor frog preserved in a jar of formaldehyde. It's not that I couldn't dissect a frog if I had to. I just didn't want to. Except, of course, I was paired with a rather cute girl who did want to but thought the whole thing was gross, so I sort of guided her through it and agreed that it was sick but necessary if she wanted to get a good mark in the course. She did. I didn't. C'est la vie. In any case, I wandered into the library, close to the end of term and drifted towards the literature section with the vague notion that if English was the only subject I had any real interest in, perhaps I should start reading more significant books. You see, there was this one teacher, my English teacher, whose name I have forgotten. I could make up a name for him, I suppose, but I'd rather not because, with the exception of my theatre arts teacher, Mr. Watson, he was the only teacher that year who took any real interest in my academic progress. But there was a reason for that. It was because I was the only person in his class who took any real interest in Paradise Lost, or had even the vaguest notion what darkness visible meant. I think I said something like, Milton is just describing what it feels like to be an archangel one minute and tossed out of heaven the next for failing to recognize God's authority.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0H7R86BDY
• ISBN13: 9798185652053
• Release Date: July 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 148 Pages
• Weight: 0.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"