Professor Winkle

Professor Winkle, eating alone one night at a table for two in the little Chinese restaurant on Main Street, is seen beyond the window by two of his female students who are hurrying along to a bar further down the sidewalk.  

“Let’s go in,” says the first girl, half-joking.

“I swear he always looks at me in class,” says the other.

 

 

 

 

Huge Jill

 

Jill was huge, even by a guy’s standards.  Her size became a joke.  Huge Jill, she was known as, because there was another sophomore named Jill who was tiny, smart and feline-looking, and who everyone seemed to like without knowing why.

The school was on a hill.  Huge Jill lived somewhere near the bottom.  Where the other Jill lived no one knew.

Everyone liked Huge Jill because she was too big and too loud not to like.  She was reminiscent of some comedians – not intentionally funny, but outrageous.  Once, in the cafeteria, she pretended she was a lineman.  Her family never moved from the house near the bottom of the hill. 

The other Jill wore glasses and had a tiny nose.  She looked like a Miranda.  People wanted to get to know her, or to appear as though they were able to get to know her.  She was depressed for reasons no one was aware of.

A lake was near the school.  The lake was frozen in winter.  Trees around the frozen lake looked like they could snap.  White and gray and brown were the colors of the landscape.

Huge Jill never thought of the lake.  The other Jill thought of it all the time.

 

 

 

 

Delinquents

 

Halfway home from school, Peter Dane and I hit the wrong car with snowballs.  Not the wrong car in that it wasn’t the car we were aiming at, but the wrong car in that, though it didn’t belong to her, it happened to be driven by my mother.

We took off through a lane, cut through Peter Dane’s backyard, and were eventually collared when my mother reached Mrs. Dane on the telephone.

We never got in trouble, though I remembered my mother’s surprised face, and the way Mrs. Dane had nodded, saying “Un-huh, Un-huh,” before finally waving us off to the TV room.

Later, after my parent’s divorced, I recognized the car in the driveway of my stepfather’s house.