‘Unless you are all in line and QUIET, we are not living’. This is what I overhear. This wonderful teacher is still working her way around the ridiculous catastrophe known as English vowels. There are five vowels, yet there are eighteen different vowel sounds. Don’t ask me how we got here linguistically.
No one is ‘leaving’ unless he or she or the whole mob is quieted and in line. For one split second I fantasize and think, ‘if only it were that simple. ‘We are not living! We are not leaving!’
However, as I look at the churning, chattering, blithering, roiling, verbalizing, pointing, grabbing, poking crowd known as ‘my temporary people, my students’ I observe that every single one standing in line is very much alive, wriggling and living. But they’re not leaving right now because of the noise. Not quiet. Not in a line. Vowels, children…it’s a cast of thousands…
690 Saint Paul 