Hot pillows

Beverly Cleary (then Bunn) continues to make her way through school:

The third-grade teacher at Gregory Heights Grammar School soon became ill and was replaced by a substitute who stayed the rest of the semester. Schoolwork was easy, but the substitute, I felt, could not be very bright. One day she asked a boy to make a sentence using the word “hot.” He answered, “My pillow is hot.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “Stoves are hot. Fires are hot. Pillows can’t be hot.”

Yes they can, I thought. I felt sorry for the little boy, who looked ashamed. Pillows could be very hot. Dumb teacher.

Beverly Cleary, A Girl from Yamhill: A Memoir (New York: William Morrow, 1988).

This substitute reminds me of the student teacher who told fourth-grader Bryan Garner that shan’t isn’t a word and refused to acknowledge otherwise. Dumb teacher.

Related reading
All OCA Beverly Cleary posts (Pinboard)