Note to the Readers: This week I am doing something different in my column. I am posting a short story I wrote. I hope you like it.
Actually Not An English Class
by Elaine Carlson
Angela Meredith figures she is just about ready to reach out and grab her purse, turn down the thermostat and leave. She didn't make a shopping list last night but still thinks she should get some groceries on her way home.
She looks up and is surprised to see a policeman walking into the room.
"Hello," she looks straight at him, "May I help you?"
"I would like to talk to Ms Meredith."
"That's me."
"Hello Ms Meredith, I am Officer Joseph Nelson," he said, "We understand Gary Rogers is one of your students."
"He was in one of my classes last year."
"Well now he is down at the station," he said, "We picked him up because we got a complaint that he was making threats."
She noticed he used the word we a lot. Did he think he was representing the police department? Maybe that much was obvious.
"He wrote that he would knock the principal's lights out," he said, "And he said he was going to blow up the school."
"Well he certainly is ambitious."
Immediately she knew she shouldn't have said that. She could see Officer Nelson wasn't in the mood for any levity. But he acted as if he hadn't heard her comment.
"It isn't good he threatened to kill or do bodily harm to the principal," the officer said.
She knew Joe was a policeman and an adult but he looked like a little boy who was so proud of himself when he said "do bodily harm."
"And he said he had done what you said to do."
"He said I told him to make threats?"
"He said you told the class to write about criminal activity with the names of the real people."
"I am the Faculty Adviser for the creative writing club," she said. "And Gary Rogers is a member." She didn't want to add that the students voted to name their club The Creative Bandits.
"In meetings the students often say they have trouble coming up with ideas for their stories."
"So you tell the kids to practice by writing threats?"
Yeah gads. What would she ever be able to say that would make a difference to this cop?
"I suggest a good way to generate ideas for their stories is to really think about the people they know --- and the really bad things they could do to them. It is all imagination and fiction is at the minimum a lot of imagination."
She wished she could see what Gary had written. She guessed he wrote a letter with a threat as a writing exercise. Unfortunately if he did, he wrote well enough to make the police to think it was a real letter. And a real threat.
Finally Officer Joe Nelson left.
The next week she had another visit from two cops. One of them was also named Joe. Off hand she couldn't remember their last names or the other cop's first name. She just didn't care enough to pull out the paperwork to refresh her memory.
She always wondered who called the police to complain about Gary Rogers. It must have been a parent of another student and not a teacher. All of the teachers in the school, actually almost everyone in the school, knew about the creative writing club.
Other teachers would joke with her about the Meredith Murder Club. Accurate enough is what she thought. Denise Croft, a senior and the oldest one in the club, got the idea of completely destroying a house by setting it on fire but leaving everyone in the family alive. When asked she said she thought that would be the meanest thing she could do to people. But murder was the only thing the other members wanted to think about.
The students really took to the idea of thinking up ways to murder. And the club really grew as more and more students wanted to join. She had been glad to see the enthusiasm but now she was really worried.
The members wrote lists of their story ideas but it wasn't long before another Gary, Gary Turner, suggested they start writing confessions. And that idea took off. So many brought to the meetings their long and complex accounts of the imaginary evil deeds they had done since the previous meeting. She thought it wasn't much of a departure for Gary Rogers to decide to write a letter.
The local newspaper ran an article about that letter and the meeting between Police Officer Joseph Nelson and the teacher Angela Meredith. And that the police filed charges against Gary Rogers and that the case would be heard in the Courtroom of Gerald B. Snodgrass. The article had been picked up by an international news service. So the whole world knew about that creative writing club.
Following that newspaper article most of the club members stopped writing confessions and started writing letters to Police Officer Nelson and Judge Snodgrass. And of course the letters contained threats. The club became very competitive as the members strived to make the wildest and craziest threats.
Someone and she wasn't sure who (but somehow assumed it was a student) made copies of a pile of the lists, confessions, and letters the club members wrote. And sent them to the Police Department with a note attached which said, "Maybe you should start an investigation of these."
She wondered if Nelson was scared if in any of the letters addressed to him the writers said they would knock his lights out.
She was all set to go to a scheduled hearing but at the last minute she was told she didn't have to go. The hearing was short and Judge Snodgrass ruled to dismiss the charge against Gary Rogers.
At the next meeting of the Creative Bandits she again stressed that a good way to generate ideas for fiction was to think of the very bad things they could do to the real people they know. But in their writings to change the names.