“There simply aren’t enough letters in the alphabet,” Mr. Lyle Baumgartner announced to his freshmen English class one afternoon. “As presently constructed the language is wholly inadequate to express the depth of my feelings.”
He stared out at the blank or incredulous faces of his students. He then leaned on his desk with his left arm while dramatically and delicately touching his chest near his heart with his right hand. With this visibly trembling hand he made a patting motion and fluttered his fingers.
There was a long moment of silence while Baumgartner surveyed the class and appeared to be rummaging in his skull for additional words with which to furnish his address. A lumpy, rumpled character with a head of greasy and thinning black hair, Mr. Baumgartner was legendary for his dandruff, his indescribable cologne, and for having worn the same pair of scuffed and clunky brown shoes every day for more than a decade. He was also notorious for once having had a hysterical breakdown while reading aloud from A Day No Pigs Would Die.
“I know,” he said, “that many of you are familiar with Miss Yennish, the distinguished business education instructor at this high school. What you may not know, however, is that that comely woman has laid claim to my soul, even as she remains blithely indifferent and even, one might say, blind to not only my affection, but also to my very existence. My every effort to woo the object of my desire having proved entirely ineffectual, I find myself driven to a level of distraction and despair that verges on the maniacal. Given this unhappy set of circumstances I am going to ask that, in lieu of your regular assignment, each of you compose a letter to Miss Yennish on my behalf. This assignment will be graded, and those missives I find to be most heartfelt, ardent, and artfully constructed will receive extra credit. They will also be delivered to Endora Yennish’s home, along with a dozen red roses and a poem of my own composition.”
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