Three Junes

Little One, my budding writer, is struggling to finish the year with straight As.  Inexplicably – to me, at least – the hardest B for her to bring up to an A has been in Writing.  Since I’ve seen this child’s development as a writer, I can’t believe she’s not acing the subject (though her spellign needds a bit of work, unlik mine).  However, despite my admitted bias, I’m still blaming her teacher.

So last night I had the dream I was back in high school, and her teacher was now my teacher.  Being June 1, he gave the class an assignment: write three sentences with the word June in it.  Wouldn’t that be redundant, a literary faux pas, I asked him.  Apparently in my dream I was an annoying thorn in his side.  Just write three sentences with three Junes, he replied sourly, and I knew I would be called on first to read my work.

So here’s what I wrote:

Later that June Hemingway was obligated to spend three weeks with McDonald, whose wife happened to be named June.  Ernest had spent the past three Junes on safari in Kenya with his old friends Bookbinder and Doggett, both of whom had wives coincidentally – and ironically – named June.  So that entire month in 1937, as he stared at his June calendar, listening to June McDonald babble on and on while reminiscing of drinking binges with two other Junes during three previous Junes, Hemingway began his most famous unfinished short story, “June.”

There.  That’s nine Junes in three sentences, three times as many as the teacher called for.  Wonder what grade I got?  Maybe I’ll find out in tonight’s dream …