Here is Come to Jesus, the follow-up to Dear De’Niece. In Dear De’Niece, Tom O’Shea was confronted by his administrator that he better cop on and do what she says, or else she’ll find a new teacher to teach his students. The bizarre escalation of threat in her voice sends O’Shea reeling.
O’Shea walks down the hall and collapses in the staff bathroom. He is a guinea pig, but he tells his students they are not.
He declares to himself, “I will not beat up (my kids)” with a book 10 grades over their heads, and tells them to just try, to take responsibility for themselves and their learning.
It’s a talk laced with cursing, urgency, and pathos. O’Shea is torn between helping his kids survive, and keeping his job.
I hope you like it! Don’t know if I should even interpret my own pieces in these descriptions. I hate fluff, and hope this doesn’t border on fluffery!
I just erased a lot of fluffery! Just know, Come To Jesus’ earliest drafts shot out of me in a whipped up rage.
If we had had all the friends and legal protection we needed from 2015 through 2019, I would still have been dashing off stories about other wack jobs I’ve held, like at an amusement park or a mall, driving truck, or parking cars of gangbangers behind Moby Dicks Bar. But no-o, I’m writing about two crazy teachers in Tales Told Out Of School.
Thanks for following! I’ll get along with the end of the novel now.
Love yas,
Hotspvrre
Come to Jesus