The ‘Ol Battle Axe

I was watching my neighbor prune the hedgeson his front yard, when for no reason in particularmy thoughts wandered back to my third gradeteacher, Mrs. Cooke, the ol’ battle ax. Now I knowwhat you must be thinking: ‘oh, he means thatMrs. Cooke was elderly and rigid, a tough andforeboding presence that presided over her students.’Well, you’re wrong; I wasn’t speaking in metaphor;Mrs. Cooke really was an actual battle ax! Why theadministrators agreed to hire a medieval weapon fromthe 14th century, I’ll never know. But there she was,in room 8A, glistening in the bright halogen lights,inspiring dread and fear in our collective hearts. “Takeout your books!” she’d bark, and we would do sowithout a moment’s hesitation. After all, who was goingto talk back to a battle ax? Even to this day, themultiplication tables are seared, no, carved into mymemory. Six times seven is forty-two. Eight times threeis twenty-four. Oh, she was a tough cookie, ol’ Mrs. Cooke.Even when she tried to be consoling – like when JimmyDufraine’s dog died and he was in tears the whole day – eventhen, she whispered “there, there” and tried to give hima hug, and ended up giving him nine stitches to his scalp.And then there was that time at P.G. O’Shanley’s, where myfather and mother would take us kids from time to time, onaccount of they give you crayons to draw on your papertablecloth. There I was, busy doodling a picture of an airplaneor something else altogether while I waited for mycheeseburger, when my mom says, “hey, Billy, isn’t thatyour teacher?” We all looked up and over at the bar, whereMrs. Cooke sat alone, drinking a Tom Collins slowly, stirringthe straw around and around. All around her men in whiteshirts and black ties were busy buying cocktails for women inlow cut red dresses; the women were laughing and the menwere leering, while Mrs. Cooke sat unnoticed and unattended.It was always strange to see your teachers outside of theclassroom; to learn that they, too, had personal lives.I wanted to approach her, wanted to point out that axesnever died, and so wasn’t she the luckiest of us all, really,but by this point the food had arrived and so I stayed seated,picking at the fries, devising a plan to find a wife somedaythat I might never be so alone.____Josh Lefkowitz is a writer and performer. His first full-length monologue, titled Help Wanted: A Personal Search for Meaningful Employment at the Start of the 21st Century, has played in cities big and small across the U.S. He won the Hopwood Award for Poetry at the University of Michigan, and has new poems forthcoming in Conduit, The Hat, and Slurve. He is currently at work on a new solo performance piece, titled Now What?