Writing Assignment:
For this assignment we were supposed to write a story about a character teaching a class something, and it goes horribly wrong. So I wrote about the Tune Squad coming into a first grade class and telling them about what they do for a living. Unfortunately everything does go horribly wrong.
“Alright kids, today we are going to have three guest speakers. Two of them are very cool detectives and the other is a forensic technician!” The teacher of the first grade class, Mrs. Burke, was very excited to inform her students of the speakers. She had been trying to get the Tune Squad to come in and talk to her students for a while now, but they had always been busy with their cases.
“What’s a fensic techcian?” Billy was always one of those kids who never stopped asking questions.
Mrs. Burke sighed, “Billy, I’m going to let the FORENSIC TECHNICIAN, Mrs. Callaghan, answer that.”
At that moment there was a knock on the classroom door. The students started to squirm in their seats in excitement at the prospect of meeting real detective. Mrs. Burke squeaked in surprise and went to go open the door, “Good morning, please come in.”
As she stepped aside to let the guests in Detective Cunningham was the first to walk in. He was iffy about being there in front of all these little kids. His gait was stiff and he awkwardly smiled and waved to the grinning children.
After him Detective Longs appeared around the door. In his hand was, of course, food. He had made Callaghan pull into a McDonald’s before they arrived at the school. He cheerfully waved to the children and went to go stand next to Cunningham.
Callaghan was the last to enter the room. She had stopped to talk to the teacher and thank her for letting them talk to the kids, and tell them what kind of work they do.
“Children, let’s give our guest a big round of applause!” Mrs. Burk started clapping and soon all the kids were clapping along with her.
“Thank you very much,” Callaghan started, “We are very pleased to be here and talk to you all about what it is we do. My name is Emma Callaghan and I’m a forensic technician.” She pointedly looked and Cunningham.
He furrowed his eyebrows at the look she was giving him, “Oh. I- uh- I’m Detective Geoffrey Cunningham. I, um, I’m a detective.” He said it in such a way that perhaps it could have been a question.
“Really?” Callaghan looked at him with her eyebrows raised.
“I don’t know how to talk in front of little kids. Most of the people I talk to make me angry and get me cussing a lot.”
At this point Longs stepped up, “Hey everyone, my name is Detective Longs.”
Billy raised his hand, “What’s your first name Mr. Longs?”
Longs’ face went blank, “That’s classified information. If I told you I would have to –“
“LONGS NO!” Both Cunningham and Callaghan knew where that sentence would lead.
Mrs. Burke didn’t know how to respond to the… interesting officer. Her face had gone white when she realized what was about to be said. “Uh, Billy, Mr. Longs doesn’t really like his first name. That’s why he doesn’t want anyone to know it,” she drifted off with a pitiful laugh.
“No ma’am. I like my first name well enough. I just cannot tell it to the children,” he turned to the class, “You see classified means that it’s a big secret and if anyone were to find out that secret I have permission to terminate them in any way possible.”
Everyone’s mouth was hanging open by the time Longs was done with his explanation.
“Why did we think it was a good idea to bring him here?” Callaghan smacked her hand to her forehead.
Although Cunningham didn’t know how to deal with first graders, he knew he had to get the topic of discussion away from Longs’ first name, “So, what does a detective do?” Many hands shot up into the air. “Oh, uh, that was a rhetorical question. So…”
Billy’s hand shot up again, “What does rhe- ra- rhetasicle mean?”
“Well, I’m not sure what rhetasicle means, but rhetorical means I wasn’t expecting anyone to answer it. Now-“
“So then why did you ask a question if you didn’t want anyone to answer it?” A girl in the back chimed in.
“Because I was using it as an attention getter,” Callaghan could tell Cunningham was getting frustrated with the children. She put her hand on his shoulder to make sure he knew he needed to calm down.
He didn’t catch the hint.
“But we were already looking at you. Why was you trying to get even more of our attention?”
Cunningham was gritting his teeth, “Because that’s just how you start speeches.”
Callaghan stepped in then, “So who knows what a forensic technician does?”
No one raised their hands.
“Okay, well what I do is help the police gather all the evidence at a crime scene.”
“Do you get to see dead bodies?” Billy was at it again.
Callaghan looked to Mrs. Burke. The teacher was shaking her head. As the forensic technician went to go answer the little boy Longs jumped in.
“She does in fact see the victims’ bodies. Actually there is this one story we tell all the time. The victim had been hanging by a noose for over 3 weeks. He was very decomposed by the time we got to him. Callaghan had to walk under him and that was a bad idea because the bottom half of the body suddenly fell right on top of her. She had blood and guts all over her, but she couldn’t take a shower because it was all evidence,” He was the only one laughing by the end of the story.
Callaghan looked at Mrs. Burke, who had now turned a pale green, and mouthed, “I am so sorry.”
Mrs. Burke couldn’t take anymore. Somehow this had turned disastrous and she didn’t know how to get the class back on track. Detective Cunningham was still glaring around at all the children, Detective Longs was still silently chuckling at his story, and Callaghan looked like a disappointed mother. She knew what that look looked like because she had seen it so many times, “Well, it looks like were out of time. It’s time for math now class. Let’s give our… esteemed guest speakers one more round of applause.”
It’s safe to say that the Tune Squad was never invited back to that school.
For this assignment I used Microsoft Word to type out my story. From there I just copied and pasted it into this post.
