Another funny story..

Sam is a student at the Bronson Alcott - the school that is driving him crazy. In the school lunchroom he strikes back at the boring rules and regulations.

THIS SCHOOL IS DRIVING ME CRAZY!

'Can't you imagine it better?' Sam asked. 'Can't you imagine a school you'd want to go to?'

'Like, for instance?'

'Like a school,' Sam said, 'where you'd never have to do anything you didn't want to. If you didn't fell like reading, you could play ball.'

'Boring,' Benjy said.

'What do you mean, boring?'

Benjy pretended to throw up as he looked at the gooey macaroni and cheese that was the day's lunch. 'After a while,' he said, 'you'd get bored doing anything you wanted to. It'd be like summer all year long. I mean, summer's OK up to about the first week in August, but then, you know what, I start wanting somebody to tell me what to do even if I don't want to do it.'

'The trouble with you,' Sam said, 'is you haven't got much imagination.'

'What the hell does that mean?'

'It means,' Sam said, 'there's always something to do. There's never any reason to be bored. Watch.

'MY BRACE! MY BRACE!' Sam howled. 'I'VE LOST IT!'

'There's nothing wrong with your teeth,' Benjy whispered. 'You don't have a brace.' If Sam wasn't a friend of mine, Benjy was thinking, I'd figure him to be the biggest jerk in creation. And you know what? He is the biggest jerk in creation.

'REWARD! REWARD!' Sam was yelling. "I LOST MY BRACE, I LOST MY DEN-TAL APPLIANCE. IT'S IN THE MACARONI OR SOMEWHERE IN THE ICE CREAM. REWARD! REWARD!

The food line stopped. Some of the kids already at their tables looked at their trays, grimaced, and pushed them away.

Mr McEvoy, the head of the middle school, a tall, thin, balding man who prided himself on his ability to remain calm, or at least appear calm, whatever the provocation, walked briskly over to Sam. 'You really did not have to tell the whole world,' he said. 'Now, are you sure you lost your brace?'

Sam, trying not to grin, nodded affirmatively. Benjy, who had moved several steps away, was looking fixedly at the ceiling.

'Wait a minute,' Mr McEvoy said. 'You don't have a brace! I remember your mother saying that at least your teeth are prefect.' He began to make noises in his throat.

Jees, Sam thought, Mr McEvoy sounds like he's growling. He sounds like - like a dog.

'Sam!' Mr McEvoy's voice was loud, but it sounded strangled. 'This is a joke, isn't it?'

Benjy moved farther away from Sam, who kept his head down.

'Well,' said Sam, 'it just came to me, you see, Mr McEvoy.'

The head of the middle school, the growls coming faster and deeper, shut his eyes for a few seconds and then, enunciating each syllable with great care, said, 'You already have an appointment for detention with me this afternoon, Sam. It will be a long appointment. And you will have a very long composition to write on why students must not act like baboons in the school cafeteria.'

'ALL RIGHT!' Mr McEvoy tried to make his voice carry throughout the cafeteria. 'ALL RIGHT! NO BRACE, NO DENTAL APPLIANCE FELL INTO ANY OF THE FOOD. ONE SMALL BOY THOUGHT HE WAS BEING FUNNY. HE WAS NOT BEING FUN-NY. AND HE IS GOING TO BE VERY SAD. CONTINUE YOUR LUNCH!'

The kids at the tables looked suspiciously at their food trays, and some began to poke around in the macaroni. The food line started moving again, but most of the kids, judging by how little macaroni they took, didn't seem to be very hungry.

'Terrific,' Benjy said to Sam. 'Terrific. if that's what you call imagination, I'd rather have a toothache.'

'What was that all about?' asked Blake Edwards, who had been waiting in the food line. 'You crazy?' he said to Sam.

'Some days nobody's got a sense of humour,' Sam said, annoyed at Benjy and annoyed at himself.

'Now, look here.' Blake poked Sam in the chest. 'Food is nothing to fool around with. Even what they call food here. You can mess with me a whole lot of other ways, but do not mess with my food. First of all, by eleven o'clock, I am thinking about nothing but food. And second, eating time is the only time you get for yourself in this school the whole damn day. You picked the wrong place, man, to have your joke, if that's what it was.'

'Oh, go to hell - both of you!' Sam said. He stalked off.

A story that I want to share..

Here is a ghost story to make your hair stand on end and your teeth chatter..

A NIGHT AT A COTTAGE

On the evening that I am considering I passed by some ten or twenty cosy barns and sheds without finding one to my liking: for Worcestershire lanes are devious and muddy, and it was nearly dark when I found an empty cottage set back from the road in a little bedraggled garden. There had been heavy rain earlier in the day, and the straggling fruit trees still wept over it.

But the roof looked sound, there seemed no reason why it should not be fairly dry inside - as dry, at any rate, as I was likely to find anywhere.

I decided: and with a long look up the road, and a long look down the road, I drew an iron bar from the lining of my coat and forced the door, which was only held by a padlock and two staples. Inside, the darkness was damp and heavy: I stuck a match, and with its haloed light I saw the black mouth of a passage somewhere ahead of me: and then it spluttered out. So I closed the door carefully, though I had little reason to fear passers-by at such a dismal hour in so remote a lane: and lighting another match, I crept down this passage to a little room at the far end, where the air was a bit clearer, for all that the window was boarded across. Moreover, there was a little ruested stove in this room: and thinking it too dark for any to see the smoke, I ripped up part of the wainscot with my knife, and soon was boiling my tea over a bright, small fire, and drying some of the day's rain out of me steamy clothes. Presently I piled the stove with wood to its top bar, and setting my boots where they would best dry, I stretched my body out to sleep.

I cannot have slept very long, for when I woke the fire was still burning brightly. It is not easy to sleep for long together on the level boards of a floor, for the limbs grow numb, and any movement wakes. I turned over, and was about to go again to sleep when I was startled to hear steps in the passage. As i have said, the window was boarded, and there was no other door form the little room - no cupboard even - in which to hide. It occured to me rather grimly that there was nothing to do but to sit up and face the music, and that would probably mean being haled back to Worcester jail, which I had left two bare days before, and where, for various reasons. I had no anxiety to be seen again.

The stranger did not hurry himself, but presently walked slowly down the passage, attracted by the light of the fire: and when he came in the did not seem to notice me where I lay huddled in a corner, but walked straight over to the stove and warmed his hands at it. He was dripping wet; wetter than I should have thought it possible for a man to get, even on such a rainy night; and his clothes were old and worn. The water dripped form him on to the floor: he wore no hat, and the straight hair over his eyes dripped water that sizzled spitefully on the embers.

It occured to me at once that he was no lawful citizen, but another wanderer like myself; a gentleman of the Road; so I gave him some sort of greeting, and we were presently in conversation. He complained much of the cold and the wet, and huddled himself over the fire, his teeth chattering and his face an ill white.

'No,' I said, 'it is no decent weather for the Road, this. But I wonder this cottage isn't more frequented, for it's a tidy little bit of a cottage.'

Outside the pale dead sunflowers and giant weeds stirred in the rain.

' Time was,' he answered, 'there wasn't a tighter little cot in the county, nor a purtier garden, A regular little parlour, she was. But now no folk'll live in it, and there's very few tramps will stop here either.'

There were none of the rags and tins and broken food about that you find in a place where many beggars are used to stay.

'Why's that?' I asked.

He gave a very troubled sigh before answering.

'Gho-asts,' he said; 'gho-asts. Him that lived here. It is a mighty sad tale, and I'll not tell it you: but the upshot of it was that he drowned himself, down to the mill-pond. All slimy, he was, and floating, when they pulled him out of it. There are fo-aks have seen un floating on the pond, and fo-aks have seen un set round the corner of the school, waiting for his childer. Seems as if he had forgotten, like, how they were all gone dead, and the why he drowned hisself. But there are some say he walks up and down this cottage, up and down; like whenthe smallpox had 'em, they couldn't sleep but if they heard his feet going up and down by their doors. Drownded hisself down to the pond, he did; and now he Walks.'

The stranger sighed again, and i could hear the water squelch in his boots as he moved himself.

'But it doesn't do for the like of us to get superstitious,' I answered. 'it wouldn't do for us to get seeing ghosts, or many's the wet night we'd be lying in the roadway.'

'No,' he said; 'no, it wouldn't do at all. I never had belief in Walks myself.'

I laughed.

'Nor I that,' I said. 'I never see ghosts, whoever may.'

He looked at me again in his queer melancholy fashion.

'No,' he said. 'Spect you don't ever. Some folk do-an't. It's hard enough for poor fellows to have no money to their lodging, apart from gho-asts sceering them.'

'It's the coppers, not spooks, make me sleep uneasy,' said I. 'What with coppers, and meddlesome-minded fold, it isn't easy to get a night's rest nowadays.'

The water was still oozing from his clothes all about the floor, and a dank smell went up from him.

'God! man,' I cried,'can't you NEVER get fry?'

'Dry?' He made a little coughing laughter. 'Dry? I shan't never be fry...'tisnt't the likes of us that ever get dry, be it wet OR fine, winter OR summer. See that.'

He thrust his muddy hands up to the wrist in the fire, glowering over it fiercely and madly. but I caught up my tow boots and ran crying out into the night.

From A Moment of Time

by RICHARD HUGHES