When I was eleven years old/A sixth-grade student at a middle school called Unit VI/My homeroom teacher was Mrs. Virginia Holmberg

She was strict and forbidding/But an early pioneer of behavior modification/Incentivizing as she did/A perfect week of spelling scores/with the reward of a candy bar

And she read us an exciting Horatio Alger story once with each chapter ending in a bad-luck cliffhanger

But she also heaped out scorn in quantity/Shaming a kid who’d written his name on his desk top with//”Fools’ names and Fools’ faces/Are often seen in public places.”

So one fateful day she was talking about how breathtaking the sight of Halley’s Comet was…

And I, the runny-nosed know-it-all, the smallest kid in the class, saw a delightful opportunity…

And my hand shot up and Mrs. Holmberg nodded and me and said, “Yes?”…

And I said, “Mrs. Holmberg, wasn’t the last time Halley’s Comet came close to Earth…in 1910??”

Many class members gasped/In astonishment/at the revelation of how OLD Mrs. Holmberg must be/And I could swear she blushed/But then a little self-deprecating smile came to her face/And she said, “Why, yes. But I was only a little girl then.”

And that moment revealed Mrs. Holmberg to me

As a little girl still.