How Do You Handle The Grade Emails? I'm Tingly in Anticipation.

My colleague teaches

summer school

in wool pants to

build stamina.

She hates them,

the summer retreads.

She tells me this

while standing by a fan.

"Their grades,"

she says,

"My God, their grades.

They must have them!"

We here electronically send

our grades at semester end,

shuffling through cyber-whirl

to a delicate fibrous transcript in the sky.

"Do you," she said,

turning her lovely bum toward the fan,

"Let them call you, email you,

hornswoggle you at the mall for their grades?"

"Ah," I say,

but don't answer.

(Our dynamic is such

that I merely listen.)

"I won't take their calls.

I set up vacation email," she says,

"although my actual vacation is only 17 days."

They can get their grades as Bill Gates intended."

"Is that bad?" she says.

Wool pants.

I sip from my coffee.