Navajo Blanket

They were both seventy years old or more than that,but they both got a real bang out of things. I used to think about old Spencer quite a lot, and if you thought about him too much, you wondered what the heck he was still living for I mean he was all stooped over and had a terrible posture and whenever he dropped a piece of chalk a guy from the front row had to pick it up and hand it too him, thats terrible, it really is. But he wasn't doing too bad for himself. For instance, one Sunday when some other guys and I were over there for hot chocolate, he showed us this old beat-up Navajo blanket that he bought off some Indian in Yellowstone Park. You could tell old Spencer got a big bang out of buying it.

His door was open, but I sorta knocked anyway just to be polite and all. I could see where he was sitting. He was sitting in this big leather chair, all wrapped up in that blanket i just told you about. He looked over at me when I knocked and yelled at me to come in. He was always yelling. It made me hella' mad at him but I felt kinda sorry for the guy, he was old, it made me wonder what the heck he was still living for. He was reading the Atlantic Monthly and everything smelled like 'Vick's nose drops'. Anyway, he told me to sit down on his bed so I did, his matress was like a rock, really it was. So I start asking him how he is, acting all concerned but all the less regretting ever turning up, and then he starts interrogating me about how many subjects I was failing. Worst of all he got my history test out and read it out too me, teachers like to do that even when you ask them not too. You can't stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it. You could tell he really felt pretty lousy about flunking me so I shot the bull for a while. I told him I was a real moron, and all that stuff. I was thinking about central park while I was shooting all this bull, I don't really need to concentrate when i'm shooting the bull. Anyway, then he started asking me how I 'feel' about all this stuff so I decided to get out. I told him i had to go pick up some equipment from the gym. That was a lie. I just wanted to get out. So we said good-bye and that was that.