High School English

August 31, 2009

[Re. Matt's note below]

I have a similar high school English class David story I need to tell! David and I were in many of the same English classes over the years. One year in high school, we together had Mrs. Greenspan for both English and Poetry. David could never understand why I had a soft spot in my heart for this woman for whom he had no patience or respect. This, of course, was a source of constant bickering between us. Anyway, all assignments were passed up to the front of the class and Mrs. Greenspan would read them aloud anonymously, and then begin a critique of what was read. One day, she begins to read aloud this anonymous poem:

"A bottle of white, a bottle of red....perhaps a bottle of rose instead. I'll meet you anytime you want, at our Italian restaurant."

I turned around in my seat to look at David who was sitting there grinning like the Cheshire Cat!

Robin Harbus-Fromme (no relation to Ethan, btw)

David and Ethan Frome

August 30, 2009

[This is] one of my all-time favorite David memories and I can't believe I didn't remember this soon enough to include in my eulogy.

We were in Mrs. Davis' English class in 10th grade or so. Brad Sklar and Andy Landis were in that class. Can't remember who else. (When asked if he was cheating on a vocabulary test once, Andy famously responded, "Yes, I was.") Anyway, we had to read Ethan Frome, written, I believe, by the same people who make Ambien. David was well into his 100th Ursula Le Guin science fiction story by this point, so let's just say that he and Edith Wharton didn't see eye to eye--certainly not a tale about snowbound turn-of-the-century New Englanders doing pretty much nothing of interest.

Mrs. Davis asked the class for its thoughts on good old Ethan Frome. Not surprisingly, no one raised a hand. There was silence in the class until David said this: "That was the biggest piece of s--t I ever read."

It was then, and remains to this day, one of the bigger smiles in my life.

Matt