Bring Your Dairy to Class
On Friday afternoon, the substitute teacher, Mr. Pell, scribbled a note on the board in a tremendous hurry. It said, "Monday: bring your dairy to class. We will write about our weekends."
Ravi Menon read the note twice. He was a careful boy who always followed directions, and he knew exactly what the word dairy meant, because it described milk, cheese, and yogurt. He thought it was a strange assignment, but a rule was a rule, and he did not want to disappoint anyone.
On Sunday night, Ravi packed a cooler with a carton of milk, two cheese sticks, a tub of yogurt, and a stick of butter. He even tucked in a small tub of ice cream, just to be thorough.
On Monday morning, he carried the cooler into Room 9 with great pride. The other students were holding thin notebooks with tiny locks, so Ravi looked at his cooler, then at their notebooks, and then at Mr. Pell, who was staring at him with his mouth wide open.
"I wrote diary," said Mr. Pell slowly. "D, I, A, R, Y. A diary is a book."
"Oh," said Ravi. The class began to giggle and then to howl, and Ravi started to laugh too, because the whole situation was completely ridiculous.
Mr. Pell scratched his head and admitted that his handwriting was the real culprit. In the end, he let Ravi share the yogurt, and the class wrote about their weekends with a snack on every desk. After that, Mr. Pell always printed his notes in big, careful letters.