From the Diary of Anne Frank
Anne and Mr Keesing
Explain how Anne turned Mr Keesing's punishment into a joke.
The class is nervous. The whole class is 'quaking in its boots' before the meeting where teachers decide who moves up. Two boys, C.N. and Jacques, have bet their holiday savings on it, and Anne and G.N. 'laugh ourselves silly' at them. Anne thinks 'teachers are the most unpredictable creatures on earth'. She is worried only about maths.
Essay 1: 'A Chatterbox'. Mr Keesing, the maths teacher, is annoyed because she talks so much. He gives her an extra essay. Anne does not just fill pages; she finds convincing arguments:
- talking is a student's trait;
- she gets it from her mother, who talks as much as she does, and you can't do much about inherited traits.
Mr Keesing laughs.
Essay 2: 'An Incorrigible Chatterbox'. (Incorrigible means it cannot be corrected.) She keeps talking, writes it, and is quiet for two lessons.
Essay 3: ''Quack, Quack, Quack,' Said Mistress Chatterbox'. This time the class roars. With her friend Sanne, who is good at poetry, Anne writes it as a poem: a mother duck, a father swan and three baby ducklings who were bitten to death by their father for quacking too much. Mr Keesing was playing a joke on her; now 'the joke was on him'.
The change in Mr Keesing. He takes it the right way. He reads the poem to the class and to other classes, lets her talk, and gives no more extra homework. 'Mr Keesing's always making jokes these days.' That is how he is unpredictable: from punishing her to laughing with her.
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