Fire Drill Letter: Fill & Download for Free

We had a problem with this for about three or four years, but I finally solved the problem.Our house is in a very dense city, so our front door is quite close to the sidewalk, and our front flowerbed is next to the steps, at the top of a waist-height retaining wall. Years ago, I planted a couple dozen tulip bulbs, different types, and I was always happy to see them bloom. They'd come up in early April.Unfortunately, we're across the street from the city's high school. And every April, the high school would stage a scheduled fire drill, that happened to fall a week after our tulips bloomed. In those years, the school's practice was for the teachers to bring their kids across the street to our sidewalk, there to wait for the all-clear.Later in the afternoon of the fire drill, when I'd go out to walk my dog, I'd find that all of our tulips had been picked. Further, during my walk, I'd see the plucked flowers lying here and there on the sidewalks and in the gutters near our house. Evidently, for the kids, our flowers were just a momentary novelty.The second year that this happened, I called the High School's main office to complain. Predictably, the staff found my call preposterous. “How are we supposed to control them?” They stuck to their guns, so that year, I didn’t get anywhere.The third year that we lost our tulips, I was ready. I’d looked up the principal’s email address in advance, so I wrote my complaint directly to him. I pointed out that the school’s job is to teach, so it’s not unreasonable for me to hope that the school might teach the kids to keep track of what is & isn’t theirs. But IIRC, my letter’s main point was, “Mr. Principal, I feel sure that if the students were raiding your flowerbed, or your mother’s, you’d find a way for the teachers to manage the kids’ behavior better.”My letter persuaded him, and ever since that year, when the kids come to our sidewalk to wait, their teachers watch them and remind them to leave our flowers alone. I go out on my front porch to be seen, and though the teachers scowl at me, they keep the kids in line.

Lord yes, mostly by teachers who had no sense whatsoever.When I was in middle school, my health teacher called my mother because she was absolutely sure I had plagiarized a paper on drug use. Her reasoning was because no child in middle school would have used the vocabulary I had. She was promptly told to find the source, which she of course couldn't find, because I didn't plagiarize anything—I'd been at a college reading level since elementary school and just wrote the paper the only way I knew how. The next year, my health teacher called my mom to tell her she thought I was bulimic because of how I reacted to the video we watched on the subject, even though I had no reaction to speak of that I'm aware of, because it wasn't relevevant to me. Pretty sure she missed the girl in absolute tears next to me, or had mistakenly thought she was me.That same year, I had a teacher call my dad to tell him I had acted up during a fire drill that had been scheduled for a week to say I'd put everyone in danger. I had to write an apology letter to the entire grade for that one.In high school my health teacher (again with health!) called my mom to tell her she was sure I was anorexic because of how thin I was. My mom explained to her I was just naturally thin—all the women in my family are. The next week she called back after we did food diaries to tell her I was bulimic because nobody my size could eat the sheer amount of calories and be skinny. My mom railed on that poor woman.Later that year my mom was called for me not doing homework probably 20 times, for skipping math class, and for being kicked off the bus because I laughed when my friend drew a heart on the bus seat and covered it up with a whole stack of post it notes.I swear I was a good kid. Pinky promise.

The Dutch have many fine attributes, but one of their most conspicuous traits is that they are not British.Other people who are not British are the French (French letters, cricket and knickers) and the Chinese (Chinese whispers, burns and fire drills).In all cases, they refer to things which are not quite right. In the times of European empires, it is not surprising that we would attribute crapness to our enemies of the time.