Administrators in Mei Flower’s district, having decided that teachers needed just half a day of classroom preparation before the onslaught of classes, planned a half-day inservice “pep rally” for the afternoon. The program included such standards as the Pledge of Allegiance (“This went well. We all knew the words.”) and an address by the local union president, plus “special” fare like a slideshow from the previous year (“I already lived through last year, thanks, let’s move on.”) and local kids singing a medley of Broadway show tunes (“I don’t understand why we had a concert forced upon us when we could have been preparing for our classes which we start when? Oh, TOMORROW.”) By that time, Mei Flower explains, everyone was more than ready to leave. But instead, they were treated to a “professional speaker"—a lawyer with enunciation problems:
...for a "Professional Speaker" our guy had very poor articulation. This, coupled with a meager sound system and the horrible acoustics that all gymnasiums have, reduced the man's speech to (approximately), "Hibbedy gibbedy." I seriously had no idea what he was saying, so I was not motivated at all...Well, in truth, I was motivated to take out a piece of paper, write RANDOM COUNTY SCHOOLS at the top, and find as many words as I could using just those letters. I challenged myself and used words with four letters or more, but I still filled up the whole page and that guy was still talking.
All we can say is that there’s a reason for the similarities in the terms “inservice” and “serving time.”
