ABSTRACT
Bob's voice was tremulous when he said this, and trembled more when he realized that the children had been listening to his speech.
They went to work on the bridge with a vengeance, intent upon proving the usefulness of their enterprise. At last when they were done for the day, they washed up, set the table and gathered around to have dinner together. They talked about education and learning and what life as a grown up might entail. The adults discussed what they had learned in school that had been of value in later life. They talked about what schools require of students and Bob told a story that no one believed at all. When Bob went to high school, his school had a gym requirement. His school was located in an old school building and it simply wasn't built to accommodate the number of students that it had. As a result it was impossible for each student to shower after gym class. There were 45 minute periods and the showers that did exist were very far from the lockers, so in order
60 3rd Stanza for everyone to shower after the class the class would have had to have been very short. The school authorities decided that every student would shower once a week. This shower was to be taken for one period of the five allotted in the week to gym, for 45 minutes. Students found this idea absurd, so they often skipped the shower period. The school found that behavior intolerable so it set up the idea that one had to "make up" any showers that were missed. What this meant, in actuality was that some students were actually forced to shower for entire days and sometimes an entire week at the end of the year in order to graduate.
