Broken Pattern

Up and down the City road,
In and out the Eagle,
That’s the way the money goes,
Pop goes the weasel.

As I might’ve said before, I come from a rather decent high school and I take huge pride in my abilities in English, especially writing and analyzing. So you can imagine my disdain when I join the Cegep slackers community and find myself having 70’s thrown at me by my narrow minded, semi-biased “my way (which is usually the book’s way) is the right way”, and even sometimes moronic teachers, especially in English class.

Due to this, I’ve come to adapt myself to the new surrounding. Seeing it impossible to please the teacher, I’ve decided that I will choose to please the class, utilizing my teenage angst as a key element to affront the teacher. Such actions took place a few classes ago when we analyzed “Pop Goes the Weasel”.

For this, you need some background. My teacher butchers poetry to an absolute. She fails to feel the rhythms or emotions, and her bad voice only helps drive the dagger through the poet’s heart (luckily, most of them are long dead). On top of that, she has her own pre-determined views of the poems, which she shares with the class while shutting down any young student’s attempt at creating a new, original analysis.

Back to present day. My teacher begins to explain what she thinks she knows the poem to be, referring to what I read in our book. She mentions how the poem is probably about a place where men used to drink back in the day, that the Eagle was the place’s name and that she was unsure about the rest. By the way, she never cited her sources.

My friend was sitting next to him so I started to tell him what I thought the poem was about and by the end we were both laughing. She realized I had something to say and questioned me by asking, “Trevor, do you have an analysis?

“In fact I do” I replied, and so commenced a journey of words that would not rest until completion.

“I think the poem is about prostitution.”

The teacher, quickly seeing her mistake acted hastily to shut me up.

“Oh, ok.” She tried to regain control of the class, but it was lost.

“‘Up and down the City’ road refers to the men looking around for a prostitute from whom to rent service.”

“Alright, that’s enough” as heads slowly turned and eyes of students met with my own.

“‘In and out the Eagle’ represents the act of sexual intercourse.

“All right, that’s enough” but it was too late; the focus of the class was placed upon me.

“‘That’s the way the money goes’ refers to the fact that the men paid for the actions they are pursuing.

By this time she had lost all control as nothing can stray teenagers away from talk of sex and prostitution.

“And ‘Pop goes the weasel’, well, what else?”

I sat back and looked at what I had done. Sure I may have disrupted the class, but the kids were happier and I was going to get a bad mark anyways. At least now I deserved it. And I’ve come to develop a better way for me to go through English class. From now on I mark myself based on how the class reacts to my comments, as long as they are intelligent and humourous observations or witty puns. Lately, I’ve been getting high 90’s.