Gatsby Dies at the End - Flash Fiction

I am a pretty easygoing teacher, the kind of teacher who will look at the cover of Romeo and Juliet when the class begins and tell the kid that Romeo and Juliet die. I’d add a little note that Tybalt is kind of a jerk, and Mercutio is funny, but I get why some thought that he would kill Shakespeare. The character talks too much.

Of course, the kids I teach don’t get these jokes, and I don’t expect them to. I guess this is just my way of enjoying the job, aside from sitting down and telling the kids what they are supposed

to hear.

I taught an SAT kid recently, and the kid was not the most studious of kids. I am certain he never did any of the work I assigned for homework, and he barely studied independently. He is what you would call a hands-on learner and someone more fit for physical labor jobs.

He told me that the class in school was reading an old favorite of mine and many other readers, The Great Gatsby.

I made a joke about how the original title of the book was The Moderately Above Average Gatsby, but that the editors didn’t think that had the same ring. That joke went right over the student’s head, and I continued for my own amusement as much as his.

I told him it was all a dream, never making it clear that I was not being serious and that the 20th-century novel was far from a dream. You can say it is about the American Dream or how one fails to obtain it, but you can’t say that it is all in the guy’s head. That would be wrong.

We continued on with the lesson about something that the student should have learned years ago, and I was forced to reteach him. You know the topic, something like punctuation or parts of speech.

Anyway, the class ended, and I went on with my life, doing other things aside from teaching. I am not one of those teachers who lives in the classroom. I live in my office writing stories all day, more than any true teaching credentials on my end. I forgot what I told the kid about the classic novel.

A week later, the kid showed up for another lesson on English topics that he should have known already. The one that gets all the kids is semi-colons. They never know what they are.

I asked him how his day was and how school was going, and he told me something I didn’t expect to hear.

“Hey, you know I told my English teacher that The Great Gatsby was all a dream, and he said that I was completely wrong.”

“Oh, that’s because it is not. I was joking.” My humor goes over the kids’ heads sometimes. “Well, at least you are interested in the book. Did you start reading it?”

“No, we only read a few pages so far.”

I told him to open the laptop and start the questions I had assigned to him. I felt like it would be cruel to tell him that Gatsby dies.