13 September
Miss Mandible wants to make love to me but she hesitates because I am officially a child; I am, acc to the records, acc to the gradebook on her desk, acc to the card index in the principals office, eleven years old. There is a misception here, ohat I havent quite mao get cleared up yet. I am in fact thirty-five, Ive been in the Army, I am six feet one, I have hair in the appropriate places, my voice is a baritone, I know very well what to do with Miss Mandible if she ever makes up her mind.
In the meantime we are studying on fras. I could, of course, answer all the questions, or at least most of them (there are things I dont remember). But I prefer to sit in this too-small seat with the desktop cramping my thighs and examihe life arouhere are thirty-two in the class, which is launched every m with the pledge of allegiao the flag. My own allegia the moment, is divided between Miss Mandible and Sue Ann Brownly, who sits across the aisle from me all day long and is, like Miss Mandible, a fool for love. Of the two I prefer, today, Sue Ann; although between eleven and eleven and a half (she refuses to reveal her exact age) she is clearly a woman, with a womans disguised aggression and a eculiar tradis. Strangely her she nor any of the other childreo see any ingruity in my presence here.
15 September
Happily eography text, which tains maps of all the principal land-masses of the world, is large enough to ceal my destine journal-keeping, aplished in an ordinary blaposition book. Every day I must wait until Geography to put down such thoughts as I may have had during the m about my situation and my fellows. I have tried writing at other times and it does not work. Either the teacher is walking up and down the aisles (during this period, luckily, she sticks close to the map ra the front of the room) or Bobby Vanderbilt, who sits behind me, is pung me in the kidneys and wanting to know what I am doing. Vanderbilt, I have found out from certaiory versations on the playground, is hung up on sports cars, a veteran er of Road & Track. This explains the tinual r sounds which seem to emanate from his desk; he is reprodug a record album called Sounds of Sebring.
19 September
Only I, at times (only at times), uand that somehow a mistake has been made, that I am in a place where I dont belong. It may be that Miss Mandible also knows this, at some level, but for reasons not fully uood by me she is going along with the game. When I was first assigo this room I wao protest, the error seemed obvious, the stupidest principal could have seen it; but I have e to believe it was deliberate, that I have beerayed again.
Now it seems to make little differehis life-role is as iing as my former life-role, which was that of a claims adjuster for the Great Northern Insuranpany, a position whipelled me to spend my time amid the debris of our civilization: rumpled fenders, roofless sheds, gutted warehouses, smashed arms and legs. After ten years of this one has a tendency to see the world as a vast junkyard, looking at a man and seeing only his (potentially) mangled parts, entering a house only to trace the path of the iable fire. Therefore when I was installed here, although I knew an error had been made, I te, I was shrewd; I was aware that there might well be some kind of advao be gained from what seemed a disaster. The role of The Adjuster teaches one much.
22 September
I am being solicited for the