The History TeacherTrying to protect his students' innocencehe told them the Ice Age was really justthe Chilly Age, a period of a million yearswhen everyone had to wear sweaters. And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age, named after the long driveways of the time. The Spanish Inquisition was nothing morethan an outbreak of questions such as" How far is it from here to Madrid?""What do you call the matador's hat?" The War of the Roses took place in a garden, and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom on Japan.The children would leave his classroomfor the playground to torment the weakand the smart, mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses, while he gathered up his notes and walked homepast flower beds and white picket fences, wondering if they would believe that soldiersin the Boer War told long, rambling storiesdesigned to make the enemy nod off. Billy Collins
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The History TeacherTrying to protect his students' innocencehe told them the Ice Age was really justthe Chilly Age, a period of a million yearswhen everyone had to wear sweaters.And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age,named after the long driveways of the time.The Spanish Inquisition was nothing morethan an outbreak of questions such as"How far is it from here to Madrid?""What do you call the matador's hat?"The War of the Roses took place in a garden,and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom on Japan.The children would leave his classroomfor the playground to torment the weakand the smart,mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses,while he gathered up his notes and walked homepast flower beds and white picket fences,wondering if they would believe that soldiersin the Boer War told long, rambling storiesdesigned to make the enemy nod off.

Source: Questions About Angels

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More Quotes By Billy Collins
  1. I see all of us reading ourselves away from ourselves, straining in circles of light to find more light until the line of words becomes a trail of crumbs that we follow across a page of fresh snow
  2. It is time to float on the waters of the night. Time to wrap my arms around this book and press it to my chest, life preserver in a sea of unremarkable men and women, anonymous faces on the street, a hundred thousand unalphabetized things,...
  3. The History TeacherTrying to protect his students' innocencehe told them the Ice Age was really justthe Chilly Age, a period of a million yearswhen everyone had to wear sweaters. And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age, named after the long driveways of the time....
  4. I could feel the day offering itself to me, and I wanted nothing morethan to be in the moment-but which moment? Not that one, or that one, or that one,
  5. All they want to dois tie the poem to a chair with ropeand torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hoseto find out what it really means.
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