The Connotations of Annotations

Alright, the title has nothing to do with the post, but after listening to Gene Kelly and Donald O' Connor sing "Moses Supposes" in Singin' in the Rain, I've been on fire!

So, something interested happened in the unusually mundane life of Senor Pooty Chang's life. My English teacher, Mr. Charles, makes us annotate - or write notes in the margin - our copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I have to digress here for a second, both for the sake of getting something off my chest and thickening up this post.

I don't care what others say, I find Huck Finn an oddly refreshing change from what I'm usually forced to read. After all, Mark Twain is much easier to read than bloody Charles Dickens (all Charles wanted to do was fatten up his wallet since they paid by the word during the 1800s - thence, his ways of calling a girl a slut in so many words). I've enjoyed Huck Finn immensely, and I know others say that's it's a boring book to read, which in that case I point your way towards Catcher in the Rye (I admit, I didn't really like Catcher in the Rye. Nothing against J.D. Salinger, I just hate teenage angst. It was the main reason why I couldn't stand Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince). However, Huck actually seems like a believable character, with the same notions and naivete of a 14 year old. Twain has a great sense of humour as a writer, and his characters are just as charismatic as one would imagine Twain himself to be. Unfortunately, people of this generation can't seem to enjoy Twain's wit - at least not without some intellect and wit themselves... Phuckin' philistines...

Back to the story. Well, my friend Elena writes "I love the cock" in one of the pages of my copy of Huck Finn. I didn't bother erasing it; I wrote "But I do love the cock, I do!" instead. Well, come English class, Mr. Charles was going around checking books for annotations while everybody was off working. I was kind of hoping that he would just skim through mine, not really read any of my notes, and just slap me with a full grade. Which would've been great; I was writing random notes that weren't even pertaining to the book, anyways. I didn't read the night before, so I did all of my anotations and highlighting the period before.

Unfortunately, Mr. Charles took the time to read my notes. While I was conversing with one of my peers, I was looking out of the corner of my eye for his reponse. During the middle of my conversation, Mr. Charles calls for my attention.

"Henry..."

He flashes to me the page with "I Love the Cock" on it.

"Ok, I didn't write that in, that's not even my writing."

He turns to the next page where, distinctly in my writing, it says "But I do love the cock! I do!" on it.

"... Ok, that I did write."

Sure, I got 1.5 points out of 4, but it was damn well worth the moment. Thing is, that night - I finished the book.

Tom Sawyer is a silly cooze.