From the very beginning–no, I mean not the beginning, but seven years after the beginning– when I was seven and in the second grade– I was fascinated by the telephone.

I liked talking into the telephone, and listening. But that wasn’t it. I liked using the telephone for mischief.

But that wasn’t it, either…

I liked science, I liked history, and I liked money. Even at seven years old I was able to connect these dots to the telephone. At that time, there were dots in the telephone, both in the mouth piece and in the part held to the ear– the receiver?

Okay I like science, and so now I can tell you what the mouth piece, the receiver, and most of the dang telephone were made of– plastic. But it was a specific type of plastic known as BAKELITE.

But while I was in the second grade, and my nourishment came from my beautiful, demure, sexually available (to the principal) second grade teacher, who was doing her best.

We second grade students, attentive to demure, almost mermaid, teachers, were stunned and delighted when they ventured into an area they hated– science and math– and then pulled a fast one– they hit one out of the park with a science explanation.

This lesson started with the name Alexander Graham Bell. Inventor of the telephone. I knew phones rang, so the “Bell” part of the thang resonated. I wanted nothing more than my name to be named in hushed tones to school children, so my ears perked up, so I could get some pointers.

Next, two tin cans were brought forth. These were empty cans which the teacher had thoughtfully saved after eating the creamed corn, or diced tomatoes– or spam– thinking of her students, and this was long before recycling. (That’d come one or two years later.) She had scraped off the labels, so it was difficult to tell. No advertisement during a science experiment or investigation, proper. Just bare, stripped down metal. Bare bones tin. Sn. (The sign for tin, Sn, suggests sin, but science suggests sin, and so does telecommunications.)

Alexander had a tin can and so did this other guy– I remember the other guy being named Watson– and between Alexander and Watson was a string. At the bottom of each can, was a hole, likely drilled by my second grade teach. She was a tactile teach. Her lesson plan asked her to knot a string, or wire, so the two cans could be in communion. There was Alex holding one tin can, and Watson, over there, holding the other. There was the wire between these two cans. There was Morse, who hewed to a righteous code, drifting in and out, winging, like a wire, like a Fourth of July, or a Bastille Day, or a flagrant fragrant, pony riding, or —

Dear sweet, fragrant, humble, my second grade teacher. The Principal reminded me of Abraham Lincoln, raw boned, and hooked on you. You were as hookable as a hookah snorting a risible rainbow in plaintive tone. What I know is Alexander Graham Bell was listening in on your lessons, and cut you some puts, some calls, some big falling water.