Best Little Finishing School This West Side Story

I’m not being facetious when I say 9 East 71st Street was an excellent Finishing School for H-E, and countless others.

The very finest minds in the world gathered here to shoot the shit, and shot shit is finished.

H-E was coming to 9 East 71st Street as a raw material, the very opposite of shit.

H-E was a comestible, an edible, an incredible edible. A nibble, a mouthful, a giggle, a gaggle of sauce for the goose, and there were, among the finest minds gathered at 9 East 71st Street, many a gander.

There had been many a gander at H-E’s Nebraska High School, too. So she was familiar with this phenomenon. Indeed, a High School is supposedly a finishing school for the lower grades. A gander is a finishing school for a goose. Thank God there hadn’t been gander’s at H-E’s nursery school, nor in the nursery of her Nebraska farm/ranch house.

Upon arrival, H-E was instructed to shut up and listen. She did so. To stand against a wall, wearing her bare bodkin. She did so. At the 9 East 71st Street Finishing School a student, a pupil, a novice, an apprentice, a newbie, was to be, above all, attentive. Studious, pupious, noviciate, apprenticio-“you’re fired”- ious. IOU-ious. There was no excessive tuition at the 9 East 71st Street Finishing School. There was no tuition at all. Students, would, however, have to put out extra effort.