Letter from the School

Firstly please accept my apologies for this being the fourth email communication it has been my unfortunate duty to relay to you this morning, but at least allow me to sweeten the bitter pill which it is my sad duty to deliver by first conveying the good news that, following a brief exchange with Miss Weisenheimer, your son, little Fresno, did indeed attend to his undone shoelace and gave us a commitment of allowing for no repetition of this shameful incident during school hours. Therefore please disregard the contents of my previous missive. Miss Weisenheimer has already arranged for the cancellation of our suggested additional appointment with Fresno's psychoanalyst, Miss Argue, given that your son's shoelace issue is hopefully resolved at this time.

However, Miss Weisenheimer informs me that at approximately 10.35AM, whilst taking the art lesson and responding to little Winchester Tagnut III's question about whether brown was a better color than gray, she happened to glance across at your son. It was at this point she noticed how, rather than working on his watercolor rendition of a clown driving a truck, he appeared to be staring from the window, his studies quite forgotten.

Mr. Burton, I must tell you that it is Miss Weisenheimer's testimony that little Fresno was in fact looking at a bird. Miss Weisenheimer, a respected teacher at San Antonio Academy for Prestigious Children of two years experience then fulfilled her commitment to respond to the question posed by Winchester Tagnut III and, this task duly dispensed, resumed her examination of Fresno who, she reports, had by this time resumed his work and was no longer looking at the bird. Miss Weisenheimer estimates that the boy's attention was focussed upon matters other than his school work for approximately fourteen seconds. When questioned regarding his conduct, Fresno appeared to have no knowledge of this shameful interlude of impromptu ornithology, and Miss Weisenheimer was unable to determine whether he was deliberately lying in order to conceal his shame, or had perhaps suffered a genuine lapse of memory - itself a troubling indication of some hitherto unexpected psychological issue.

I have therefore taken the initiative and made a fresh appointment for Fresno to discuss his future at San Antonio Academy for Prestigious Children with Miss Argue and will be recommending a course of anticatepinerohypnatines in the hope that this may reduce his tendency to look at birds every so often, providing of course that it doesn't clash with any of his other courses of medication.