In order to make up for the crummy Monday, on Tuesday Mr. Mint said we could have classes outside. It meant more effort for him as he had to trudge everything with us and rely more on traditional media like paper and pencils than the computers and stuff we typically used. We both worked with increased vigor though. The serious lack of windows meant being cooped up inside all day most days had us suffering from a lack of vitamin d among the other benefits of being connected to nature. It was why I spent a lot of my time outside when at home.
"That was a terrible story," I complained, closing my book firmly.
"Was it actually poorly written, or is it terrible because it has an unfortunate ending?" Mr. Mint probed studiously.
"Both. I don't like it because it makes me feel sad. It's also badly written because the situation is deliberately set up to make the girl's death inevitable. No real organization would allow such shoddy engineering where a small amount of additional weight would require the pilot to jettison the girl out the airlock. They'd save more money and resources that they're trying to conserve if they use more of those resources to allow a margin of error. Then the flights wouldn't be so risky and catastrophic if something small goes wrong."
"A fair point," Mr. Mint acknowledged. "Because you had good reasoning, I'll save this reading of 'A Good Man is Hard to Find' for another day."
"What, is it another depressing story?"
"Mayhaps," Mr. Mint smirked.
"Why are you giving me all these harder-to-read dark tales anyway?"
"Despite your dislike of most literature, you read at an exceptionally high level. These are standard stories for study, and I thought it'd be best to get them out of the way so I don't have to continually throw them at you."
"I'd rather you actually throw the book at me if it meant I didn't have to read them," I mumbled.
Mr. Mint just laughed.
