It's really strange the way humor manifests itself in us. At first, I took this story pretty seriously. Actually, it even made my skin crawl at first, especially from the revelation of the mass deaths of trees to the mass deaths of snakes... and then mice and salamanders and gerbils. I was wondering what was wrong with this school (since the title is "The School" especially) but once I got to the part where they adopted a Korean kid named Kim, I couldn't help but let out a little laugh. Not because the idea of an orphan dying is funny, but because a class adopting a kid just seemed absurd and unrealistic. However, once I got up to reading about the parents, my mood turned somber again and I once again found the story creepy. The abrupt and volatile changes in my mood surprised me.
Then, later towards the end of the story, where the kids asked Edgar to "make love" with Helen, I was a bit confused. Because these kids are called "kids" and they have class pets, I was imagining them to be little children, but they spoke like adults. And because the narrator refers to them as "they" when speaking, as if they are one collective whole who are droning on at the same time, it creeped me out even more, and made me wonder if the kids were actually the ones who may be responsible for the weird things happening at the school.
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