"CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_on_a_Hot_Tin_Roof_(1958_film) OVER Christmas Break, 1969, our freshman English class at Howard University had been assigned to read Tennessee Williams' play, "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." Somehow, I had missed the assignment. After Christmas, our teacher directed us, first thing, to take out paper and write an essay on the play! Imagine my shock, my horror! My dismay. Although I had been one of her top students, I had also pestered Mrs.____, a white woman, with probing intellectual forays, verbal and written jousts, about "the black perspective" in this or that. Now, I was in a fix, briny pickle! What could I do, what should I do? The brother needed a rally, an effective solution to an insoluble scholastic dilemma. I wrote in the opening line of my desperate essay: "Dear Mrs. ______, I am the "cat on the hot ten roof....." From there, I went on with my best apologia, mea culpa, literary swoon, probably in the history of English literature. Bottom line: IT WORKED! I RECEIVED A GRADE OF "A" IN HER CLASS! Decades later, I learned that her husband was black, which state of matrimony certainly gave her some in-depth knowledge of the "black perspective!" to say the very least. One never knows whom one might need, when, where, why. Great lesson learned! And now paid forward in gratitude, including right now!