Sunday, 21 June, 1942 - QUACK, QUACK, QUACK, says MRS NATTERBEAK' | ANNEFRANKSTORY PAGE 5

Dear Kitty,

Our whole class B, is trembling, the reason is that the teachers' meeting is to be held soon. There is much speculation as to who will move up and who will stay put.

Miep de Jong and I are highly amused at Wim and Jacques, the two boys behind us. They won't have a florin left for the holidays, it will all be gone on betting. "You'll move up", "Shan't", "Shall", from morning till night. Even Miep pleads for silence and my angry outbursts don't calm them.

According to me, a quarter of the class should stay where they are, there are some absolute cuckoos, but teachers are the greatest freaks on earth, so perhaps they will be freakish in the right way for once.


I'm not afraid about my girl friends and myself, we'll squeeze through somehow, though I'm not too certain about my math. Still we can but wait patiently. Till then, we cheer each other along.

I get along quite well with all my teachers, nine in all, seven masters and two mistresses. Mr. Keptor, the old math master, was very annoyed with me for a long time because I chatter so much. So I had to write a composition with "A Chatterbox" as the subject. A chatterbox! Whatever could one write? However, deciding I would puzzle that our later, I wrote it in my notebook, and tried to keep quiet.

That evening, when I'd finished my other homework, my eyes fell on the title in my notebook. I pondered, while chewing the end of my fountain pen, that anyone can scribble some nonsense in large letters with the words well spaced but the difficulty was to prove beyond doubt the necessity of talking.

I thought and thought and then suddenly having an idea, filled my three allotted sides and felt completely satisfied. My arguments were that talking is a feminine characteristics and that I would do my best to keep it under control, but I should never be cured, for my mother talked as much as I, probably more, and what can one do about inherited qualities?

Mr. Keptor had to laugh at my arguments, but when I continued to hold forth in the next lesson, another composition followed. This time it was "Incurable Chatterbox", I handed this in and Keptor made no complaints for two whole lessons. But in the third lesson it was too much for him again.

"Anne, as punishment for talking, will do a composition entitled 'Quack, quack, quack, says Mrs Natterbeak' "

Shouts of laughter from the class. I had to laugh too, although I felt that my inventiveness on this subject was exhausted. I had to think of something else, something entirely original. I was in luck, as my friend Sanne writes food poetry and offered to help by doing the whole composition in verse. I jumped for joy.

Keptor wanted to make a fool of me with this absurd theme, I would get my own back and make him the laughingstock of the whole class. The poem was finished and was perfect. It was about a mother duck and a father swan who had three baby ducklings. The baby ducklings were bitten to death by Father because they chattered too much. Luckily Keptor saw the joke, he read the poem out loud to class, with comments and also to various other classes.

Since then I am allowed to talk, never get extra work, in fact, Keptor always joke about it.

                                                                                                     Yours, Anne

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