As Your Child’s Octopus Teacher, We Need to Talk about This Progress Report

It would break one of my three hearts to see a gifted student fall through the cracks.

Gwen Coburn
The Belladonna Comedy
4 min readApr 16, 2021

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To The Parents of Julia Mooney,

Hello! I’m Dr. Cephalopoda, but you can call me Dr. C. I’m the 9th grade Octopod Studies teacher here at Mariana Trench Regional High School. We are thrilled to have our first human student down here at MTRHS! I realize that it must be difficult as earthlings to adjust to underwater pod life and, on a personal note, I would be happy to host you at my cave dwelling for a “welcome to the trench” dinner. I make a fantastic poisoned-crab ceviche. I didn’t see you at parent teacher night, unless you were disguised as a pile of shells? It can get crowded in the caf-reef-atorium, so perhaps we just missed each other.

Unfortunately, Julia’s semester progress report does not reflect what I believe to be her excellent aquatic potential. It would break one of my three hearts to see a gifted student fall through the cracks. As I always say, with eight arms I am more than capable of providing extra support. In preparation for our meeting, I’ve made some notes to demonstrate where Julia is struggling.

Swimming: C

I’ve started with Julia’s strongest subject. While Julia can swim, her technique is strange. She struggled to crawl along the seafloor, instead floating up to the surface. I gave her an extra credit project to practice blasting off, but Julia can only siphon in a little water so her velocity is poor. Where a passing grade is an eight minute knot, Julia struggled to swim the same stretch in half an hour. She insisted on using her own method of swimming, which she called the “breast stroke.” I assume this was a joke meant to impress her peers; fortunately as her classmates are mostly squids and cuttlefish the humor was lost on them.

Home Economics: D

Alas, Julia has yet to find a suitable shell, reef, or crevice to serve as her “home”, and thus has been unable to complete any of the assignments in Home Ec. She did attempt the “sand cave” habitat, however her head protruding out of the sandy mound was a clear target for predators.

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Gwen Coburn is a writer and comedian based in Boston. She has strong opinions about feminism, horses, and gardening TikToks. gwencoburn.com