“Roses have never grown like this on this plat of land before,” is what I would have said, had there been any roses growing. I’d spent most of my morning getting geared up to be impressed and overwhlemed by the sheer volume of roses my students had nurtured to beautiful, living works of art on the abandoned plat of dry, dusty land I had left them in six months prior.
As part of their final exam, I’d left them in an airid patch of land owned by the university just southeast of the South Dakota Badlands. They had been given room, board, and ample bandwidth for communication and educational purpoeses. Each student was allowed to select six strains of rose to bring with them, and they were to, by the end of their six month sabattical, have created a rose that would prospoer in the Badlands climes.
They were given access to anything and everything the could need horticulturally, no questions asked — It was a landmark grant that I’d won— funded by the South Dakota Rose Foundation. We only needed one student to succeed to secure the conditions of the grant— and it appeared— at least by first glance— that none of the students had.
“There is not one among you who has grown a rose of any sort?” I asked my seven most promising proteges. They didn’t need to answer. I watched them paw at the grond with thier toes, and stare vapildy at the dusty sands blowing across their boots to know that noen of them had. “NO roses? Not one rose?” I repeated.
Kelly Sanders, one of my most promising students up until this point, steped foraward. Not daring to look me or any member of the presentation board in the eye, she scrunched up her face before she spoke— as if squinting would somehow make it all better.
“It’s just that,” she said, hesitatating, a little, and then spitting out, “It’s just that growing roses, is, like, hard and stuff.”
She stepped back in line and continued her study of the top of her boots.
My rage and shock stole from me then, my ability to speak. I gasped, I squeeked, but I could not speak.