> Hot Dog
>  by Garbo
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Hot Dog
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was a loud morning in the Ponyville school house, or at least, louder than usual. Volume was relative when dealing with a room full of energetic foals who wanted nothing more than to be outside or someplace else, as long as it wasn’t in school.

“Please turn to page 228 in your textbooks. Today we’re going to be learning about climates.”

Cheerilee scanned the class of foals in front of her. Her announcement triggered the same reaction it normally did: smiles from the few foals who cared, a wake-up for the ones who has already fallen asleep, groans from the rest of them, and no reaction from the strange colt in the corner. The other foals called him the “sketchy kid”, which was a behavior she wouldn’t have tolerated if it wasn’t such an accurate assessment. Needless to say, her class had some interesting characters in it.

“Now, does anypony know anything about climates?”

Only one pony raised their hoof, the same one that always did. Part of Cheerilee knew she should try to call on the other students, with the No Foal Left Behind act and all. She knew that wouldn’t do any good, though. No law could make these foals care.

“Yes, Alula?”

“We live on the northern end of a Humid Subtropic Zone. We get 121 inches of rain on average, and the average temperature in Ponyville is 17 degrees, or 62 if you wanted to use the Griffon scale.”

Cheerilee raised an eyebrow. Even she didn’t know half of that. “Well, yes, that’s true. But I think we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves here. Does anypony have anything else to contribute?”

No words were given in response, only blank stares.

“Did anypony here do the reading I assigned?”

“You didn’t assign anything last class for this,” a voice replied from the back row. “Our homework was to ask our parents about Equestrian history.”

“That’s odd. I thought I assigned a one-thousand word essay on why Ponyville has no snow on Hearts and Hooves day.” She looked to the back of the class to see where the voice had come from. To her surprise, it was Snails.

“So, Snails, I’d assume you asked your parents about history, correct?”

“Uh … … maybe?”

A round of stifled laughs rang through the classroom. 

“Maybe? Snails, you either did or you didn’t.”

Cheerilee would be lying to herself if she said she didn’t enjoy this sort of thing a little. Backing a student into a corner every once in a while was the best way to insure that everypony did their work, and as long as no feelings were hurt, it was harmless. Snails, meanwhile, was desperately trying to think of some sort of excuse. She had to give him credit for his persistence, if not for his intelligence.

In a last act of desperation, Snails looked over to the desk on his left - more specifically the pony sitting in it - and found the loophole he needed. “You know, I’ll bet Applebloom has something to say. Granny Smith’s really old and all, I’m sure she was around for most of the stuff you’re teaching us.”

“Hey, she ain’t that old,” Applebloom replied, glaring over at Snails. “Why should I have to go up there? I actually did my work on time.”

“Well if you did, why don’t you share it with us?”

Apple Bloom whirled around, her exasperation clear to see. “Cheerilee, I didn’t do anythin’ wrong, but Snails ain’t even—”

“I know you didn’t Apple Bloom, but somepony’s going to have to present, and I can’t think of anypony better than you.”

For a moment, Cheerilee could have sworn she saw smoke rising from the filly’s ears. In a huff, Apple Bloom got up, making sure to give Snails a good kick in the leg on the way up. Before long she made it up to the front of the classroom, and began her presentation without further incident.

“My granny may not have been around for the intertribal wars, the equestrian migration, or anythin’ like that, but she did grow up during that thing with the griffons … what was that called, Cheerilee?”

Cherrilee sighed. If one of her brightest students couldn’t answer that question, she might have trouble getting her license renewed for next fall. “It was called the Cold War, Applebloom.”

“Oh yeah, right. Anyway, granny told me that growing up during that time was tough. There was the constant fear of war and supplies were running because of the lack of tradin’. I think that’s called an in-bag-o or somethin’ like that ...”

Apple Bloom’s presentation went on for some time, and by this time Cheerilee had completely tuned it out. It wasn’t that she didn’t care about her students, but this one had a particular talent for running her mouth.

Maybe she’d have more success finding her cutie mark as a politician, Cheerilee thought with a grin.

“And that’s what I learned about Equestrian history. What do you think, Cheerilee.”

At the mention of her name, Cheerilee was thrust from her daydreaming and arrived back in the world of the living and conscious. Though she hadn’t heard half of what Apple Bloom had said, she prepared the usual response.

“Good job Apple Bloom. Your presentation was very informative. You can sit back down now.”

Apple Bloom’s face as she made her way back to her desk, you would probably she’d just been released from jail, not from some simple classroom assignment. However, she was a good student, if not an enthusiastic one. Cheerilee knew she had to take what she could get.

As she moved along with the lesson plan, Cheerilee noticed an unusual amount of activity going on between Apple Bloom and Snails. Though the two played innocent when she was facing their side of the room, she could see the kicks and shoves in her peripheral. This continued off and on for well over an hour, carrying them through to the start of lunch and recess.

As the foals romped and played on the playground and the fields surrounding the school, cheerilee sat down in a chair she’d set up next to the flagpole in the front of the building. Back when she’d first started out in her job as schoolteacher, she’d used the recess time to grade papers and clean up the messes the foals had made over the course of the day, but nowadays she didn’t worry about things like that. Teaching wasn’t about how the room looked or whether or not things were organized, it was about giving young children the skills they needed to live their lives. 

Of course, it was also about being paid, but she didn’t need to let anypony else hear that.

As she looked out into the schoolyard, she saw the same thing she saw every day. Some of the foals were running, some of them were sitting, and some of them were jumping rope. They all tended to play with the same ponies every day. So consistant was their social interaction that Cheerilee could use it alone to tell if any of the foals were having problems that they weren’t telling her about.

Everything seemed normal until she looked for the Cutie Mark Crusaders. They tended to wander the farthest, but always together, and Apple Bloom wasn’t there. In addition, Snips was sitting alone by some maple trees, seemingly unbothered by his friend’s absence. It didn’t bother Cheerilee either, but she was curious. Another sweep of the yard didn’t reveal much else until she saw some bushes rustle on the west side of the field. A few seconds later the leaves shook again; it certainly wasn’t a trick of the light. Cheerilee briefly considered going to investigate, but thought better of it.

“If they don’t come in after recess, then I’ll go looking for them.”

With that, she settled back into her chair, smiling contently. She sat there for the next half hour or so, shifting her gaze between the students and the dirt below her, both of which had similar entertainment value. It wasn’t until recess ended that she got a real show. The shaking in the bushes ended up being Apple Bloom and Snails, as she saw when they emerged from the shrubs. The pair walked back towards the schoolhouse, and Cheerilee could see the awkward smiles all the way from her perch. They were the last into the building, and she followed them in. They were a little bedraggled, but certainly not as much as they would’ve been if they were doing the naughtier things.

After getting situated, Cheerilee calmed the class down and began the lesson. As she often did, she allowed herself to go into a sort of autopilot. With the experience she had in her saddlebags, all she had to do was follow the lesson plan. Every so often, she shifted her gaze to the two lovebirds. What had prompted this sudden change from kicking each other’s hooves to holding them? There was no way to know.

The lesson continued on for some time. Cheerilee entertained questions from her students every so often, though never as much as she would’ve liked, and in helping those students lost track of time. By the time she looked up she looked up, there were only five minutes left in the day.

“Alright, class, I don’t have anything else to do with you.” Most of the students had already started packing up their things a while ago, and those who had not soon scrambled out. With the classroom empty, she could finally relax.

As she was about to kick back, however, she heard a commotion at the front steps. Sighing, she slid out of her desk and walked over to the door, expecting to break up yet another fight over a stolen lunchbox or a slight invasion of personal space. She looked out the glass in the door only to see Apple Bloom and Snails embroiled in a battle of kicked dust and ear-splitting tantrums. Cheerilee looked up at the clock.

“Three hours,” she remarked. Her chuckling soon filled the empty room—she couldn’t help herself. It was funny how mindless the romance of a foal could be. The sun could rise on a romance and set on hatred, only to rise on a great, dramatic make-up. Sure, she'd been the same at that age just like every other young filly, but she'd outgrown the need for constant affirmation of her desirableness. She was old enough to know who she was and what she could do.

And so she sat back at her desk, content in her emotional maturity. She just sat there for a while, neither thinking about nor doing anything in particular. A half an hour or so later, she looked back up at the clock. It was 3:45, and that seemed to. It took her a moment to realize why this time was significant, but when she did ...

"Oh my gosh, I almost forgot my date!"

Hurriedly, Cheerilee packed up her things into her saddlebags and ran out the door, letting it slam behind her. She ran down the path into town, hoping that the sun wouldn't set with her in bed alone.