People talk about God like it's a word that everyone understands in the same
way. Either you believe or you don't. But as I've learned from
teaching, the same word can have many different meanings in different
languages.
When I was in middle school I recall going to a high school football game on a Saturday afternoon in the autumn. Even though the team was very good and it was the only thing our town really came together to care about, I had somehow been there for a year without seeing them play. I had moved to that school the year before and didn't understand the draw of going to the school on Saturday's when I could be at home watching better football players play college ball, or simulating it on a Nintendo. Even so, I was hanging out with a friend who lived a block away, and we wanted to check it out.
I remember sitting behind the end-zone to watch our team score, and we were the only ones sitting on the grass in that area, away from the crowds. I was busy balancing a bottle cap on my head, and when my friend asked why, I eventually joked that I was starting a religion called "bottle-cap-ism." My friend wasn't very religious, and later evolved into a staunch atheist, but for some reason he took issue with that and accused me of blasphemy, although I think he was aware I wasn't religiously affiliated anyway. I told him I could imagine anything I wanted about the world, and believe what I wanted, and that bottle caps were important.
Years later I discovered the bliss that is Jones Soda, which is a delicious soda that has fortunes under each bottle cap, kind of like fortune cookies. If they're good (which they usually are), I save them. I have a few plastic bags of them right now, actually. They're fun to break out from time to time to remind me of important things to focus on. Recently I saw one that said, "Thank a former teacher." I have been meaning to follow through on that on this web site, so I'm going to do you a few better. I'm going to thank several teachers.
The first teacher I would like to thank is Ms. Murray, my fourth grade teacher. She was old, walked with a cane, had a glass eye and a reputation for being a very strict hard teacher. The reputation was deserved, but I was a determined and fearful student, so I got on her good side, but not before many demonstrations of my abilities and good behavior. We had to memorize poems in her class, which is the first place I was introduced to epic poetry beyond children's rhymes. She also had a discipline system of checks that she kept on the wall: if you forgot to do your homework or got in trouble for some reason, you got a check. There were awards for students who went a whole month without a check. I went the whole year. I was the only one. One girl forgot her homework or something silly, so she had one check. My competitive friend, Kevin, got in trouble once and forgot his homework, so I danced with glee because he had been trying to beat me since we were seven. That being said, this was all the year after I lived in Baltimore for a summer, and hung out in hospital waiting rooms with diseased and handicapped children from around the world. It was also the summer I became obsessed with sports. Thus, I already had a strangely intuitive good feeling about Ms. Murray because my favorite player in baseball (my first serious sport I followed, beginning that summer and autumn) was Eddie Murray, who once won the Most Valuable Player award in baseball while playing for the Baltimore Orioles, but was now playing for my favorites, the New York Mets. He eventually made the Hall of Fame, but I confirmed that he probably wasn't related to my teacher the first time I saw her.
Anyway, what was my reward for all of that suffering, fear and anxiety that I would somehow screw up and fail to be perfect? Recognition, and a very small hand-held Konami baseball game, the kind where the background was already drawn beneath a screen, and all you really controlled was the batter. It was very primitive, and I already had a Game Boy with infinitely better baseball games. I did appreciate the gesture though. I was touched that she had thought of me outside of school and gone to the store to spend her money on something for me. But still... it didn't seem worth the worry. I mastered it anyway, because I could.
I'll always remember Ms. Murray's lessons. 1st, I learned I had to work hard, pay attention and be organized. 2nd, I learned that I wasn't actually stupid, and that I could do very well if I tried. 3rd, I learned about simplifying fractions. I didn't understand it at all the first day and was terrified, but I got it eventually and it became my best math skill. I don't do as much math anymore, but the "simplify" idea has been applied to the world extensively with great benefit. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I learned that it was important to achieve excellence and to be as great as you can be when you do a project or take a test, but if you expect to have a long career of absolute perfection and mostly pursue this end as a means of supposedly pleasing someone else, you are probably going to be disappointed by the reward. After that year I was very content to accept a 99 or a 97, or even a 94 or a 91 if the class wasn't that important. In college I even accepted B's sometimes. But that was all part of a different education. As long as you made an "A" the routine, the occasional B reminded you to just be yourself and allow mistakes to happen so that you can learn from them while enjoying life instead of worrying about being perfect in every way.
The next teacher I would like to thank is Mr. Tully. He wasn't just a science teacher who told a lot of stories. He was also my first coach, because he coached seventh grade football. He really got us fired up, but not just about football. He wanted us to be the best we could be, and to be part of a tradition that was bigger than we were, and involved our families and the whole community. During our second game of the year they let the seventh graders play because the eighth graders had already dominated this team in Vermont. He called this special play, 47 counter, which was designed to give me the ball while everyone else thought it was going the opposite way. I ran at least 45 yards up the left sideline before getting tackled. Since we were young they had the coaches on the field behind the huddle in each play so they could call the plays and teach us game experience. When we got back to the huddle he was so fired up that he pounded me on the shoulders and said that I would be an all-star someday and that that play was going to earn me at least two stars on my helmet (you got one for a good play). I had a decent year as a reserve that year whenever they let the young guys in, and I was expected to be a starter the next year in eighth grade. Meanwhile, I enjoyed earth science, chemistry and physics very much. Unfortunately, I broke my arm on the first day of practice in eighth grade. Coincidentally, that was the same year Tully handed over the reins to the young guy brought in to take over the head coaching position. Tully was still there, but he didn't run the show anymore. Of course, I didn't know my arm was broken at first. I just knew I couldn't move it and it hurt like nothing I'd ever experienced. We went to the doctor, who turned out to be the father of my classmate, Bill Palinski. It would take a few days before we got X-rays, so I went to practice the next two days, running laps and sprints while holding my arm up with the other one. We weren't tackling yet, so it was just helmets, but it was really hard to put on my chinstrap with only one hand. Then they found out I had a fracture, and I was out for five games. I lost my starting spot, and I never recovered from it. I came back at the end of the year and even had one great play I'll never forget (with Mr. Tully on the field coaching us). But I didn't sign up for football again after that. When my sister graduated (I was 15) Mr. Tully approached me and reminisced about my playing days, and really wished I would come back and play again. He was an assistant then, and I knew I wasn't part of the team anymore. Still, it really meant a lot to me.
The third teacher I would like to thank is Mr. Tefft. He was the assistant varsity basketball coach when I was a sophomore on the junior varsity team. So technically he wasn't my coach, but he did basically run try-out's and the first few weeks of practice because he had been a very successful coach at a nearby school, even winning a state championship. We already had a head coach, but they were happy to have his input. He was also a former military instructor. The kind that yelled angrily at people for not working hard enough. Even though we all feared him greatly, that made us respect him more. I remember there was one drill we were going to do where one player dribbled the ball a few steps each way before pivoting and going the other way, while one defender crouched down and had to guard them each way by stepping and sliding their feet from side to side with their arms out. We'd done this a million times, but the coach was very adamant that we actually use the court's boundaries and pretend they were real, as opposed to disregarding them like we usually did because we were often using so many different baskets around the gym. So of course I was the first dribbler in my line, and I had dribbled the ball twice before I heard a screeching whistle and the terrifying roar of Tefft's voice thundering through the gymnasium: "What did the coach JUST GODDAMN SAY!" I stood frozen in trepidation and complete confusion. I had dribbled twice. What could have gone wrong? "He JUST SAID NOT TO DRIBBLE OUT OF BOUNDS!" "Oh…" I thought, but didn't dare to say anything. Soon after that, maybe in the same practice, I was hustling my brains out on the defensive side of that same drill, and he got really fired up and started shouting praise at me. He never yelled at me again, although he stopped working as a coach when the original coach had to leave for family reasons and they promoted my lackluster JV coach to the top spot instead of Tefft, who already had a proven track record. We weren't done though.
The next year Tefft was the teacher of my first ever Advanced Placement (AP) course: American History. I couldn't imagine how he would be in a class room after seeing him on the court. He turned out to have a similar intensity, but with much more positivity. We'd never had so much homework assigned over the summer (reading, essays, document based questions, aka the dreaded "DBQ"). And it turned out we'd never had as much homework during the year either. That was good though. He prepared us. By the time we had to take the test, we knew our game because we had experienced so much intensity during class. I got a 5/5, and he told me that I should work for the State Department someday. Well, I never traveled on any official business, but I have represented America abroad quite a bit...
The fourth teacher I would like to thank is Ms. Firman, my senior year AP English teacher, which was the most dreaded course of all. My generation as a whole does not particularly care for reading, writing, analyzing literature or figuring anything out that doesn't already have a clear cut concrete answer. We really didn't like writing essays. Luckily Tefft had helped us on that front to some extent, and our eleventh grade teacher, Baldwin, was very creative and fun. But nothing prepared us for the sheer girth of essays we would produce during the twelve months we spent under Firman’s wing. We basically had at least a one page essay every single night for homework. And there were many five page essays and ten to twenty page reports as well.
The work started right from the beginning. I think we had our first meeting as a class right after the last day of exams that summer, and learned the fate of our last summer as kids too young to vote or go to college: we had to read five books and write essays about them over the summer, and read a new serious book every few weeks. Once I read Catch-22 (Yossarian), probably the first book that ever made me want to be a writer. It was both hilarious and disturbing. I remember writing a very important grade-heavy essay for the midterm about great novels mixing "pleasure and disquietude."
I read much of that book while waiting for other teams to finish playing at a holiday basketball tournament during Christmas vacation. We went to the Spa Catholic tournament in Saratoga, where our undefeated team loaded with senior stars had lost their first and only regular season game in the first round the year before. This year we won the first game and lost the second game, even though the guy who I mostly split time with as a starting point guard threw a temper tantrum at halftime (he'd been benched for skipping practice) that ended with him walking out on the team and supposedly quitting. I had already been playing well, had a career high scoring night, and even had a block. We didn't win the championship, which just happened to be against the exact same team with the exact same players who had beaten our super seniors the year before. I played well again though, and I was the only player from the team to be named to the All-Tournament Team. It's my only sports trophy.
Anyway, I recall reading the book during the intermission of the game before when a freshman on our team approached me. He was going to be a star, and was the heralded phenomenon of the best sports family in town. His fathers and his uncles owned all the school records for football and basketball, and he would go on to break many football records and have an excellent basketball career. He asked me, "What are you reading for?"
"Did you ask what I was reading or what I was reading for?"
"What are you reading for? Reading is boring!"
"This is actually an excellent book. It's funny and exciting and interesting."
"I would never read if they didn't make me for school. The last thing I would do is read a book."
I don't know what he does now, but I know that nobody pays him to play basketball or football.
I also know that I got the best hit of my baseball career off of him during my last game in seventh grade: a bases-loaded double with three RBI.
Meanwhile, Ms. Firman made me so used to reading and writing that I soon achieved a pace of consumption and production I never thought possible. What's more, she taught us how stories can have deeper meanings than they appear to at first glance, a truth that more left-brained rational people really disdained, but years later shines with brilliance when viewed with my eyes. I aced both exams, the reading and the writing, but that wasn't what really mattered.
What really mattered is that a few months later I went to an Ivy League institution of higher learning, with many students from some of the best public, private and magnet schools in the world, and I didn't flinch when the professor told us we had two 3-5 page essays to write during the semester, total. I think it took me a couple hours, whereas many of my classmates moaned and worried about it for weeks. I wouldn't be counting the pages upon pages of written words I have been fortunate to produce the past few years if it weren't for Firman's stern and supportive leadership.
There are more than a few college professors who I didn't know that well but could easily thank for the lessons they gave me. The one who comes to mind the most is my American Social Movements professor, Sanders. On the last day of class she gave us three life lessons that had nothing to do with politics. 1.) Don't wear high heels. She grew up wearing high heels because that's just what ladies did, and at that time was preparing to go in for back surgery to repair all the problems they had given her. She walked around with a cane at our final exam as proof. I am way ahead of her on the not wearing high heels thing. 2.) Don't eat french fries. They're not good for you and a waste of calories when you could be having something nourishing. I didn't follow her advice for a long time, but I barely eat them at all now. It's always fun to indulge from time to time though. I'm sure high heels are excellent in small doses as well. 3.) When given a choice between white bread and wheat bread, choose wheat bread. Number three is the one that changed me the most, I suppose. It was probably one of the first basic nutritional changes I made as an adult, the first of many. Meanwhile that same semester I got a B- in nutrition, my lowest grade ever, because it was all memorization of chemical and biological relationships between compounds found in various nutrients, which I don't recall inspiring me to eat better food. Conversely, Sanders' advice was clear and simple, and laid down the foundation for a healthier future for me.
I would also like to thank my grandmother, Mrs. Sullivan, who was a high school history and social studies teacher. I never took her class at Peru, but she taught me my whole life. She taught me that the giant crocodile monster of time which I fear is chasing me is really just my grandma wearing a smile and wanting to play with me, knowing she can't catch me anyway, although she appears larger and experienced. I'll explain that story some other time.
As long as we are on the subject, I would like to thank one more teacher: the man I just met in the checkout line at the grocery store.
I had been feeling very lethargic this afternoon. It was suddenly very warm and humid today, but also very cloudy, and I was feeling the effects of a long week. Napping and eating didn't help, so eventually I just turned on some loud music and began jumping around my room to get my blood flowing. I did a little work and then went for a walk. I originally wanted to go across the street to the grocery store, but I just kept going and going, reading beautiful murals on a school wall, such as the one that reads, "It's so good to be ALIVE." I walked through CUNY, City University of New York, which is only one block away on Amsterdam Avenue. I walked through the campus to an overlook of Harlem just before a small park that leads down a hill to St. Nicholas Avenue, where I get the train to work as a language teacher six days a week. Then I walked back and realized that the same road leads to the state park on the Hudson River, with basketball courts and a baseball field. I walked back to the grocery store and got an armload of groceries. I already had wheat bread, so I stuck with vegetables, fruits, peanut butter and grape juice (apparently it's almost as good for your heart as red wine). I have a rule I mostly follow which is that if I am at a nearby grocery store, I can only buy as much as I can carry in my arms. I tend to push the limits of that exercising with absurd balancing acts, but it keeps me from wasting money or eating too much.
I got in the express line and saw two people ahead of me. One young mother was at the head of the line but turned around to squeeze by and get some more food. She was wearing a shirt that read, "Eat pussy, not animals." It's amazing what you can learn simply by leaving the apartment and moving around. Meanwhile, a kindly older man with graying hair and a tweed cap moved his vast pile of junk food slightly so that I could have a little room to place some of my items instead of holding everything in my arms. I removed my headphones to thank him "very much," and then paused to patiently await my turn. Soon I heard the man humming, and then even singing quietly. I was thinking about something strange at the time, and his singing seemed like a positive sign. Earlier in class we had been reading about the mystery of people's electrical impulses in their brains affecting electronic devices at times, and I imagined that perhaps he had synched into my thoughts and was sent to teach me something. Maybe he was God, playing the role of a simple man in a Harlem grocery store. He then turned to me and said, "You know, I think of these situations as a chance to exercise. People go to the gym and get around to exercise, but this is a different kind of exercise. You get a chance to exercise patience. If people had to go to the gym to do it, they never would!" He laughed, and I agreed. "When I'm waiting in situations like this, I am happy to thank God for giving me this chance to thank God, if you know what I mean." I did. In fact, one of the best commencement addresses ever, This is Water by David Foster Wallace, is about “the real value of a real education”, which is to be aware and truly care about other people. It centers around the art of appreciating the wonder of sheer being while you are in a stressful slow situation, specifically, waiting in a checkout line at a grocery store. Who knows? You might even strike up a conversation with and learn something from a teacher you didn't even know you had.
I told the man that I had been places where people didn't have any food, so I try to remember that when I am waiting for it after such a simple exertion toward obtaining it. Even without that, just by watching an ocean documentary about fish eating other fish made me promise never to complain about the simple inconvenience of waiting to buy sustenance that other people made possible without the terror of fearing other shoppers were going to eat me, or spending every waking moment devising stratagems on how to eat again so I could stay alive. The man agreed and said, "This is a gift. This food here, it's beautiful!"
Then he said, "Bless you," and told me to have a great night. I then passed on that energy to thanking the cashier, who must have been thinking, "You only have to wait in line for a few minutes. I'm in charge of the line!"
If you're reading this and I've met you, you are my teacher.
Thank you.
If I haven't met you, go teach someone who needs it. If you're not sure what to say, just remind them how great it is to be alive.
Remind yourself too!
When I was in middle school I recall going to a high school football game on a Saturday afternoon in the autumn. Even though the team was very good and it was the only thing our town really came together to care about, I had somehow been there for a year without seeing them play. I had moved to that school the year before and didn't understand the draw of going to the school on Saturday's when I could be at home watching better football players play college ball, or simulating it on a Nintendo. Even so, I was hanging out with a friend who lived a block away, and we wanted to check it out.
I remember sitting behind the end-zone to watch our team score, and we were the only ones sitting on the grass in that area, away from the crowds. I was busy balancing a bottle cap on my head, and when my friend asked why, I eventually joked that I was starting a religion called "bottle-cap-ism." My friend wasn't very religious, and later evolved into a staunch atheist, but for some reason he took issue with that and accused me of blasphemy, although I think he was aware I wasn't religiously affiliated anyway. I told him I could imagine anything I wanted about the world, and believe what I wanted, and that bottle caps were important.
Years later I discovered the bliss that is Jones Soda, which is a delicious soda that has fortunes under each bottle cap, kind of like fortune cookies. If they're good (which they usually are), I save them. I have a few plastic bags of them right now, actually. They're fun to break out from time to time to remind me of important things to focus on. Recently I saw one that said, "Thank a former teacher." I have been meaning to follow through on that on this web site, so I'm going to do you a few better. I'm going to thank several teachers.
The first teacher I would like to thank is Ms. Murray, my fourth grade teacher. She was old, walked with a cane, had a glass eye and a reputation for being a very strict hard teacher. The reputation was deserved, but I was a determined and fearful student, so I got on her good side, but not before many demonstrations of my abilities and good behavior. We had to memorize poems in her class, which is the first place I was introduced to epic poetry beyond children's rhymes. She also had a discipline system of checks that she kept on the wall: if you forgot to do your homework or got in trouble for some reason, you got a check. There were awards for students who went a whole month without a check. I went the whole year. I was the only one. One girl forgot her homework or something silly, so she had one check. My competitive friend, Kevin, got in trouble once and forgot his homework, so I danced with glee because he had been trying to beat me since we were seven. That being said, this was all the year after I lived in Baltimore for a summer, and hung out in hospital waiting rooms with diseased and handicapped children from around the world. It was also the summer I became obsessed with sports. Thus, I already had a strangely intuitive good feeling about Ms. Murray because my favorite player in baseball (my first serious sport I followed, beginning that summer and autumn) was Eddie Murray, who once won the Most Valuable Player award in baseball while playing for the Baltimore Orioles, but was now playing for my favorites, the New York Mets. He eventually made the Hall of Fame, but I confirmed that he probably wasn't related to my teacher the first time I saw her.
Anyway, what was my reward for all of that suffering, fear and anxiety that I would somehow screw up and fail to be perfect? Recognition, and a very small hand-held Konami baseball game, the kind where the background was already drawn beneath a screen, and all you really controlled was the batter. It was very primitive, and I already had a Game Boy with infinitely better baseball games. I did appreciate the gesture though. I was touched that she had thought of me outside of school and gone to the store to spend her money on something for me. But still... it didn't seem worth the worry. I mastered it anyway, because I could.
I'll always remember Ms. Murray's lessons. 1st, I learned I had to work hard, pay attention and be organized. 2nd, I learned that I wasn't actually stupid, and that I could do very well if I tried. 3rd, I learned about simplifying fractions. I didn't understand it at all the first day and was terrified, but I got it eventually and it became my best math skill. I don't do as much math anymore, but the "simplify" idea has been applied to the world extensively with great benefit. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I learned that it was important to achieve excellence and to be as great as you can be when you do a project or take a test, but if you expect to have a long career of absolute perfection and mostly pursue this end as a means of supposedly pleasing someone else, you are probably going to be disappointed by the reward. After that year I was very content to accept a 99 or a 97, or even a 94 or a 91 if the class wasn't that important. In college I even accepted B's sometimes. But that was all part of a different education. As long as you made an "A" the routine, the occasional B reminded you to just be yourself and allow mistakes to happen so that you can learn from them while enjoying life instead of worrying about being perfect in every way.
The next teacher I would like to thank is Mr. Tully. He wasn't just a science teacher who told a lot of stories. He was also my first coach, because he coached seventh grade football. He really got us fired up, but not just about football. He wanted us to be the best we could be, and to be part of a tradition that was bigger than we were, and involved our families and the whole community. During our second game of the year they let the seventh graders play because the eighth graders had already dominated this team in Vermont. He called this special play, 47 counter, which was designed to give me the ball while everyone else thought it was going the opposite way. I ran at least 45 yards up the left sideline before getting tackled. Since we were young they had the coaches on the field behind the huddle in each play so they could call the plays and teach us game experience. When we got back to the huddle he was so fired up that he pounded me on the shoulders and said that I would be an all-star someday and that that play was going to earn me at least two stars on my helmet (you got one for a good play). I had a decent year as a reserve that year whenever they let the young guys in, and I was expected to be a starter the next year in eighth grade. Meanwhile, I enjoyed earth science, chemistry and physics very much. Unfortunately, I broke my arm on the first day of practice in eighth grade. Coincidentally, that was the same year Tully handed over the reins to the young guy brought in to take over the head coaching position. Tully was still there, but he didn't run the show anymore. Of course, I didn't know my arm was broken at first. I just knew I couldn't move it and it hurt like nothing I'd ever experienced. We went to the doctor, who turned out to be the father of my classmate, Bill Palinski. It would take a few days before we got X-rays, so I went to practice the next two days, running laps and sprints while holding my arm up with the other one. We weren't tackling yet, so it was just helmets, but it was really hard to put on my chinstrap with only one hand. Then they found out I had a fracture, and I was out for five games. I lost my starting spot, and I never recovered from it. I came back at the end of the year and even had one great play I'll never forget (with Mr. Tully on the field coaching us). But I didn't sign up for football again after that. When my sister graduated (I was 15) Mr. Tully approached me and reminisced about my playing days, and really wished I would come back and play again. He was an assistant then, and I knew I wasn't part of the team anymore. Still, it really meant a lot to me.
The third teacher I would like to thank is Mr. Tefft. He was the assistant varsity basketball coach when I was a sophomore on the junior varsity team. So technically he wasn't my coach, but he did basically run try-out's and the first few weeks of practice because he had been a very successful coach at a nearby school, even winning a state championship. We already had a head coach, but they were happy to have his input. He was also a former military instructor. The kind that yelled angrily at people for not working hard enough. Even though we all feared him greatly, that made us respect him more. I remember there was one drill we were going to do where one player dribbled the ball a few steps each way before pivoting and going the other way, while one defender crouched down and had to guard them each way by stepping and sliding their feet from side to side with their arms out. We'd done this a million times, but the coach was very adamant that we actually use the court's boundaries and pretend they were real, as opposed to disregarding them like we usually did because we were often using so many different baskets around the gym. So of course I was the first dribbler in my line, and I had dribbled the ball twice before I heard a screeching whistle and the terrifying roar of Tefft's voice thundering through the gymnasium: "What did the coach JUST GODDAMN SAY!" I stood frozen in trepidation and complete confusion. I had dribbled twice. What could have gone wrong? "He JUST SAID NOT TO DRIBBLE OUT OF BOUNDS!" "Oh…" I thought, but didn't dare to say anything. Soon after that, maybe in the same practice, I was hustling my brains out on the defensive side of that same drill, and he got really fired up and started shouting praise at me. He never yelled at me again, although he stopped working as a coach when the original coach had to leave for family reasons and they promoted my lackluster JV coach to the top spot instead of Tefft, who already had a proven track record. We weren't done though.
The next year Tefft was the teacher of my first ever Advanced Placement (AP) course: American History. I couldn't imagine how he would be in a class room after seeing him on the court. He turned out to have a similar intensity, but with much more positivity. We'd never had so much homework assigned over the summer (reading, essays, document based questions, aka the dreaded "DBQ"). And it turned out we'd never had as much homework during the year either. That was good though. He prepared us. By the time we had to take the test, we knew our game because we had experienced so much intensity during class. I got a 5/5, and he told me that I should work for the State Department someday. Well, I never traveled on any official business, but I have represented America abroad quite a bit...
The fourth teacher I would like to thank is Ms. Firman, my senior year AP English teacher, which was the most dreaded course of all. My generation as a whole does not particularly care for reading, writing, analyzing literature or figuring anything out that doesn't already have a clear cut concrete answer. We really didn't like writing essays. Luckily Tefft had helped us on that front to some extent, and our eleventh grade teacher, Baldwin, was very creative and fun. But nothing prepared us for the sheer girth of essays we would produce during the twelve months we spent under Firman’s wing. We basically had at least a one page essay every single night for homework. And there were many five page essays and ten to twenty page reports as well.
The work started right from the beginning. I think we had our first meeting as a class right after the last day of exams that summer, and learned the fate of our last summer as kids too young to vote or go to college: we had to read five books and write essays about them over the summer, and read a new serious book every few weeks. Once I read Catch-22 (Yossarian), probably the first book that ever made me want to be a writer. It was both hilarious and disturbing. I remember writing a very important grade-heavy essay for the midterm about great novels mixing "pleasure and disquietude."
I read much of that book while waiting for other teams to finish playing at a holiday basketball tournament during Christmas vacation. We went to the Spa Catholic tournament in Saratoga, where our undefeated team loaded with senior stars had lost their first and only regular season game in the first round the year before. This year we won the first game and lost the second game, even though the guy who I mostly split time with as a starting point guard threw a temper tantrum at halftime (he'd been benched for skipping practice) that ended with him walking out on the team and supposedly quitting. I had already been playing well, had a career high scoring night, and even had a block. We didn't win the championship, which just happened to be against the exact same team with the exact same players who had beaten our super seniors the year before. I played well again though, and I was the only player from the team to be named to the All-Tournament Team. It's my only sports trophy.
Anyway, I recall reading the book during the intermission of the game before when a freshman on our team approached me. He was going to be a star, and was the heralded phenomenon of the best sports family in town. His fathers and his uncles owned all the school records for football and basketball, and he would go on to break many football records and have an excellent basketball career. He asked me, "What are you reading for?"
"Did you ask what I was reading or what I was reading for?"
"What are you reading for? Reading is boring!"
"This is actually an excellent book. It's funny and exciting and interesting."
"I would never read if they didn't make me for school. The last thing I would do is read a book."
I don't know what he does now, but I know that nobody pays him to play basketball or football.
I also know that I got the best hit of my baseball career off of him during my last game in seventh grade: a bases-loaded double with three RBI.
Meanwhile, Ms. Firman made me so used to reading and writing that I soon achieved a pace of consumption and production I never thought possible. What's more, she taught us how stories can have deeper meanings than they appear to at first glance, a truth that more left-brained rational people really disdained, but years later shines with brilliance when viewed with my eyes. I aced both exams, the reading and the writing, but that wasn't what really mattered.
What really mattered is that a few months later I went to an Ivy League institution of higher learning, with many students from some of the best public, private and magnet schools in the world, and I didn't flinch when the professor told us we had two 3-5 page essays to write during the semester, total. I think it took me a couple hours, whereas many of my classmates moaned and worried about it for weeks. I wouldn't be counting the pages upon pages of written words I have been fortunate to produce the past few years if it weren't for Firman's stern and supportive leadership.
There are more than a few college professors who I didn't know that well but could easily thank for the lessons they gave me. The one who comes to mind the most is my American Social Movements professor, Sanders. On the last day of class she gave us three life lessons that had nothing to do with politics. 1.) Don't wear high heels. She grew up wearing high heels because that's just what ladies did, and at that time was preparing to go in for back surgery to repair all the problems they had given her. She walked around with a cane at our final exam as proof. I am way ahead of her on the not wearing high heels thing. 2.) Don't eat french fries. They're not good for you and a waste of calories when you could be having something nourishing. I didn't follow her advice for a long time, but I barely eat them at all now. It's always fun to indulge from time to time though. I'm sure high heels are excellent in small doses as well. 3.) When given a choice between white bread and wheat bread, choose wheat bread. Number three is the one that changed me the most, I suppose. It was probably one of the first basic nutritional changes I made as an adult, the first of many. Meanwhile that same semester I got a B- in nutrition, my lowest grade ever, because it was all memorization of chemical and biological relationships between compounds found in various nutrients, which I don't recall inspiring me to eat better food. Conversely, Sanders' advice was clear and simple, and laid down the foundation for a healthier future for me.
I would also like to thank my grandmother, Mrs. Sullivan, who was a high school history and social studies teacher. I never took her class at Peru, but she taught me my whole life. She taught me that the giant crocodile monster of time which I fear is chasing me is really just my grandma wearing a smile and wanting to play with me, knowing she can't catch me anyway, although she appears larger and experienced. I'll explain that story some other time.
As long as we are on the subject, I would like to thank one more teacher: the man I just met in the checkout line at the grocery store.
I had been feeling very lethargic this afternoon. It was suddenly very warm and humid today, but also very cloudy, and I was feeling the effects of a long week. Napping and eating didn't help, so eventually I just turned on some loud music and began jumping around my room to get my blood flowing. I did a little work and then went for a walk. I originally wanted to go across the street to the grocery store, but I just kept going and going, reading beautiful murals on a school wall, such as the one that reads, "It's so good to be ALIVE." I walked through CUNY, City University of New York, which is only one block away on Amsterdam Avenue. I walked through the campus to an overlook of Harlem just before a small park that leads down a hill to St. Nicholas Avenue, where I get the train to work as a language teacher six days a week. Then I walked back and realized that the same road leads to the state park on the Hudson River, with basketball courts and a baseball field. I walked back to the grocery store and got an armload of groceries. I already had wheat bread, so I stuck with vegetables, fruits, peanut butter and grape juice (apparently it's almost as good for your heart as red wine). I have a rule I mostly follow which is that if I am at a nearby grocery store, I can only buy as much as I can carry in my arms. I tend to push the limits of that exercising with absurd balancing acts, but it keeps me from wasting money or eating too much.
I got in the express line and saw two people ahead of me. One young mother was at the head of the line but turned around to squeeze by and get some more food. She was wearing a shirt that read, "Eat pussy, not animals." It's amazing what you can learn simply by leaving the apartment and moving around. Meanwhile, a kindly older man with graying hair and a tweed cap moved his vast pile of junk food slightly so that I could have a little room to place some of my items instead of holding everything in my arms. I removed my headphones to thank him "very much," and then paused to patiently await my turn. Soon I heard the man humming, and then even singing quietly. I was thinking about something strange at the time, and his singing seemed like a positive sign. Earlier in class we had been reading about the mystery of people's electrical impulses in their brains affecting electronic devices at times, and I imagined that perhaps he had synched into my thoughts and was sent to teach me something. Maybe he was God, playing the role of a simple man in a Harlem grocery store. He then turned to me and said, "You know, I think of these situations as a chance to exercise. People go to the gym and get around to exercise, but this is a different kind of exercise. You get a chance to exercise patience. If people had to go to the gym to do it, they never would!" He laughed, and I agreed. "When I'm waiting in situations like this, I am happy to thank God for giving me this chance to thank God, if you know what I mean." I did. In fact, one of the best commencement addresses ever, This is Water by David Foster Wallace, is about “the real value of a real education”, which is to be aware and truly care about other people. It centers around the art of appreciating the wonder of sheer being while you are in a stressful slow situation, specifically, waiting in a checkout line at a grocery store. Who knows? You might even strike up a conversation with and learn something from a teacher you didn't even know you had.
I told the man that I had been places where people didn't have any food, so I try to remember that when I am waiting for it after such a simple exertion toward obtaining it. Even without that, just by watching an ocean documentary about fish eating other fish made me promise never to complain about the simple inconvenience of waiting to buy sustenance that other people made possible without the terror of fearing other shoppers were going to eat me, or spending every waking moment devising stratagems on how to eat again so I could stay alive. The man agreed and said, "This is a gift. This food here, it's beautiful!"
Then he said, "Bless you," and told me to have a great night. I then passed on that energy to thanking the cashier, who must have been thinking, "You only have to wait in line for a few minutes. I'm in charge of the line!"
If you're reading this and I've met you, you are my teacher.
Thank you.
If I haven't met you, go teach someone who needs it. If you're not sure what to say, just remind them how great it is to be alive.
Remind yourself too!
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