November 2nd, 2024
I recall each of my three English teachers in high school. The first was Ms. Barnes. She was an older lady, quite nice, and a good teacher; I liked her. One day, though, whilst walking down the hallway and noticing her approaching, a thought leapt into my head: “Rape her!” I have no idea where that thought came from; I was immediately nauseous and horrified with myself. I remember stopping and leaning against the lockers because I was so physically destabilized by the experience. I looked down and hoped that nobody would notice. The feeling passed in just a few seconds. I put it out of my mind — but I never forgot that awful moment.
The second was a fellow whose name I forget, but he was inspiring. I remember a tale he told of two school athletes practicing running after school; he was coaching and they were really trying hard. He relates that, as one fellow inched ahead of the other, he grunted, “Eat your heart out!” My English teacher thought that was really swell.
Another of his exploits came when we were reading Shakespeare’s The Twelfth Night. He had been having pairs of students play out scenes from the play, and he assigned me and a girl the roles of the hapless fool Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Maria, a clever and saucy woman. We came to the line where she says “Come, bring your hand to the buttery bar and let it drink.” Just then I realized what the line meant; I turned red with embarrassment. The girl had no idea of what was going on and looked at me innocently as I debated with myself as to whether I should place my hand on her breast, as called for by the line. I was entirely too flustered and just stood there dumbly, and the English teacher stood up and said, “Good enough!” but he had a huge grin on his face. I think he chose me for the role because he knew I would not act out my role.
My last English class was creative writing and our teacher was also a good teacher. I still remember his advice that, if we wanted to learn to write well, we should submit writings to journals and “paper our walls with rejection slips”. The classes were free-form and I would often squeeze myself between a huge cabinet and the window-wall, a place of privacy where I could concentrate as I wrote. I was one of his better students. Here’s a photo somebody took of me in that class:
If you look carefully, you can see my slide rule case hanging on my left side, below the stool seat and just behind my shoes. You can also see the cord I used to hold it in place. That was the greatest slide rule! It was a Keuffel und Esser Teflon-coated slide rule with just about everything that a slide rule could have. I paid something like a hundred dollars for it with the money I had saved up from my paper route. A year later it got caught in the spokes of my motorcycle and shattered.