While I love reading the Chapters in Imaginative Writing - each one explaining aspects of the craft in different ways - I had a lot of trouble siting down an committing to talking about one of the stories in this chapter besides Tandolfo the Great, which I responded to earlier this semester.
After a lot of deliberating, I decided upon The Book of My Life, partly because of it being creative non-fiction, which I don't often get to read, and partly because the way the narrator described his Professor reminded me of a teacher I had in high school.
Technically he wasn't a teacher yet. He was still a student, a paid assistant to our teacher on who would soon be on maternity leave. It was months into the semester, her reactions to students growing harsher with every day her child swelled in her belly. When she left in the middle of the year to tend to her newborn, it was as if the class had been freed. All we had was our class assistant, Mr. X [Let's just assume his last name was actually X...]. Mr. X became our teacher the remainder of the semester. But we didn't really call him Mr. X. We called him Saint X. To his face. I have to admit it's a ;little embarrassing, and he insisted it wasn't right, but he was an angel compared to our teacher and he understood us, and helped us out of hell. I remember a joke shrine in the corner of the classroom, and the liberation of having a teacher who still remembered what it was like being a student.
He taught us, without a fight. He showed us he supported our passions and the causes we cared about - even if it meant buying boba for a fundraiser when he hated the drink. He promised to take some of us surfing. He passed out phone numbers in case any of us needed someone to talk to. He let us carry on with our hero worship because he understood us. he was closer to us in age than anyone in authority really ever had been. And he care about each of us in a way many of us don't get often from complete strangers.
I find the little slip of paper where he wrote down his first name every once in a while, remembering that over 5 years ago he promised to accept any friend request once we graduated. Whenever I see it, I think about what he meant to us, then and now. But he's a human being. And just like running into a teacher outside of school, we would one day surprise ourselves by realizing he was more than what we had seen.
I'm sometimes terrified to think of who are heroes really are, all their faults and fumbles and beliefs that they held back from us. The problem with heroes is that most times we don't know who they are. Not really. Unless you limit your heroes to your immediate family or your best friends, you won't know. And even then, you still really can't.
Mr. X is still a saint to me. But I call him Mr. X now, because it's what he preferred and I owe him that much. But I never reached out after graduation and I still haven't gone in search of his Facebook.
In the non-fiction piece, the professor turns out to be someone dangerous, who taught with a mind full of things students don't learn in a classroom - ideologies and justifications that teachers usually never share. And that's a good thing, probably. But it prevents us from really knowing the kinds of people who inspire us and shape us. And that is a dangerous thing, too.
Technically he wasn't a teacher yet. He was still a student, a paid assistant to our teacher on who would soon be on maternity leave. It was months into the semester, her reactions to students growing harsher with every day her child swelled in her belly. When she left in the middle of the year to tend to her newborn, it was as if the class had been freed. All we had was our class assistant, Mr. X [Let's just assume his last name was actually X...]. Mr. X became our teacher the remainder of the semester. But we didn't really call him Mr. X. We called him Saint X. To his face. I have to admit it's a ;little embarrassing, and he insisted it wasn't right, but he was an angel compared to our teacher and he understood us, and helped us out of hell. I remember a joke shrine in the corner of the classroom, and the liberation of having a teacher who still remembered what it was like being a student.
He taught us, without a fight. He showed us he supported our passions and the causes we cared about - even if it meant buying boba for a fundraiser when he hated the drink. He promised to take some of us surfing. He passed out phone numbers in case any of us needed someone to talk to. He let us carry on with our hero worship because he understood us. he was closer to us in age than anyone in authority really ever had been. And he care about each of us in a way many of us don't get often from complete strangers.
I find the little slip of paper where he wrote down his first name every once in a while, remembering that over 5 years ago he promised to accept any friend request once we graduated. Whenever I see it, I think about what he meant to us, then and now. But he's a human being. And just like running into a teacher outside of school, we would one day surprise ourselves by realizing he was more than what we had seen.
I'm sometimes terrified to think of who are heroes really are, all their faults and fumbles and beliefs that they held back from us. The problem with heroes is that most times we don't know who they are. Not really. Unless you limit your heroes to your immediate family or your best friends, you won't know. And even then, you still really can't.
Mr. X is still a saint to me. But I call him Mr. X now, because it's what he preferred and I owe him that much. But I never reached out after graduation and I still haven't gone in search of his Facebook.
In the non-fiction piece, the professor turns out to be someone dangerous, who taught with a mind full of things students don't learn in a classroom - ideologies and justifications that teachers usually never share. And that's a good thing, probably. But it prevents us from really knowing the kinds of people who inspire us and shape us. And that is a dangerous thing, too.
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