'Tis

by Frank McCourt

  You intend to go straight home with your bag but you then discover Friday afternoon is the time for beer and teacher enlightenment. An occasional teacher might say he has to go home to his wife till he finds Bob Bogard standing by the time clock to remind us of first things first, that the Meurot Bar is a few steps away, next door in fact, and what harm would there be in one beer, one? Bob is not married and may not understand the dangers for a man who might go beyond the one beer, a man who might have to face the wrath of a wife who has cooked a fine Friday fish and now sits in the kitchen watching the grease congeal.

  We stand at the Meurot Bar and order our beers. There is teacher small talk. When there’s a mention of good-looking women on our staff or even nubile students we roll our eyes. What we wouldn’t do if we were high school kids nowadays. We talk tough at the mention of troublesome boys. One more word out of that goddam kid and he’s gonna beg for a transfer. We unite in our hostility to authority, all the people who emerge from their offices to supervise and observe us and tell us what to do and how to do it, people who spent as little time as possible in the classroom themselves and don’t know their ass from their elbow about teaching.

  A young teacher might drop in, just graduated from college, newly licensed. The drone of university professors and the chatter from college cafeterias is still in his ears and if he wants to discuss Camus and Sartre and how existence precedes essence or vice versa he’ll be talking to himself in the mirror of the Meurot Bar.

  None of us had followed the Great American Path, elementary school, high school, college, and into teaching at twenty-two. Bob Bogard fought in the war in Germany and was probably wounded. He won’t tell you. Claude Campbell served in the navy, graduated from college in Tennessee, published a novel when he was twenty-seven, teaches English, has six children with his second wife, took a master’s degree at Brooklyn College with a thesis, Ideational Trends in the American Novel, fixes everything in his house, wiring, plumbing, carpentry. I look at him and think of Goldsmith’s lines on the village schoolmaster, “And all around the wonder grew/That one small head could carry all he knew.” And Claude hasn’t even reached the age of Christ at his crucifixion, thirty-three.

  When Stanley Garber drops in for a Coke he tells us he often feels he made a mistake by not going into college teaching where you amble through life thinking you shit cream puffs and suffering if you have to teach more than three hours a week. He says he could have written a bullshit Ph.D. dissertation on the bilabial fricative in the middle period of Thomas Chatterton who died when he was seventeen because that’s the kind of crap that goes on in colleges while the rest of us hold the front lines with kids who won’t get their heads out from between their thighs and supervisors content to keep their heads up their asses.

  There will be trouble tonight in Brooklyn. I’m supposed to have dinner with Alberta at an Arabic restaurant, the Near East, bring your own wine, but it’s six going on seven and if I call now she’ll complain she’s been waiting for hours, that I’m just an Irish drunk like my father and she doesn’t care if I stay on Staten Island the rest of my life, good-bye.

  So I won’t call. Better not to. No use having two rows, one on the phone now, another when I get home. It’s easier to sit at the bar where’s there’s a glow and important matters are discussed.

  We agree that teachers are sniped at from three fronts, parents, kids, supervisors, and you either have to be diplomatic or tell them all kiss your ass. Teachers are the only professionals who have to respond to bells every forty-five minutes and come out fighting. All right, class, sit down. Yes, you, sit down. Open your notebooks, that’s right, your notebooks, am I speaking a foreign language, kid? Don’t call you kid? Okay, I won’t call you kid. Just sit down. Report card grades are just around the corner and I can put you on the welfare rolls. All right, bring in your father, bring in your mother, bring in your whole damn tribe. You don’t have a pen, Pete? Okay, here’s a pen. Good-bye, pen. No, Phyllis, you can’t have the pass. I don’t care if you’re having a hundred periods, Phyllis, because what you really want to do is meet Eddie and disappear into the basement where your future could be determined by one smooth panty drop and one swift upward stroke from Eddie’s impatient member, the start of a little nine-month adventure that will end with you squawking Eddie better marry you, the shotgun aimed at his lower frontal region and his dreams dead. So I’m saving you, Phyllis, you and Eddie and no, you don’t have to thank me.

  This is talk along the bar that will never be heard in the classroom unless a teacher loses his wits entirely. You know you can never deny the lavatory pass to a menstrual Phyllis for fear of being dragged before the highest court in the land where the black robes, all men, will excoriate you for insulting Phyllis and the future mothers of America.

  There is talk along the bar about certain efficient teachers and we agree we don’t like them and the way their classes are so organized they hum from bell to bell. In these classes there are monitors for every activity, every part of the lesson. There is the monitor who goes immediately to the board to write the number and title of the day’s lesson, Lesson #32, Strategies in Dealing with the Dangling Participle. Efficient teachers are known for their strategies, the darling new word at the Board of Education.

  The efficient teacher has rules for taking notes and the organization of the notebook and there are notebook monitors who roam the classroom to check for proper form, top of page filled with student’s name, homeroom class, title of course and date with the month written out, not numbers, it must be written out so that the student will have practice in writing out because there are too many people in this world that we live in, business people and others, who are too lazy to write out the months. There are to be prescribed margins and no scribbling. If the notebook doesn’t adhere to the rules the monitor will enter demerits on the student’s card and when report card time rolls around there will be suffering and no mercy.

  Homework monitors collect and return assignments, attendance monitors preside over the little cards in the attendance book and collect excuses for absences and latenesses. Failure to submit written excuses leads to further suffering and no mercy.

  Some students are known for their skill in writing excuse notes from parents and doctors and they’ll do it in return for favors in the cafeteria or the far reaches of the basement.

  Monitors who take blackboard erasers to the basement to knock out the chalk must first promise they’re not taking this important job to sneak a smoke or make out with the boy or girl of their choice. The principal is already complaining there is too much activity in the basement and he’d like to know what’s going on there.

  There are monitors to distribute books and collect receipts, monitors to handle the lavatory pass and the sign-in sign-out sheet, monitors to put everything in the room in alphabetical order, monitors to carry the trash can along the aisles in the war against litter, monitors who decorate the room to make it so bright and cheerful the principal brings in visitors from Japan and Lichtenstein.

  The efficient teacher is monitor of monitors though he may lighten his monitor load by appointing monitors who monitor the other monitors or he may have dispute monitors who settle arguments between monitors accusing other monitors of interfering with their jobs. The dispute monitor has the most dangerous job of all because of what might happen on the stairs or the street.

  A student caught trying to bribe a monitor is immediately reported to the principal who will enter a remark on his permanent record that will blacken his reputation. This is a warning to others that such a blot could be an impediment to a career in sheet metal, plumbing, auto mechanics, anything.

  Stanley Garber snorts that with all this efficient activity there is little time for instruction but what the hell, the students are in their seats, completely monitored and behaving themselves, and that pleases the teacher, the chairman, the principal and his assistants, the superintendent, the Board of Education, the mayor, the governor, the President
and God Himself.

  So says Stanley.

  * * *

  If a university professor discusses Vanity Fair or anything else his classes listen with notebooks open and pens poised. If they dislike the novel they won’t dare complain for fear of lowered grades.

  When I distributed Vanity Fair to my junior class at McKee Vocational and Technical High School there was moaning in the room. Why do we have to read this dumb book? I told them it was about two young women, Becky and Amelia, and their adventures with men, but my students said it was written in that old English and who can read that? Four girls read it and said it was beautiful and should be made into a movie. The boys pretended to yawn and told me English teachers were all the same. They just wanted to make you read that old stuff and how was that gonna help you if you was fixin’ a car or a busted air conditioner, ah?

  I could threaten them with failure. If they refused to read this book they’d fail the course and they wouldn’t graduate and everyone knew girls didn’t want to go out with anyone who wasn’t a high school graduate.

  For three weeks we toiled through Vanity Fair. Every day I tried to motivate and encourage them, to draw them into a discussion of what it’s like to make your way through the world when you’re a young nineteenth-century woman, but they didn’t care. One wrote on the board, Becky Sharp Drop Dead.

  Then, as decreed by the school syllabus, it was on to The Scarlet Letter. This would be easier. I’d talk about the New England witch hunts, the accusations, the hysteria, the hangings. I’d talk about Germany in the 1930s and how a whole nation was brainwashed.

  Not my students. They’d never be brainwashed. No, sir, they’d never be able to get away with that here. They’d never fool us like that.

  I chanted to them, Winston tastes good like . . . and they finished the sentence.

  I sang, My beer is Rheingold the dry beer . . . and they finished the jingle.

  I chanted again, You wonder where the yellow went when . . . and they finished the line.

  I asked if they knew any more and there was an eruption of jingles from radio and television, proof of the power of advertising. When I told them they were brainwashed they were indignant, Oh, no, they weren’t brainwashed. They could think for themselves and nobody could tell them what to do. They denied they’d been told what cigarette to smoke, what beer to drink, what toothpaste to use though they’d admit that when you’re in a supermarket you’ll buy the brand in your head. No, you’d never buy a cigarette called Turnip.

  Yeah, they heard about Senator McCarthy and all that but they were too young and their fathers and mothers said he was a great man for getting rid of the Communists.

  From day to day I struggled to make connections between Hitler and McCarthy and the New England witch hunts, trying to soften them up for The Scarlet Letter. From parents there were indignant calls. What is this guy telling our kids about Senator McCarthy? Tell him back off. Senator McCarthy was a good man, fought for his country. Tail gunner Joe. Got rid of the Communists.

  Mr. Sorola said he didn’t want to interfere but would I please tell him was I teaching English or was I teaching history. I told him about my troubles trying to get the kids to read anything. He said I shouldn’t listen to them. Just tell them, You’re going to read The Scarlet Letter whether you like it or not because this is high school and that’s what we do here and that’s that and if you don’t like it, kid, you fail.

  They complained when I distributed the book. Here we go again with the old stuff. We thought you was a nice guy, Mr. McCourt. We thought you was different.

  I told them this book was about a young woman in Boston who got into trouble over having a baby with a man who wasn’t her husband though I couldn’t tell them who the man was in case it might ruin the story. They said they didn’t care who the father was. One boy said you never know who your father is anyway because he had a friend who discovered his father wasn’t his father at all, that his real father was killed in Korea, but the pretend father was the one he grew up with, a good guy, so who gives a shit about this woman in Boston.

  Most of the class agreed though they wouldn’t want to wake up in the morning to find their fathers weren’t their real fathers. Some wished they had other fathers, their own fathers were so mean they made them come to school and read dumb books.

  But that’s not the story of The Scarlet Letter, I said.

  Aw, Mr. McCourt, do we have to talk about that old stuff? This guy Hawthorne don’t even know how to write so’s we can understand and you’re always saying write simple, write simple. Why can’t we read the Daily News? They have good writers. They write simple.

  Then I remembered I was broke and that’s what led to Catcher in the Rye and Five Great Plays of Shakespeare and a change in my teaching career. I had forty-eight cents to get me home on the ferry and the subway, no money for lunch, not even for a cup of coffee on the ferry and I blurted to the class that if they wanted to read a good book that didn’t have big words and long sentences and was all about a boy their age who was mad at the world I’d get it for them but they’d have to buy it, a dollar twenty-five each which they could pay in installments starting now, so if you have a nickel or a dime or more you can pass it up and I’ll write your name and amount on a sheet of paper and order the books today from the Coleman Book Company in Yonkers, and they’d never know, my students, I’d have a pocketful of change for lunch and maybe a beer at the Meurot next door, though I didn’t tell them that, they’d be shocked.

  Small change was passed up and when I called the book company I saved a dime by using the assistant principal’s phone because it’s illegal to have students buy books when bookrooms are spilling over with copies of Silas Marner and Giants in the Earth.

  Catcher in the Rye arrived in two days and I passed them out, paid for or not. Some students never offered a penny, others less than their share, but the money collected kept me going till payday when I’d satisfy the book company.

  When I handed out the books someone discovered the word crap on the first page and that brought silence to the room. That’s a word you’d never find in any book in the English bookroom. Girls covered their mouths and giggled and boys tittered over shocking pages. When the bell rang there was no stampede to the door. I had to ask them to leave, another class was coming in.

  The class coming in were curious about the class going out and why was everyone looking at this book and if it was that good why couldn’t they read it. I reminded them they were seniors and the class going out were juniors. Yeah, but why couldn’t they read that small book instead of Great Expectations? I told them they could but they’d have to buy it and they said they’d pay anything not to read Great Expectations, anything.

  Next day Mr. Sorola came into the room with his assistant, Miss Seested. They went from desk to desk snatching copies of Catcher in the Rye and dropping them into two shopping bags. If the books weren’t on the desks they demanded the students take them from their bags. They counted the books in the shopping bags and compared them with the class attendance and threatened the four students who hadn’t turned in their books with big trouble. Raise your hands, the four people who still have the book. No hands were raised and on the way out Mr. Sorola told me I was to see him in his office right after this class, not a minute later.

  Mr. McCourt, you in trouble?

  Mr. McCourt, that’s the only book I ever read and now that man took it.

  They complained about the loss of their books and told me if anything happened to me they’d go on strike and that would teach the school a lesson. They nudged and winked over the strike and they knew I knew it would simply be another excuse for avoiding school and not any great concern for me.

  Mr. Sorola sat behind his desk reading Catcher in the Rye, puffing on his cigarette and letting me wait while he turned the page, shook his head and put the book down.

  Mr. McCourt, this book is not on the syllabus.

  I know, Mr. Sorola.

  You know
I’ve had calls from seventeen parents and you know why?

  They didn’t like the book?

  That’s right, Mr. McCourt. There’s a scene in this book where the kid is in a hotel room with a prostitute.

  Yes, but nothing happens.

  That’s not what the parents think. You telling me that kid was in that room to sing? The parents don’t want their kids reading this kind of trash.

  He warned me to be careful, that I was endangering my satisfactory rating on the yearly performance report and we wouldn’t want that, would we? He would have to place a note in my file as a record of our meeting. If there were no further incidents in the near future the note would be removed.

  Mr. McCourt, what are we gonna read next?

  The Scarlet Letter. We have tons of them in the bookroom.

  Their faces fell. Aw, Gawd, no. All the kids in the other classes told us it’s that old stuff again.

  All right, I said, jokingly. We’ll read Shakespeare.

  Their faces fell even farther and the room was filled with moans and hisses. Mr. McCourt, my sister went to college for a year and dropped out because she couldn’t read Shakespeare and she can speak Italian and everything.