wisdom comes in small doses.

over the past few weeks, i have been periodically messing with something i started writing more than a decade ago. i wouldn’t go so far as to call it a book, but it’s likely as close as i’ll ever get to that sort of thing. it’s sort of a musical memoir, focusing on one specific adventure spread out over a period of a few years when i was in high school. this is something i would never be able to publish or even share with much of anyone, not just because of how unflinchingly honest and uncensored it is, but because what it’s “about” wouldn’t be interesting to very many people who aren’t me. and i knew that going in. it was something i felt a need to document for myself, for some reason that still isn’t entirely clear to me.

i wrote a very rough unfinished first draft in 2001, after my initial brainstorm in 2000, and arrived at what i thought was my finished draft in 2005. returning to what i wrote all these years later, i found myself rewriting a lot of things, getting rid of clunky language, and writing a lot of new material to fill in some gaps. the more-final-than-ever-before final draft now runs about 120,000 words.

the thing that’s interesting to me is looking at who i was then, but viewing it through the lens of who i am now. it’s stepping back in time with the gift of hindsight, in a way. while reading and editing, i realized things i’d never even considered before (like the fact that the entire papa ghostface discography probably wouldn’t exist if i’d had a girlfriend for any length of time back in high school). and in adding more material to more or less complete the story, i’ve discovered that some of my favourite bits are the side-stories that have nothing to do with the main thrust of the thing. i don’t know if any of it is good writing, but i’m glad i wrote it.

there’s one bit i’d like to share, and i think it works out of context, even if you have no idea who lewsaw, my classmate richard, or mr. zawadski are. it’s about how one of the best high school teachers i ever had was a substitute in grade twelve. i’ve changed the name of the english teacher he subbed for, in the interest of avoiding hurting someone’s feelings a decade after the fact when it wouldn’t accomplish anything or give me any pleasure (not that i think there’s a popsicle’s chance in hell she would ever end up here in the first place…but you never know).

mrs. drake was my second semester english teacher. she looked a little like a short-haired brunette version of natasha henstridge. i probably don’t have to tell you how popular she was with the male students. it was a shock to the system for all of us, to have a female teacher who was that attractive.

the shock wore off in a hurry for me, because mrs. drake was not only the best-looking english teacher ever to set foot in a classroom — she was also quite possibly the worst. she didn’t just follow the curriculum; i wouldn’t be surprised if she masturbated to it. there wasn’t a single shred of character or soul in her class, or the way she taught it. some teachers, like mr. zawadski, make you feel smarter just from being in the same room with them. i felt like the time i spent in mrs. drake’s class caused large groups of my brain cells to kill themselves in a desperate effort to end the pain.

let me try and explain why i felt that way, and how she managed to make me despise a subject i had always loved. the really good english teachers encourage you to think for yourself and write in your own unique voice. i was lucky enough to have at least a few of those. a classy lady named mrs. gilham was way at the top of the heap. mrs. drake, on the other hand, despised and punished anything that even resembled personality in our writing. we were supposed to write the way a textbook read — cold, clinical, and utilitarian. anything deviating from that was wrong.

but it wasn’t just that. she would explain to us how she wanted an assignment or an essay written. i would write it just the way she wanted it. then she would tell me i hadn’t followed her instructions, and i would get a middling mark. every time i gave her what she said she wanted, she turned around and told me it wasn’t what she wanted.

in a way, you could say she was preparing me for a romantic relationship.

and the thing is, she was nice. she was a bubbly person who was almost always in a good mood. it was difficult to dislike her. but good god, she didn’t know a thing about how to teach an english class to people with functioning brains. if lewsaw at least never bothered to pretend he was an english teacher in the first place, mrs. drake tore everything apart until it ceased to mean anything. shakespeare was a bore in her hands. good books lost whatever it was that made them any good. writing was a chore instead of a gift.

i stopped trying to please her after a while and started looking for ways to have some fun. in response to test questions about macbeth, i wrote about the care bears cartoon that came on in the morning before i left for school, and how the theme song was weirdly infectious. i went out of my way to fail some assignments, and didn’t bother handing others in. i didn’t care. the joke is, i still got something like an 84% in her class. my latent writing ability was enough to get me through, even with someone like her at the cockpit. but i never hated a single class in my life more than i hated hers. it was abysmal beyond all reason.

the best thing she ever did was break her leg in a skiing accident. she had to take two weeks off, and our substitute teacher was mr. klein, a middle-aged jewish man with bifocals. he was almost violent in his hatred for the lesson plan mrs. drake had outlined for us. he threw it out immediately. he told us point blank that our teacher was an idiot. he used yiddish slang like tuchus. most of the students thought he was nuts. i thought he was the most brilliant person ever to set foot in our school.

he made shakespeare interesting, when i normally found the stuff pretty ponderous. he approached things from odd, unexpected angles. he got us involved in discussions, whether we wanted to participate or not. if someone was being an idiot in class, he kicked them out. he didn’t just ask you to leave; he barked, “get the fuck out of here.”

i hung around as long as i could after class everyday to talk to him. i wanted to soak up everything he had to say. he seemed to like me, but he wasn’t the kind of person who would come out and tell you a thing like that. he had a sort of controlled aggression about him that’s difficult to describe. he would act like he didn’t give a shit, but then he would say or do something that was the equivalent of a raised eyebrow, telling you in a subversive way not to take everything at face value. the classroom was alive when he was in it, charged with unpredictable kinetic energy.

he called me by my last name. “read tom robbins, west,” he said. “get still life with woodpecker. you’ll like him. now get the hell out of here.” then his face would soften a little and he would say, “be careful. there are a lot of assholes floating around this place.”

i wrote something for an assignment mrs. drake gave us right before mr. klein showed up, and i didn’t put any effort into writing about the actual subject at hand. i just wrote some random brain spill on a piece of paper and called it charlie brown sings frere jacques. mr. klein sat down at my desk, read it, and talked to me and a female student for what seemed like half an hour, while ignoring the rest of the class.

“the title is apropos of nothing,” he told me, but he said it in a way that conveyed approval. he told us in detail about a recent phone conversation with his daughter. he analyzed something i’d written out of my ass, and treated it like it had meaning and worth. he was interested in it. he was interested in us.

a few small groups of students in our class read scenes from macbeth in the auditorium. they tried to be funny and failed miserably. there was no invention or reinvention there. just moronic ideas poorly realized. my modernized hamlet reading that never was would have been a masterpiece next to this.

mr. klein stopped and talked to me in the hall for a minute at lunchtime.

“they fucked it all up,” he said, looking as unimpressed as i was. “but you know what they say…shit floats to the top. see you, west.”

he taught me more in ten days than the sum total of what almost every other teacher taught me in four years of high school, and it had nothing to do with literature. it was about existing. he was fearlessly himself, without apology. he said what he thought. he did what he said. he expected you to use your brain and break away from “safe” and familiar modes of thinking. he didn’t go out of his way to piss you off, but he didn’t care if he did. that was your problem. i wish i knew his first name so i could find his address and write him a letter telling him all of this. he probably wouldn’t remember me anyway.

mrs. drake returned, her leg still in a cast, and sucked the life right back out of the classroom. she regarded the residue of what mr. klein had done to her lesson plan with something approaching horror. the horny male students were happy to have her back, content to go back to nursing their semi-hard dicks through the pockets of their jeans. i felt empty.

a little bit of mr. klein stuck around, though. after her leg had healed, mrs. drake had us come up with thesis statements. i volunteered one, and she proceeded to pick it apart like it was a potential suitor she felt pity for. richard champagne, without putting up his hand, said, “i think it’s an excellent thesis statement.”

he argued with her. he got angry. he was eloquent and compelling. i felt like he was passionately defending me in a courtroom. every lame throwaway excuse mrs. drake threw out, richard tore it to shreds. he told her she was missing the point. he was the teacher, and she was the uncomprehending student. i sat there without saying a word, in awe. in the end, she lost her patience for a debate she wasn’t even intellectually awake for and said, “i’m not going to keep arguing with you, richard.”

after class i thanked him for sticking up for me. he was still upset about it. he had been slamming a baseball bat against a brick wall, but he felt if he’d just been able to get in a few more swings, he might have made a dent. i didn’t think there was any getting through to her, even with a jackhammer. i was moved by the effort anyway.

i also learned that i was far-sighted in mrs. drake’s class, when i began to have trouble reading what was on the chalkboard. i liked finally having an excuse to wear glasses. so her english class was good for at least one thing that didn’t involve mr. klein after all.