August 24, 2005
-
The Daily News
1 If-I'd-a-Knowed-You-Were-Comin-I'd-a-Baked A Cake, Dept. What an awesome outpouring yesterday's DN caused! I was pretty overwhelmed by everybody's reaction. It was like a celebration, so thank all of you who sent me your thoughts. I was especially touched by all the alumni who remembered those wonderful posters, and sent condolences, and memories. Just a wonderful show of support. I salute all of you, and thank you from the bottom of my heart.
2 It's a bit funny, but by sixth period yesterday, there I was, thinking about all of the good thoughts and wishes, when the bell rang, meaning I was about to teach a group of utterly CLUELESS freshmen, who had no idea of ANY of this. Just to get things going, I asked who they had last year for their English teacher. Although it wasn't really a loaded question, there was that first-day pause, when finally, after a fashion, one wiseguy decided to break the silence."Doug," he blurted, to the delight of LOTS of goofballs with braces.
3 I stared the little bastard down. I looked him right in the eye, and said, "MY name is MISTER Harrington!" and gave a look that would have turned a fresh gargoyle to stone. The class fell silent as I walked away from the insolent little vermin, and I moved toward the front of the room. The room proper had fallen unabashedly silent, and there suddenly appeared damp candles flickering on the stone walls of the dark castle.
4 After a short period of strained silence, the same student broke the tension. "Umm...Mr. Harrington?" He was clearly respectful and courteous.
"Yes?" I answered.
"Would it be okay if we called you Mr. H?"
5 ?
6 Whew. I'm guessing someone out there gets it.
7 It's times like these, time and time again...
8 Well! I managed to get them working on something or other, and soon, I found myself walking about the room, watching over papers, looking at the clock, and the board, and the posters. One poster brought a smile; it is this poster I had moved to a prominent place next to the whiteboard. It is an older poster of Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Coogan in The Kid. It looks like this:
9 I continued around the room, and the students began chatting and making noise, when one kid said, "Hey, Mr. H?"
10 Pleased at the salutation, as well as the professorial respect, I raised an eyebrow so as to say, "Yes?"
11 "Why do you have a poster of Hitler on your wall?"
12 And so it goes...
13 For goodness sakes.
14 To this minute I love the fact that the Creator of the Universe has a sense of humor. Well, needless to say, I assured the student that the guy in the poster wasn't Adolph Hitler, but was a guy who probably Hitler wished he could be, but within seconds he was corrected by his peers, who had such perceptive and poignant comments as "Nah, foo! That's that doo who was in all those silent movies, doo; that's not Hitler, foo!"
15 And quite soon enough, perhaps just in time, the bell rang, ending the first school day of school, the first day of the rest of my life, my new dawn, my new horizon, my whole new world, and don't EVEN sing or I shall strike you.
16 Ya gotta love it.
17 So thanks again to all of you who have enjoyed this pooprag for TEN years. It's been quite the pleasure, and I am really glad to hear that for many of you, it is just the lift you need first thing in the morning.
18 That's it for today; we'll see you again. Hope you had fun. Enjoy your bowl of Total, and your morning cuppa. Throw some smiles out there today.
19 Peace.
Recent Comments