I Love the Smell of Whiteboard Cleaner in the Morning

"I love the smell of white board cleaner in the morning..."

No, I don’t; it actually stinks; it’s probably completely toxic and likely kills brain cells and will give us all cancer 20 years from now after we’ve been breathing it in (even though we try not to breathe for a good fifteen minutes after the boards are cleaned). But the point is that this line cracked my students up when I delivered it before class, standing by the door.

It was not only meant to be funny, however, but also to educate. I didn't actually plan to say it; it just worked out well, as things sometimes do.

“Do you understand what that means?” I ask as the kids file into the classroom.

“It means the white board cleaner smells?” someone asks.


A literal interpretation was to be expected.

Perhaps, I think, I didn’t ask the question in precisely the right way. I was referring to the cultural allusion I made, but my class isn’t there yet. Let’s see where this has to begin.

I smile, then cough and wrinkle my nose. “Well, it does smell horrible. I’m being sarcastic when I say that I love it.”

“My grandma says sarcasm is the lowest form of humor,” another student pipes up. “She hates it and she will freak at anyone who uses sarcasm around her.”

We nod, we chuckle, and we discuss for a minute how sarcasm is usually--grandma's opinion aside--very clever and incorporates other ideas, such as understatement. I have to imagine that this girl’s grandma would probably not get me. Sarcasm can be fun, and I always appreciate fun, but sure, it can also be mean. I personally don’t use mean sarcasm—not at school, not at home, not ever. There is nothing mean about commenting, truthfully, however, that the board cleaner smells awful. Because it does.

This reminds me of something. “Did you know,’ I ask, “that some people just don’t understand sarcasm? They are, in a way, missing the sarcasm chip in their brains.”

“Like some people don’t understand satire?” a student asks.

“Yes, just like that. Some people never realize the difference between truth and twisted truth, as seen in sarcasm or satire. But, be careful; I don’t want you to confuse sarcasm and satire. Satire can be sort of sarcastic—I mean, sarcasm can be funny, but it doesn’t really have to be. So, too, satire can be funny, but sometimes it’s just sick and weird.”

There is, I know—and this is a scientific fact—a certain portion of the population that doesn’t understand satire, doesn’t recognize it as what it is—an exaggeration meant to point out how stupid something is. Is this inability to recognize satire genetic? Is it a matter of conditioning? 

I know that students WILL be tested on whether or not they can recognize satire (at least, this will happen on the AP English exams). Recognizing satire is a life skill (like swimming!) that I want them to have. If they don’t have it naturally—some people are born with it, as I believe I was. I love satire; in fact, the more absurd something is, the funnier I’ll find it—then I hope to at least increase the chances that they will eventually notice satire.

I get back to what I really want to say: “Okay, so I told you that I love the smell of white board cleaner in the morning. But I really don’t. What I said was actually, though, an allusion to a famous film. Anyone know which film I was referring to?

Silence.

That movie is probably much before their time, but I want to them to know it and see it, at some point.

“What I said was a riff on,  ‘I love the smell of napalm in the morning,’ actor Robert Duvall’s famous line in Apocalypse Now. That’s a really famous 1970s film about the Vietnam War, based on Joseph Conrad’s classic novel, “Heart of Darkness.” Which you should read. Write that down; put it on your Amazon wish list. In the meantime,"--I turn on the SmartBoard--"watch this clip."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbLv_GtQYLE
(I just had to sub in a new, much longer clip. The dialogue to which I referred begins approx. 9:10, but trust me: the entire clip is worth watching. Horrifying and absurd.)

Some of my students, most of them, dutifully write down the name of the book. I love to recommend books.

“Guess what we’re doing? We’re going to see Apocalypse Now. You need to see that film,” I say. 

Sudden lesson plan change! The clip won't be enough. My students need to really understand all of this—satire, allusion, Vietnam War, Joseph Conrad, appreciation for fine acting.

“Movie, movie,” my American Lit class starts chanting.

I wave my hands in the air, stopping the chanting. “Tomorrow, I'll bring in the movie. Today, we're talking about literary terms. What do we have so far?

“Satire!”

“The difference between sarcasm and satire! And, the similarities!”

“Allusion!”


"Understatement or, uh, overstatement (hyperbole)."

Yes! I write the terms on the just-cleaned white board. I’ll have to clean it again, before the next class comes in. That will work out perfectly.

You Say You Know What That Word Means? Define It.

Life, literature, school, all the major standardized exams...everything comes down to words—the words we know, the words we choose to use, the words we read, the words we remember.

I love words. I always have. I remember as a second-grader telling an older, annoying girl who was bugging me and my friends in the elementary school cafeteria that she was “ignorant.”

I can’t claim I actually knew what that word meant, precisely, but even at the age of seven, I knew it was a diss. It worked, too. The older girl was stunned silent and she never really bothered me again.

Teaching English class twenty-five-plus years later meant I got to teach vocabulary. This is fun—at least, it is for me. I believe in teaching vocab in context, not from a vocabulary workbook. That means, if the words are coming up in a particular story or novel, we study them beforehand (because honestly, no student—hardly any student, rather—will stop and look them up while reading. She or he might circle the foreign word, but as for pausing to look it up and scribble a definition down, and think about the word right then and there? Fat chance). 

Workbooks are fine and good, but I find that students more easily forget those workbook words; they need to see the words in action, and link them in their memories with a storyline for the words to truly stick.

One thing I always do when teaching vocabulary is to discuss the one apt synonym students can remember as a definition. This, I find, works wonders. After all, who can remember a paragraph-long definition in five parts, as is often seen on one of the online dictionary websites? Very few people remember those definitions; they’re neither study-friendly nor student-friendly.

Now, I understand that words can have more than one use and one meaning, but in general, there is one synonym that pretty much describes any given word.

Here’s an example: Plaintive. This word means mournful, I explained in class one day, as in “a plaintive wail.” My students looked sort of blank-faced as I defined the word and gave a quick example of how it is used. 

I felt like sighing; I had a big list of words used in Ethan Frome that I needed to get through before this class ended, and I didn't think they had quite gotten "plaintive."

            

“Plaintive doesn’t sound like what it means,” I said quickly. “When I was your age, I had a hard time remembering this word…I think we need a word trick here, a way to associate this word with its definition.”

We sat quietly for a moment as I tried to think of the perfect mnemonic device (something I do sometimes) for remembering plaintive, until one of my students almost leapt from her seat. “I’ve got it!” she shouted, waving her hand wildly. “You know when you go to a bagel store and every kind of bagel you want, they don’t have, they’re all out? So you have to get a plain bagel?”

We all nodded knowingly; plain bagels are so lame.

“And then, you ask really nicely for the bagel to be toasted, but the bagel shop person gets all snotty with you and says, 'we don’t toast'—and what is that? Seriously? How can a bagel store not toast the bagels? And so you’re not only stuck with a plain bagel, but it’s also a cold, smushy bagel, and it just makes you want to go, ‘Waahh!’ That’s a plaintive wail!"

            

“That is a plaintive wail,” I agreed. “That is a perfect word trick for plaintive.”

I applauded my student. We all did. I never forgot her trick for remembering plaintive; I am sure none of us will ever forget it.

            

Any time we can associate a little story with a word, we have a far better chance of remembering it, I think. Case in point: the word nebulous. I did not recall ever seeing this word before it appeared on my PSAT exam, and when my father picked me up after the test, he asked me, predictably, “How did it go?”

“Fine,” I said. “Except for this one word I didn’t know. Nebulous. I couldn’t answer that question.”

            

“Aw, come on, Elizabeth!” my father said, smacking his steering wheel. I wondered why he was getting all worked up. “That’s easy. Nebulous. Nebulous. Just sound it out. It means…nebulous.”

            

My father didn’t know what nebulous meant, I realized. Or, maybe he thought he knew what it meant, but he couldn’t actually define it, and if you can’t define a word, even with just one other word (the apt synonym), then you don’t—as I explained years later, to my students—truly know it.

I went home after the PSAT and I looked up "nebulous." It means cloudy, hazy, unclear (pick a synonym). 

(image: the Crab Nebula...a related form of 'nebulous')

Nebulous was no longer nebulous. And because of that little story, that anecdote, I never forgot the word. 

Neither, I am pleased to report, did my students, because I always told that story to them when I first started teaching vocab, and I always told it on Back-to-School night. It was a crowd pleaser. So thanks, Dad, for not actually knowing what nebulous means. Having my parent not know something was actually very helpful!

What Was the First Thing You Wrote That Got Noticed?

I was in my attic office this morning (this office, which I can't work in as the top floor of our house is being renovated, is a fantastic mess of books and writing, a crazy professor's lair), and I happened to find the first piece I wrote that made a teacher say, "You're going to be a writer."

To be honest, before I was told this--in an ominous tone by a woman who frankly scared the hell out of me--I hadn't consciously considered becoming a writer. 

I had always been creative, sure, but I was such a lost kid that I never really thought about the future. I still don't really think of it. I just keep trying to create things, day by day. But I liked to read, and I was decent at writing; I just never really put 2+2 together. Until then.

When I was a sophomore in high school (I went to an excellent girls' high school before switching to public because I thought the scenery change would do me good), I wrote this weird little piece, later published in the 1987 edition of "Windward," the Kent Place School's literary magazine. 

My demanding, exacting, humorless English teacher, whose name I forget, but whose words and face still live in my mind, submitted it for me. To my tremendous surprise, they published it:

MAINE HUNTING SHOES

Looking down at her feet, she thought, "God, my L.L. Bean seven-inch Maine Hunting Shoes are so cool." Clunky and tough, with brown rubber bottoms and tan leather uppers, they seemed to smile at her. Or maybe that was the strip of light rubber connecting the shoe to the sole. It didn't matter. "I love my boots." She said it aloud. True, they made her feet sweat profusely, and she walked strangely when she wore them, but they had chain tread soles. She was in awe. They were a masterpiece. Although she barely ever hunted in Maine, she felt they were the perfect shoe. Wear with everything, bulletproof, won't slide on ice. They gave her clothes that "just back from the fox-hunt" look--classic, timeless. When they'd first arrived from Freeport, she had torn open the box, tossed the boots into the oven, and then lovingly applied the entire packet of Sno-Seal.  She wore them to bed.  She wore them to church. Their huge toes made it difficult to walk out of the pews, but didn't suffering make you a better person?  She loved those boots. They were so roomy she could fit four pairs of Ragg socks on with them.  How convenient!  Bending down, she planted soft kisses on each foot's upturned brown toe.  

"Goodnight," she whispered.

--Elizabeth Collins

I don't really know why I wrote this strange, satirical little ditty. I must have given it to my English teacher as part of some homework that I had pretended to do.  Or maybe I did do my homework for once (I would later do my homework like a good girl, but middle school, freshman and sophomore years were spotty homework times). because it was a fun sort of homework. 

I handed this piece in--inspired, no doubt, by Puritan New England (we had just read Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic novel, The Scarlet Letter, which I rather hated back then; I later realized I don't hate the book; it's a very good book, beautifully written and imagined by Hawthorne, but I do sincerely hate the Puritans. They gave me the creeps back then, and they still do. In fact, I am horrified by anything that reminds me of the cruel and hyper-judgmental Calvinists)--and then I forgot about it.

Soon afterward, teachers I didn't even know started stopping me in the hallway. "I loved your writing," they said to me--and honestly, I wasn't quite sure what they were talking about. "Brilliant satire! So funny! Read it three times already!" they said.  

And then, my own teacher, my English teacher, who often asked complicated questions that required sophisticated critical thinking and articulation of the finer points of literature, and, almost daily, it seemed, stared down her long nose at me and intoned, "I. Think. Not," said, "Do you know what you are, Elizabeth? I will tell you. You are a writer. You are going to be a writer. And this piece," she handed it back to me, "is how I know that is true."

My scary English teacher smiled, which I am quite sure I had never seen her do before. I took my weird, non-story and left the room (having been called in for a private conference, which was semi-terrifying), sort of shaking my head, both confused that she suddenly liked my schoolwork and grateful that she believed in me.

What I know now is that it doesn't take much, sometimes, to see the potential in students. I can see even in e-mail notes that someone has a gift for words. One thing I always do is try to encourage that gift when I see it. 

After all, we often do not even know what we can become until someone else tells us.

What the Hell Else You Got To Do? A Recent Question

I was in the gym, as I often am (although lately, for some reason, whenever I get to the gym, I just want to get out…it might be the new rust colored paint on the walls…it might be the FOX news blaring from the plasma screens; it could be the crowds of annoying people who are just parking their butts on the Nautilus equipment or talking too loudly around me, which makes it hard to concentrate on my reading).

But anyway. Sometimes people (it's always men) come up to me in the gym. For example, the same guy asks me, once a week, “Is your name Judy?”

I always smile and tell him no, my name isn’t Judy. He probably wants to know what my name is, but I think that fishing expedition is sort of ridiculous. Besides, he hasn’t asked the right question.

Some other man suddenly started talking to me this past summer. “Damn, this never gets easier,” he said as he grunted out some reps on the assisted pull up machine.

I nodded. I was using the hip machine. I like that one as my hips have been achy and tight ever since I had children.

“But you gotta do it, you know?” he blurted a few minutes later, suddenly reappearing in the aisle next to me. “How often you come here?”

I told him most mornings.

“Me, too.” he said. “You gotta do it. You gotta keep from falling apart.”

“True,” I said.

My new noisy friend pointed to an elderly man nearby who was slowly doing some tricep dips. “Ya especially gotta do it before you can’t do it no more. Like after you retire. Me, I’m not retired or anything. But you, man,” he said, pointing to the older guy, “what the hell else you got to do? You ain't working, you got no family you need to take care of. You got nothing going on. But you got your body, so your job becomes keeping that body in shape.”

He snapped his towel over his shoulder and sauntered away.

I was left thinking about that—and feeling sort of bad for the most-likely-unintentional diss on the old guy. Was it also a diss on me, even though this man certainly didn’t know my status?

What the hell else you got to do?

Some obnoxious troll wrote something similar to me back in June. This troll clearly wanted to engage me (as hundreds of people did) in some sort of political debate.

I responded that I do not have time for that.

“Oh, really?” he wrote, “It seems to me you have nothing BUT time.”

Charming! I ignored it. Yes, I have time, but that time is not going to be spent arguing politics with people whose minds will never be swayed. I have better things to do.

I can work on my own projects. I can read. And yes, going to the gym is important. In general, my focus is on doing good, lasting work. I believe that everyone needs to have outside interests, a meaningful hobby or, better yet, an avocation. We should all, in our own ways, work a little bit everyday to make a difference in the world.

I don’t think lives are well spent buying stuff or cleaning out closets. How does that make the world a better place?

That reminds me of someone who told me she spent her day off squirting dozens of take-out soy sauce packets into a half-full bottle of soy sauce. "You just never have time for all that stuff you should do," she explained. "Besides, I'm the child of Depression-era parents. I simply can't waste things."

I was incredulous. I said, as nicely as I could, "Your life is too important to spend even an hour doing that. Really, it is." I know that doesn't sound nice, but I meant it kindly. Perhaps I shouldn't have said anything, but it makes me crazy to think that anyone would engage in such meaningless activity, though I suppose it's certainly no worse than watching TV.

"The soy sauce in packets is probably of inferior quality," someone else piped up. "You probably don't want to mix it."

Sigh...

Like most people, I have annoying to-do lists of things I have to do, or mean to do. I have lots of stuff on those lists that bores me to tears. The bad stuff (calling to cancel Club Penguin memberships, for example), I tend to do one or two pieces at a time. I don’t want to waste my whole day on chores.

No, I want to do something meaningful, create something lasting. So I write.

I study new subjects (currently, microbiology and anatomy) and, every day, I try to learn something I didn't know before.

I work on art projects--though I don't actually love doing this while I'm doing it (it's hard work!), but I am always happy, later, that I created the art.

I help my children with school, and try to encourage and inspire them more.

I also work as a tutor, and my schedule is even filling up more than I’d like, in that regard.

Right now, I am--more than ever--protective of my time. I want time for me, time I feel good about spending.

If I use that time for the gym, then fine. 

Lately, I’m feeling as though I want to be freer. I want to be outside, in the sunshine. I don’t want to be trapped in a box.

What the hell else you got to do?

I can, at any given moment, think of plenty.

Another Taste of the Memoir: Fall on Your Knees* (chapter)

You never heard any class dying the way that this one was. I was about to lead them in prayer. They were halfway out of their chairs, falling over laughing; some students had tears rolling down their faces. Others were quietly hysterical, gaping open-mouthed with silent shrieks, and incredulous, “This is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen!” faces.

            I knew that the other teachers down the hall would be dishing later on the usual, “Liz Collins’ classes laugh too much. What could be so funny about English?”

            I had entered the classroom with a nametag (generic, white and blue, Hello! My Name is Mrs. Nagle).

            It was over the left side of my chest, just a bit under my wide black jacket lapel.  It only halfway stuck on the fabric, one edge constantly curling up, and I had actually sort of forgotten why I was wearing it.

            “Wait, does that say your name is…” one girl in the front row craned her head forward, squinted her eyes to look, “Mrs. Nagle? Are you serious? Is that your name, Mrs. Nagle? No-oo!” she said, sort of shocked, as if tacitly commenting, “You can’t do that! You’re Ms. Collins! You can’t change your name! It wouldn’t be right!”

            “Yes, my name is Mrs. Nagle. You can now call me Mrs. Nagle,” I said, trying to keep a straight face, because honestly, I was dead serious about this. I had been married for 12 years, but this name issue was a constant, annoying battle, no matter where I went or what I did (filling out my kids’ school forms, taking them to the pediatrician, constantly crossing out the Mrs. from in front of Collins because I am not, as I always pointed out, married to myself).

            I was simply sick of it. Easier to give in here, I felt, than to keep trying to stand up for my—or any other woman’s—identity.

            I wrote it on the board in large black dry-erase marker letters:  MRS. NAGLE.

            The girls were already laughing.

            “Hey, don’t laugh,” I said, turning around. “This is not an occasion for humor. This is my name. Learn it, live it, love it.” But, as was my habit while teaching, I cracked a flash of a smile that some of them caught; smiles and laughter, like yawns, can be contagious.

            Then I purposefully strode over to the computer to take attendance. I wasn’t going to volunteer a scrap of information about my name or my nametag. Class was starting.

            “Ms. Collins says her name is Mrs. Nagle,” some of the girls were telling those who’d just walked in.

            “It is Mrs. Nagle,” I said, as I scrolled down the class list with the mouse. “My name is Mrs. Nagle.”

            I muttered softly; probably no one heard me, “It’s Mrs. Nagle because God clearly does not approve of married women refusing to take their husbands’ names.”

            Why had I suddenly decided to become Mrs. Nagle? I would later be accused of  indirectly “making fun” of someone because of the nametag I wore. This person had sent me an e-mail the day before that said, among other---weird, and what I perceived as threatening—things, “We let it go that you did not change your name after marriage. That was not an appropriate comment to make to the girls in English class.”

            Even later, people would write on newspaper comment boards that they felt “sorry for [my] husband” who clearly “needs to grow a pair” and “keep his wife in line.” I wish they knew my husband. He never cared for one second whether or not I took his name. In fact, he was now telling me, when I worried about whether or not I should finally change it, that to do so would be "absurd."

            I had always only responded when my students asked about my name—and they always asked, every year, every single class—that I did not care to change my name after I got married. I didn’t add, because I think that women need to stop letting themselves be advertised as the property of men, which yes, I actually do believe. 

            I hate the history behind the taking of a husband’s name; I find it highly offensive, even disgusting. I understand that many people now think that a woman taking her husband’s name is only announcing the creation of a family, but while that sounds sweet, I still think it ignores the fact that for thousands of years, women were only respected as property.

            For a woman to say that she is taking her husband’s name in order to announce to the world their new unity is fine, I think, but also, I suspect, obtuse. I do respect any woman’s decision in this matter, and her ability to decide for herself which name she wants to use. But no one—especially another woman, whether it’s in the name of a religion or a social convention—should try to force or shame any other woman into taking her husband’s name. That’s just not right.

            I only ever said to my students, “I didn’t want to change my name. Many of the girls who went to my school did not end up changing their names; it was just normal, in my world, or maybe typical of my generation.”

            I was actually starting to worry about this new generation; none of the girls I met seemed to even consider keeping their own names. They seemed not to realize that was even an option, and I highly doubt they’d ever before met a married woman who wasn’t a Mrs.

            I didn’t add that the women I’ve most respected in my life all happened to keep their maiden names, but that’s true, too.

            “Changing your name is really…time-consuming,” I told them, if they kept bugging me about it. “There is a ton of paperwork involved. And I just never had time for that.”

            Name-changing conversations pretty much ended there. I didn’t make it a political or human rights issue in my classes; I only described it as a personal choice.

            Getting that e-mail made me shaky, though. It made me start thinking, “I really don’t need this. I’m tired of defending my choice. Maybe—at least in this school, because it might save me some anguish—I should just be Mrs. Nagle.”

            I walked back to the front of the classroom. “Listen up, now!” I barked. “It’s time to be good Catholics; it’s time to pray.”

            Hail Mary, full of grace, I started, my palms together, as my eyes scanned the room, guilt-ing the class into praying. The girls sat up straight and their voices joined mine.

            The prayer was over in what seemed like three seconds. As soon as we all said Amen, they were laughing again, remembering the nametag.

            “You aren’t laughing at Mother Mary, are you?” I prodded them. “Do we need to try that again?”

            They laughed harder.

            “You know what?” I asked, not giving up, wresting back control, “I want to kick this up a notch. I want a bigger, longer prayer. In fact,” I added, “I am going to get on my knees for this next prayer.” I got down, sort of uncomfortably, given my bum right leg, but still graciously, I hoped.  “Join me if you want to.”

            Now my class roared, and I knew they'd find this funny, but I was also being kind of serious; I thought, why not take a page from Mary Karr's Lit, which I had just read? Her memoir (the third) advocates kneeling while praying to enhance the experience.

            “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” I assured them because I knew it was unconventional, at least in class. “I’m going to do it, but you certainly don’t have to kneel. I want to do it because I recently read that kneeling makes you feel closer to God. It’s a spiritual thing.”

            Boom. They all knelt, eyes dancing like I’d never seen before, their laughter reaching a crescendo.

            “The Hail Mary is a fine prayer,” I said above the noise, balancing on my knees, “but now, I think, we need something else. I actually can’t think of a long, serious prayer,” I said, which was true. “Anyone want to volunteer to lead the class in another prayer?"

            One girl—a kid I like very much—jumped up and down with an abundance of enthusiasm. “I know, Ms. Collins! I mean, Mrs. Nagle,” she shouted, trying to be good, but also in the spirit of the (silly) day.  “The Act of Contrition!”

            “That sounds great,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure what the Act of Contrition was; I thought I might know, thinking it was the "Bless me Father, for I have sinned..." that is said before Confession, but I was completely wrong. Still, I told my student volunteer to “Take it away.”

            In near-perfect unison, the class recited, quite loudly and still joyously, the Act of Contrition, which I, in fact, had never heard before, and still do not actually know. But it seemed apt—for me, or for anyone, for whomever. I merely listened and tried to look beatific.

             Then I stood up and started the class. It was especially productive and all the kids were smiling. I was sort of on a roll that day. We covered how to increase the power and emotional resonance of our writing by using the choicest, high-octane adjectives and working in thoughtful sensory details.

            We were moving on from speechwriting, because I certainly wasn’t going to go there anymore.

            Later, I suspect that the same person who’d complained that I hadn’t changed my name would write to me—anonymously, via my blog comments—that I had “made a mockery of school prayer” and “I should have gotten you fired months ago.”

            That was a gross misunderstanding of the situation—and incredibly mean, I thought. I was trying to make school prayer deeper and more meaningful, and settle my class down.  I couldn't help it if they laughed; it was funny; my classes were usually sort of funny. I like laughter and usually both appreciate and encourage it.

            “Don’t worry,” someone else wrote to me then, “they hate you because you are uplifting and hopeful…something they’ll never be.”  Another friend wrote, very presciently and amusingly, I thought: “Stay the course in Eastwick, darling.”

            I wondered, however, if I could continue to stay on, to fight.  Could I keep trying as hard as I had been to make school more inspirational, useful and fun? Was it worth the effort if I was only going to be harassed and misunderstood?

            I wrote around this time, “Is teaching worth the angst?” It’s a question I am still trying to answer. On its best days, which are most days, teaching is a joy. On its worst days, it’s a hell you would never wish on another.


*"Fall on Your Knees"--a chapter from the in-progress memoir, TOO COOL FOR SCHOOL by Elizabeth Collins

A Tiny Taste of the Teaching Memoir (in Progress)

"Lost in Florence, Italy…and Summit, New Jersey"

(tentative chapter from the memoir, Too Cool for School by Elizabeth Collins; rough!)

            The school counselor wanted to see me. “Just to chat,” she said. Why? What had I done wrong? Nothing, really. I had simply been Underachieving. The counselor, a brilliant, well-padded, halfway gray academic psychologist, wanted to figure out why.

            I liked talking with her, sometimes. It got me out of class, and she had tea, even Peek Freans cookies with raspberry jam and cream middles, which weren’t the greatest, but which I’d take in a second since we never had sweets at home. 

            The counselor loaned me books from her wall of shelves, if I asked for them. She smiled at me as if I were an unpolished emerald that she’d had the good luck to find on the floor and the skill to see its worth.

            She held up the side of her head in a thoughtful, not bored, way while sitting back in an overstuffed chair, asking me questions.

            So why had I joined the ranks of underachievers? I don’t even know myself, not even now. Why does anyone underachieve? Why does any kid zone out and ignore homework, preferring her own books, her own projects, her own, all-too-active inner life?

            Some people say that underachievement stems from fear of failure. I personally think that’s bullshit. Underachievement—all I know about it, actually—seems to stem from fear of success.

            What will happen, what sort of pressure will ensue, if you’re incredibly successful at a very young age? You’ll just be expected to do it again, even better this time. Even better the time after that, and the time after that.

            Sometimes it’s easier not to try.

            Take, for example, Harper Lee. Did she ever write anything after her classic novel, To Kill a Mockingbird? Not that I know of. 

            One could argue that Harper Lee wrote one perfect book, and there was no need for another. One could also argue that her friend Truman Capote actually wrote it, helping her, as some have alleged (which I think is, frankly, mean; my apologies to Harper Lee for even mentioning it, but I thought I had to). One could surmise that Ms. Lee was petrified to attempt an encore, not after how well that one novel was received, and the stellar reputation it still enjoys.

            I was only 15, and I was already underachieving. This after years already of being deemed Gifted, Highly Creative, off-the-standardized-test-charts smart.

            I had As in some subjects, Cs in others. I never studied. Rather, sitting in the student lounge amidst the cacophony of the rest of my class, I flipped through my textbooks and the novels that were assigned to me, letting my eyes quickly roam the pages. This took perhaps 10 minutes. Then, I’d head in for the test. Often, I aced it (unless it was math or physics, some subject not exactly based on any book).

            My homework, though, which was graded, was rarely ever done. There, I was failing. Perfect in one area, miserable in the other; I was a walking oxymoron.

            This is, in some ways, the story of my life.

            My freshman English class (homogeneous, for this year) was reading Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.  Actually, at this point, a few months later (it felt like a band-aid on hairy skin, being ripped off a half-millimeter at a time), we were supposed to be done.

            I hadn’t read a damn word. Why, I don’t know. I just wasn’t, I guess, in the mood. The final test was coming up in half an hour, though, and I wanted to do well.

            I grabbed my copy of the novel and skimmed some pages, flipped around. I scanned the loose-leaf notes that I had taken in class (most of the notes were comments made to the friend who sat on my left…or doodles, my favorite doodle relating, of course, to the one boy I had a thing with—a rather innocent thing; we hardly ever got to see each other as we lived far away. He was widely regarded as Fine, although he broke up with me, due to some inexplicable peer pressure, every two months like clockwork. This went on, making me sort of crazy, for years).

            The bell rang. That was it. I had, once again, squandered my time and not done what I was supposed to. Would the LC Cram (as they called it, in some circles) actually serve me well this time?

            The fast visual cramming, the frantic book flipping, was usually my process in these awkward teenage years, though other girls looked at me in astonishment when I did this, or they were simply and obviously annoyed. But what can I say? I have a photographic memory; I remember quotes from the pages of books. I can see page numbers, too, in my mind.

            It has always been like this, for me. Words, especially printed words, come to me very easily.

            We took the test. I felt okay about it, but I didn’t really discuss it with anyone, apart from freely admitting, when asked, that I hadn’t read.

            The next day, we got the tests back and I had a 100. Perfect. The large numbers were visible across the tight, stuffy, tan classroom, but it was also obvious that I’d done well because a friend and I were silently, and obnoxiously, air-high-fiving each other.

            A shout shattered the brief moment of delight that I felt.

            “That’s not fair!” one girl said, pointing angrily at me. Her cheeks were blooming red, and I saw, a bit grossed out, that she needed a tissue. “She didn’t even read! I saw her; she was cramming in the lounge. Liz Collins didn’t even read, and she got a 100? I have a 76, and I read. I studied! It’s just not fair!”

            My accuser collapsed her head on her tiny, curved desk, crying unabashedly, totally frustrated with the status quo.

            I am not really proud of what I did, at that point. I merely smirked to my friend. My accuser was, I thought, being whiny and ridiculous, though I did sort of see her point. Why’d she have to shout it in the middle of class, though? Did she think the teacher would cross out my 100 and, out of spite, give me a 50? I mean, really; we were freshmen, not babies. Whining about grades was something the immature or overly-entitled did, I always thought.

            I just took what I got and never questioned any teacher.

            “Tammy, dear,” the teacher said, patting her on the shoulder, trying to quell the girl’s outrage, which had quickly turned into heaving, muffled sobs that the rest of the class just watched, open-mouthed, like a slow-motion train wreck. “I know it’s not fair. You studied very hard; I can see that. You tried your best.”

            The teacher, soft-spoken, easy-going, verging on elderly, was quiet for a moment, looking off into the middle distance.

            “Elizabeth is just…” –she shook her head a bit as if she couldn’t really bear to admit it, but she wanted me to hear—“…well, Elizabeth has an incredible memory, a gift. Elizabeth doesn’t have to read the book, and yet, she still knows the answers. But Elizabeth should read”—she looked directly at me now; I stopped smirking and felt guilty—“because Elizabeth might actually enjoy doing so.”

            I would probably enjoy the book. I would actually read it later, when I was older and not so busy calling the local indie radio station to request New Order songs or reading the great works of satire, absorbing all the masters’ tricks for ripping apart stupid arguments. I would enjoy the book for sure when it wasn’t being discussed, piecemeal, in excruciating months-long units, covered line by line with (horror of horrors—I still hate this) students reading—badly—every paragraph aloud.

            I certainly enjoyed other reading, any other reading than that which was assigned in school. I read several books a week, both then and now. I read magazines on every subject, and still do. When my family went away on ski trips, people paid me actual cash to be on their lodge team in super competitive games of Trivial Pursuit. I just knew all the answers, even the ones I had no reason to know.

            Every time the report cards came out, though, I would pretty much have to hide. The scenes were badbadbad, always ending with, “Life is a game. Would you just play the game, Elizabeth? You know, according to the rules?”

            Would I? I always said that I would. And always, it never happened.

            “Tell me,” said the counselor, clearly searching for an innocent conversation-opener, “what did you do this past summer?”

            I said, which was true, that we went to Italy, France and Switzerland. My childhood was filled with journeys, travel, doing, which in retrospect, I appreciate, though at the time, I just wanted to lie on a beach, in silence and stillness, and read.

            “Did you happen to visit Florence?” she asked. “I love Florence.”

            “Florence is beautiful,” I agreed, not giving this woman much. I wasn’t particularly in the mood to talk today, though at the mention of Florence I recalled the best meal of my life: a multi-course, family-style repast of bread soup, melon and proscuitto, fish, pasta, beef, and large bowls of my favorite fruit, blackberries, with a wonderful vanilla gelato, followed by Vin Santo and biscotti.

            I also remembered that the hotel’s open window caused me to get dozens of mosquito bites on my fingers (I had held the gauzy blanket up to my nose, with just my fingers sticking out. My hands got so swollen and purple, I looked like a leper). No one else in the room was bitten even once. Only me.

            “What did you see there?” the counselor asked me, clearly not giving up.

            I replied, rather reluctantly, “Oh, you know, art, the Duomo. Lots of museums. My parents were really into the shopping, which I don’t care for. They always wanted to shop in the marketplaces. My feet would get tired from the walking, and the shopping. One day, I just told them I was going back to the hotel.”

            “How’d you get there?” the counselor asked.

            “I tried to get a taxi, but every time I gave a driver the hotel address, which was on Via Laura, they all just sneered at me and acted deliberately obtuse. It was so strange. Via Tora? Via Bora? they kept saying, and then waving me away, like I was, I don't know, a fly on their food.  I know they knew what I meant, but no one would drive me, for some reason. So I walked.”

            “How did you know which way to go?”

            “I looked at the Duomo; my father had said that our hotel was near the Duomo, so if I ever got separated from them, to look for the gold dome and just head that way. So I did.”

            “That sounds like a good plan,” she said.

            “Well, yeah, except that the closer I got to the Duomo, the less I could see of it. At one point, I couldn’t see it at all anymore. It was obscured by buildings. And the streets were just these narrow little wind-y alleys. I realized I was lost.”

            “Lost in Florence? Oh, my. So what did you do?”

            “I bought a map,” I told her. “I figured out where I was, traced a path to Via Laura, like filling out a kiddie maze on a paper placemat at IHOP, and I walked there.”

            “You got back using a map?” The counselor was incredulous.

            “Yes, I used a map,” I said. I couldn’t quite figure out why this was a big deal.

            “You’re very clever, Elizabeth, very resourceful. It’s remarkable, actually.” She shook her head, suppressing a smile, and wrote down something on a clipboard.

            “Why? Because I bought a map? Isn’t that what you should do if you’re lost?”

            “Yes, of course. But many 15-year-olds simply would not think of it, and they wouldn’t know how to take control of the situation. They’d be both literally and metaphorically lost.”

            “What would they do?” I wondered aloud. “Sit on the curb and cry? In a city where your language is either not understood or basically ignored? You have to get back, don’t you? You have to help yourself, if you can, if no one else will help you.”

            Later that evening, my mother told me how the counselor called her, raving about my brilliance. Because I bought a map in Florence and found my hotel. But now that I think about it, the counselor was right: I was especially wise as a kid. I just seemed to know things.

            Things that I (too easily) forgot later on.