“BREAK A LEG: Part Two”

(On Making Me Look Good)

My high school dramatics-coach career lasted an incredible quarter of a century+. I’ve counted and before it was over, I’d directed/co-directed fifty-two high school plays and/or musicals. But believe me, had some crystal-ball fortune teller ever prophesied such a terrifying future to me, I would have run away and joined the circus. Nobody knew more than I just how unqualified I was to fulfill such a prediction.

So what happened? A rocky start. That’s what happened. So many things would go wrong. No big surprise considering I was the guy who’d virtually wilt at the prospect of being commissioned to pilot such an above-his-pay-grade helm.

Take for instance the ordeal of my first time being tasked with three one-act plays to produce and direct on my own at Foxcroft Academy. I say on my own because it wasn’t like it had been eleven years ago at Belfast when I’d inherited an army (The Footlights Club) who could’ve/would’ve managed just fine with or without me. No, there was no army to carry me through and make me look good this time.

So what went wrong? Well, right off the bat, two of my best and brightest plays fizzled right out from under me due to critical absenteeism at scheduled practices. That was crushing. The professional embarrassment over such a failure! I couldn’t figure out how other directors somehow managed to strong-arm their players into seeing that showing-up-at-rehearsals is a very big priority. Me? No General Patton. All I was is just some passive little ‘know-little’ who happened to have accidentally parachuted into the “director’s” chair, and was just going through the motions because, honestly…? I’m ashamed to say I simply didn’t know how to do it.

So there I was, Nervous Norvous me, left only with my B-side play, the least important of the three; a silly, childish piece of fluff titled “Once Upon A Playground,” the one I’d basically inserted into the program only as a filler. Talk about feeling naked.

So despite the fact that I wanted to gather up my family and run away to Canada, we were required to do the play in front of the Academy’s student body first, once that evening, and then once more for the kids in the lower grades the next day. I was going to die!

I remember the feeling of abject shame right down to the pit of my stomach while hearing the sound of the audience, quieting right down to watch as the curtains finally swept apart for our first performance of my fiasco. It was Zero hour. D-Day. And oh how I pitied my kids for having had the bad luck to end up with… me. And now everybody would know, would see with their own eyes, just what an incompetent loser I was as the so-called “director.”

Backstage, and following along with my script, I listened to my kids out there begin delivering their memorized lines. What an empty little play, the voice in my head harangued. What was I ever THINKING?

About three minutes into the play, I was startled practically out of my shoes by a thunderous, raffish noise that sounded something like a crash! Two seconds later in, I’d identified the ‘concussion’ as… laughter. Audience laughter!

Ohmigod! Was that a contemptuous laugh???

Utterly confused I looked down upon the last delivered line. Huh! OK. Yeah, it was… kind of a funny line… but that funny? And by then of course the show was moving on at its inevitable clip, totally out of my control. But before long…

It happened again! Another volley of belly laughs. And not sounding one bit mean-spirited either! And then another one. What the heck was going on?!

What was going on was that the play was working! Somehow succeeding way beyond my mousy, second-guessing expectations. It had never occurred to me that, duh (a) the playwright knew what he was doing when he wrote the thing, that he was good at what he did for his living, and that (b) the kids I’d cast could be trusted to do their part at making the thing work. What a surprise.

But here’s the real reason this dinky little offering somehow finally got off the ground? It turned out that I had two little freshman firecrackers in that cast, two young women who had SO much Pollyanna-esque-optimism and drive to, first and foremost, just be in plays and secondly, once cast, to do everything in their power to make those plays succeed.

That’s the truth. And my God, I had no way of imagining the walloping impact this duo was destined to have on not only me over the next four years but also on Foxcroft Academy’s dramatics program overall. God bless the freshmen, Sarah Thistle and Marliese Eberbach!

So know this: the overall, underlying purpose of me writing this post is… all about me setting the record straight. Because of them, I ended up getting one hell of a great reputation over a number of years as an award-winning drama coach. But that’s not where the bulk of the credit should have gone.

So here it is: this is all about me giving credit where the credit’s due.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

OK. Let me back up a little first.

The first time I held auditions as the new director, something quickly became clear to me: on the one hand, I had a handful of underclassmen who’d come in with the greatest of hopes to be chosen. It was obvious that The Try-Out was something of great importance to them. And… not only had they come to me so admirably prepared, but also with an unbelievable ethic of teamwork and support for one another. Like, I mean they were altruistically helping each other get prepared for their readings, giving each other selfless encouragement to others in the hopes that they too might succeed, rather than approaching the whole ordeal with the hostile intent of a dog-eat-dog competition.

On the other hand was the gang of upperclassmen boys and girls who arrived all cocky, smirking, and openly sneering at their inexperienced, younger counterparts… and right in front of me. Oh yes, they knew this was an open “audition” alright, and yet their vibe was, We don’ neeed no steenkin’ try-outs. Us getting all the juiciest parts? That’s a foregone conclusion, it’s in the bag. Because we’re the varsity and that’s just the way it goes, you losers.

And although I had serious qualms about doing it (and as a result had to endure a long period of guiltily second-guessing myself thereafter)… I assigned roles not to those who seemed to have the most credentials necessarily, but to those who actually demonstrated the most skill, energy, and desire during the audition. Meaning that a lot of those juniors and seniors got dumped in favor of underclassmen who had just honestly earned their places with hard work and talent, damnit!

And oh, what a high school, drama-queen scandal that turned out to be! Upperclassmen’s parents were not happy campers. And the dumpees? Dumbfounded, yet mad as wet hens. But... in the long run, it turned out the best thing I ever could have done. For the kids, for me, and especially for the Academy’s drama program.

And so yes, my directorial career had to get shakily jump-started with the frivolous “Once Upon the Playground.” And I couldn’t believe it got such an enthusiastic reception. Because I guess me, being the dyed-in-the-wool college English major, I was feeling my job required more literarily-meaty offerings with dark and complex themes, overtones, symbolism, double-entendres, and elements of existentialism… which is pretty much why shortly after “Playground,” I opted to put on Albee’s “The Zoo Story,” the one-act featured in my last post.

How pretentious of me. I had so much to learn.

So my tenure got off to an embarrassing, molasses crawl over the first couple of seasons. Reason being, (besides not having a hint of a clue as to how to proceed) I was choosing my plays from among the same musty, curmudgeonly classic titles that F.A. had been putting on since back when I was a student. And my God, weren’t they ever talky and boring!

So one day, I pushed myself to begin to look for something new. Something unique. And I started sending away for play catalogues from all over the country. And as summer vacation loomed, I was deep into poring over the descriptions of many much-more-interesting-sounding, just-published scripts.

Script-reading turned out to be fun. To me, the script catalogs were like the old Sears and Roebuck Christmas Toy Catalogs, each play description sending visions of sugar plums of all the props and costumes we would need to get dancing in my imagination.

So I started ordering. Like a madman! Perusing scripts became my newest hobby, and I found myself rabidly getting into it. For a ‘know-little director,’ at least this was something I could do. And my burgeoning script-library began filling up mostly with some very odd titles such as “Postponing the Heat Death of the Universe,” SECOND Prize: TWO Months in Leningrad,” and “Nice People Dancing to Good Country Music.” As time went on it got so that before I felt confident about a purchasing a title for my program, I’d honestly ended up reading close to a hundred scripts. And I’m talking each year! (Did I mention that I’m a little obsessive-compulsive?)

Picking the Perfect Play developed into one of my unique Super Powers (OK, let’s just call them my stronger suits, my forte if you will). Say anything you want about me but, damn, I could pick a great play. The other super power being that I was actually very good at coaxing kids out of their little shells, and really releasing and expressing their emotions effectively. But that’s it. That’s all I had. Other than that… I was just some friggin’ moron in the field. But anyway, one day…

Ding! I’d found it! The best play out there! Something brand new and odd and unique in the catalogs, something just published too, something that no one in the entire state had probably heard of yet, let alone had seen performed. Something deliciously unusual.

(from the catalog…)

INCIDENT AT SAN BAJO by Brad Korbesmeyer Short Play, Drama / 4w, 3m

The residents of a trailer camp have quite a story to tell. A stranger tried to sell each of them a mysterious elixir which he claimed would make them live longer. Most, of course, did not buy the elixir –and they are now dead, the water supply having been poisoned by the stranger. Only seven are left to tell the tale– the seven who drank the elixir which, it turned out, was an antidote! Each of their stories is told in a series of interlocking monologues directed at an unseen interviewer. The effect is somewhat like a “60 Minutes” segment.

Yes! This was the one! And when I ordered my dozen copies of the “San Bajo” script, I actually felt excited to be committing us to a different sort of play at least. And when I began our first meeting with my, “OK kids, here’re your copies. This is the play we’re doing. First read-through is right now… I felt a curious little spike in my heart-rate, a little blip of passion that was beginning to go right to work at countering the usual dread that normally handicapped my heart in these endeavors. Because this one was unlike any play I had read before.

What I had no idea of was that this was the play that was going to change everything.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Early on, I’d decided (in order to set the dark and mysterious tone of the piece) that the first thing I wanted the audience to hear while waiting for the curtains to open would be Bob Dylan’s “The Man in the Long Black Coat.” That song is captivating, lurking, spooky, and evocative of some mysterious event so very like “The Incident at San Bajo” it was uncanny.

You don’t have to listen to the whole thing, as we were only going to use the first minute and a half. But here, take a quick listen if you will and try to imagine you’re seated in a packed auditorium waiting on the curtains to swish open, and then this mood-setter starts up. Close your eyes and see where the music takes you. Listen to the tone. Listen to… the crickets:

Most often I’d have that piece playing while the kids came in and took to setting up the rehearsal stage. And right away a positive sea-change overtook the spirit of our rehearsals, which were becoming a labor of love.

Because this little newcomer in the catalogs was a unique ensemble piece wherein each actor is given a coequal starring role, it is an actor’s dream. Each of the seven individual players is intermittently a star in his/her own right, simultaneously occupying one of the six “stations” spread left-to-right across the stage (one station being occupied by a “married couple” together). When the single spotlight is highlighting one of the stations, the other five are left frozen, out of sight in silent darkness. Each “station” is an off-and-on little “micro-world” of its own.

Sure, the entire play is set in the one-and-the-same trailer park— each character being one of the trailer park’s trailer-trash losers. But each is being interviewed in his/her own “mobile home” individually— one, a guy a who’s a conspiracy-theory-ranting gas station attendant; an octogenarian spinster; a wannabe-suave ladies’ man in a smoking jacket, sipping bourbon; a middle-aged, new-age, lady-psychic scammer; and a shallow yuppie couple hell-bent on keeping up with all the latest trends. Point being: the physical space each character occupies on stage is a disparate little time-space microcosm, replete with that character’s emotional, educational, psychological, and spiritual plane. An actor’s dream.

The audience never hears the interviewer’s voiced questions, but of course the characters’ responses make the prompts obvious.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So along with the two other one-acts, we put “The Incident at San Bajo” on in front of the school and then the community. We were a big hit. Then it was time to board the bus and head out to the Maine State Principals’ Association Regional One-Act Play Competitions.

The Regionals never know what hit’em. We took them completely by surprise and by storm. “San Bajo” steamrolled right over the other schools. Not only did we take first place, but each and every individual of the seven took home his/her own much coveted All-Cast Festival Award, a rare accomplishment. And when it was all over, everybody was talking about the play itself, and about us.

(below, an encouraging note from our supportive headmaster)

So two weeks later, we hit the States on a roll… but immediately found ourselves humbled. We were up against the much bigger schools, a lot of them, and it showed— bigger schools with fatter wallets, humongous programs, and decades of greater experience, schools who were used to winning.

We were the small school underdogs, ripe for failure…

Such an interesting thing though, these competitions. Your big yellow school bus stops at a local motel for you all to drop the bags and suitcases into your assigned rooms, and then you rush to get right back on the bus. Next, over at the host school, you unload all the props, register yourselves at the welcoming table in the school lobby, get your festival badges, get escorted to your assigned to a classroom (which will be your home base over the next two days), get handed your programs, discover what time of day (Saturday or Sunday) your play is scheduled to hit the stage, and then you just sort of dissolve into the chattering crowds for a bit.

It’s a time for all the kids to meet and befriend their competitors, while the directors do likewise. There are three sessions each day: morning, afternoon, and evening— each one followed by The Unnerving Critique where your cast and crew (with their little tails between their legs, most likely) get herded into the designated ‘Judges’ Classroom’ and face the music.

It’s kind of like a rodeo.

Over the entire weekend you’re seated with your crew in the auditorium (watching all the other schools perform their little hearts out), seated in the cafeteria for the lunches, or seated in your assigned classroom going over and over your lines.

But you know, it’s a wonderful thing, getting to watch the spunk and the amazing creativity of all those various high school students on parade. Often daunting too, because you do find yourself struggling with imagining just how well your play might get measured up against the ones you’re watching.

But somewhere during those seemingly endless two days comes That Heart Attack Moment! It’s… your turn!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Thank goodness I’d chosen the first two-minutes of Bob Dylan’s “The Man in the Long Black Coat” as our intro for “San Bajo.” Because while we were toiling at the last-minute tweaks of our props set-up back-stage, in the semi-darkness back there behind those closed curtains, the lethargic tempo of that music (which was soft and slow, and contained the sound of the night-time chirping of crickets) felt familiar and comfortable, and seemed to calm us all right down. Seemed to make the whole thing feel that this was nothing more than just another dress rehearsal back home.

My visual memory of those last moments have the actors, like busy, little, methodical shadows, silently tip-toeing about the stage, and moving things around in slow motion.

And then OMG! The curtains swept open. And there we were.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

OK, so no, we didn’t win. The competition was really stiff. Still, what we did do is knock the socks off everyone! So it was a moral victory. There is no third place trophy, at least there wasn’t at the time (1990), but according to the judges’ notes, that’s where we placed. Sure, we’d have liked to have won, but the enthusiasm that was showered upon us from all the other directors and cast members throughout the rest of the festival left us all very proud.

Two signs indicating how well we’d done were (1) in the following year, and the years that followed, we saw many, many other schools choosing to enter their versions of “The Incident at San Bajo” into the competition, so I’d say the Samuel French Publishing Company owed our school a big debt of gratitude for the free advertising, plus (2) before heading for home, we were profusely congratulated on our performance by the judges and were informed that in the following year we’d be placed at the highest level competitively (i.e., we’d be judged specifically against only the top-tier schools). And see, I didn’t even know that then, that there were two levels of the competitions. Which shouldn’t surprise anyone, since at that time an encyclopedia could have been published containing all the directorial things I wasn’t aware of.

But… look at us: WE’D MADE IT TO STATES!! And so yes, this was the play, and the cast, that began making all the difference in the Academy’s dramatics program over the next ten years back then.

So with FA’s student body back home already awed by our stellar performance on the hometown stage, some changes were in store. For one, it immediately became a lot easier for me to get boys to try out for the plays. When I’d begun, 98% of those trying out were females, while 98% of the scripts I could get my hands on called for mostly guys. Secondly, over time our productions began drawing larger and larger audiences, not just the parents and families of our cast members anymore, but seriously interested theater-goers from the neighboring towns and general area were showing up. So we were steadily building a reputation, which meant our program was beginning to haul in more money on ticket sales for a change.

So, “Incident at San Bajo” really had put us on the map. But does that mean I finally got over my Nervous Norvousness as a director? Hah! Nope. Not at all. It just meant more ulcers for me. Don’t get me wrong. I loved seeing the plays I’d selected do so well. But there were always, every single time, those lingering terrors threatening to, you know, unexpectedly collapse everything… all those what-IFS that could end a play in disaster in the wink of a poked eye.

I just wasn’t cut out for a tension-filled career.

But my actors were. They thrived on it. Things did go wrong, of course. But my kids always took care of those things. They were amazing. So it’s embarrassing for me to have gotten the credit for the way our dramatics program took off over the next decade. Yes, I picked great plays. I can take credit for that. And yes, I was pretty good at getting kids to let their emotions loose, and to project their voices. But that was it. The only other thing that I was good at was… well, letting go of things, letting my amazing crackerjack kids loose on each play. They were wonderful.

So here I am, setting the record straight: The lion’s share of the credit for making Foxcroft Academy shine in dramatics and helping the drama program grow and improve during my tenure goes to the kids, the little actors I was so blessed to get the chance to be associated with. And this is especially true for the three above, my drama wunderkinder: the amazing Sarah Thistle, Marliese Eberbach, and Pat Myers, all members of the class of 1994. They put their magic into those “great plays” I selected. They made each one simply fly. They made me practically famous as a director.

Only it wasn’t me. It was them.

I was only picking the plays and sort of going along for the ride…

And look at what a ride it was…

**THE SECOND-BEST PLAY WE EVER DID**— **GOT US A COUPLE OF MONTY- PYTHON-ESQE LETTERS OF COMPLAINT FROM LOCAL MINISTERS, HEH HEH**

Et Cetera…

Ah, those halcyon days (with ulcer)…

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STAGE FRIGHT: Always Say ‘Break A Leg,’ Never ‘Good Luck’

When I was a high school freshman, the dramatics coach tried to recruit me to audition for a play he was doing. The very thought of that terrified the hell out of me. I’d had stage fright all my life, and I’d never even been on an actual stage. And I told him so. He said not to worry. I told him I freeze whenever I even have to do an oral book report in front of the class. He told me not to worry. I told him it wasn’t even possible for me to memorize anything. Again, not to worry. So, I flat out told him I didn’t want to be in a play.

He told me to meet him in the library right after school that afternoon. And back then, we were all pretty much duty-bound to do whatever a teacher told us to do. So… I showed up.

But in the meantime though, dumb-ass little me got to stupidly wondering, What would it be like to be… a stage star? And then I got to thinking that… maybe this coach actually could, no— that he obviously could, get me over the terror that always gripped me whenever any number of silent eyes were locked onto me. That his job, after all. So yeah, it occurred to me that just maybe my life could be about to change. BIG-time. Because I’d always been a dreamer.

I’d begun imagining the glory of the thunderous cheers and applause while I, standing alone up there on the stage, was taking my final bows. It felt… good. Exciting. Where might it l all lead? I was asking myself. Hollywood? It made sense. Because I assumed that many a Paul Newman might likely have begun their super-star careers on humble high school stages just like ours. After which… well, one thing had just naturally led to the next thing which could just as naturally lead to… well, being a heartthrob eventually. And getting to sign thousands of autographs. I was getting excited.

So right after school I strolled my way to the library with as confident a smile as I could paste onto my face.

A sign taped to the door sternly warned, AUDITIONS. NO ADMITTANCE.

I stepped inside. “Close the door,” I was told, rather curtly.

He in a bad mood or something? I wondered. I closed the door behind me, but suddenly, once inside, I was unexpectedly overtaken by a slightly creepy, ominous feeling. I’d been expecting droves of my classmates being there, all clamoring for the big part I was probably going to walk away with. But instead, no, it was only me. Only me and the director. One on one.

I would’ve preferred the door left open…

Then, checking his watch like we’d already run out of time, he slapped a dog-eared script into my hands, turned on his heel, and headed off for the opposite far end of the long library. “Page 36!” he called over his shoulder. Well, the script was already opened to page 36, so… “Read the highlighted passage!”

For some reason, my chicken-livered little heart had begun to worm its way up about three inches in my chest. I tried swallowing, but it didn’t want to go back down. Looking down at his own opened copy, he barked, “Begin reading!”

I cleared my throat a few times first, but then managed it. I read the passage. And looked up to find him contemplating me with a puzzled look on his face.

“What?” I asked.

“I couldn’t hear what you said, is what. I couldn’t hear a thing you just read. You know, if I can’t hear you… in here, with just me and you, how’s even the first row of the audience ever going to hear you? So OK. Once again, once again. From the top! Louder this time. Project your voice!”

Well, I’d thought I’d read the words exceedingly well, but…

His terse manner was crushing me like a cigarette butt under his toe. Yes, I know. I can easily see it now. I cringe to admit it, but I was one exceedingly fragile little wuss back then.

Anyway, I took a deep breath and bellowed out the lines.

“OK. I did hear you that time. But there was no emotion. None whatsoever. You’re not reading telephone book listings, you know. I mean, look at what you’re reading. Look at it. What’s the character feeling there, do you think? Happy? Sad? What??”

Jeez. I didn’t know there was gonna be a quiz. I looked down at the words. “I dunno,” I said. “Mad?”

“Bingo! Angry! But not just angry. Angry as hell! Can you show me angry as hell?”

Well, I knew he wasn’t ready for the honest answer to that. “I dunno,” I mumbled. “I’m not sure.” Inside I was dying for some reason. Fading fast. Becoming the deer in the headlights.

“OK OK OK,” he said. “Lemme show you. Watch me…. OK?”

So… yeah. I watched him. He began by looking down at his feet for a few moments. Taking a couple of deep breaths. And then… whoa! His head snapped up so suddenly, I recoiled! His face was flushed. And his eyes? They were locked on me, and he was seething! And before I knew it, he’d started pacing, back and forth, in a rage that seemed just too great to contain, and needed more damn room!

Wham! He launched into a loud, raving tirade! He started going nuts right there in the library where you were only supposed to whisper! And even though yes, I realized intellectually that this was just a demonstration… I was feeling a scold stab of guilt anyway because emotionally… I couldn’t unconvince myself that it was really me personally he was raging at because he’d simply just had it with me and my little chicken-shit hesitation! I mean, Jesus, I was watching a temper tantrum growing right before my eyes! An all-out Jeckyll and Hyde!

And when he was finished (well, whenever he was finished), the only proof that I’d ever even been there was a dog-eared script I’d left dropped on the library floor and the click of the door closing behind me!

Little Elvis had fled the building! And from now on, Little Elvis was gonna be content spending the rest of his spineless little life cowering somewhere off in the shadows where it’s gonna be safe…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So. Guess what happens. Five-plus years later and drenched in nervous perspiration, I’m seated before a school superintendent, having just inked the very first contract of my future thirty-four-year high school English-teaching career life.

Wow. Quite daunting for little ol’ shrinking-violet me; however it’s done and dusted. I heave a big sigh of relief. I’m rich, for cryin’ out loud. I’m making $5,618 bucks a year! I’m gonna buy me a new car!

But… as the super is shaking my hand, sealing the deal as it were, he hits me with this: “So. You’ll be teaching four English classes, two speech classes, and taking over as the new dramatics coach. Again, welcome aboard!”

“Excuse me?” My blood is running cold! “What was that?”

“I said, ‘Welcome aboard…’”

“No. Not that. ‘Dramatics coach?’”

“Yes. And congratulations.”

“Oops. Uh-oh! Wait wait wait. Uhmmm, look, I’m sorry. I thought I was just signing on to teach English. Right? I mean… OK, honestly? See, I’ve never even been in a play in my life. I’ve hardly ever even been to any plays. I mean, I don’t know the first thing about dramatics. So… I guess what I’m saying is… I don’t think I can possibly…”

“And yet…” and here he’s studying me over the top of his glasses, “you just signed a contract agreeing to be doing exactly that.”

I do the old double-take here. “What? I did?”

And while my eyes crazily careen down through the words and lines and paragraphs on the top page lying before me, I hear him say, and with an ice-cold, razor-sharp edge… “I must say… this is odd, because I definitely thought you’d just told me… that you wanted to teach here this year…”

Yikes!

(If I’d had any of my wits about me, and any amount of courage at all (which I hadn’t), I suppose I could have told him, “Why no. Says here I just signed up for ‘DRAMAGICS,’ whatever the hell THAT is.” Truth is, though, I was so nervous I’d missed the misspelling and only right now just noticed it.)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Long story short? I did “become” the dramatics “director.”

I lucked out somewhat, though. I inherited a student army of thespians known as The Footlights Club.

And more fortunately, those kids, unlike moi, really knew what they were doing, thank God.

So, throughout that year I ended up surviving co-directing one syrupy, patriotic, three-act play titled This Is My Country, which gave me two or three heart attacks on a weekly basis;

“directing” one two-act comedy (ditto on the heart attacks); and then “directing” three one-act plays, one of which would be required to compete in the Maine State Principals’ Associations Area One-Act Play contest. For that one, I chose a stodgy, dry, classic British drama titled “The Rocking-Horse Winner” by D. H. Lawrence. It was a clever little thing.

But get this, and wouldn’t you just know it— somehow (much to my chagrin) the damn thing actually won!

For me, this meant two more long weeks of rehearsals, and then a bus-trip over to Bowdoin College for the State level competition where, thankfully, our play earned nothing more than an Honorable Mention.

And by the way… the administration was oddly flabbergasted by the surprise of us winning. It was like… they didn’t know how to take the news. The school had apparently never ever won at the drama competition before and, being so totally baseball, basketball, football, wrestling, and golf oriented, it had apparently never even occurred to them that such an event might conceivably be a thing. I mean… it was almost as if I’d done something wrong. You know, like… nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

So you see, this fiasco turned out to be one of what I call the many “successful-failure stories” of my life. I’ve had a slew of them. I mean, look: without even a stinkin’ clue as to what I was doing, I came out of it a first-time winner. Not that coming out of it a winner was what I wanted, mind you. All I wanted was for it just to be over. But no. Beginner’s luck. Now I had to keep on having rehearsals every day until it was time, two weeks later, to load up the bus and take the show on the road to Bowdoin College for the States..

Why ME?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Anyway, I couldn’t wait to bail on that town after only a year (for tons of reasons). And I immediately lucked out, landing a position at a school that not only had an amazingly successful drama program already in place, but one that was manned by a simply incredible drama director. Phew! And so, for the decade I spent there, I was able to just sit back and enjoy his (not my) productions from the comfort and safety of an audience seat, right where I wanted to be. It was great. Ten years without having to “direct” a single play. I was living the dream.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

But after that, I ended up moving back to my old hometown. Took an English-teaching slot at my old alma mater, Foxcroft Academy. It felt good to be home. Yeah, I did have duties of course. I ended up being the advisor of the school newspaper for one thing. But as long as it wasn’t coaching drama, that was OK with me…

But before long, alas… the need for a high school drama coach once more raised its ugly head and began looming over me. And I was not happy about that. I sure as hell didn’t want it. That was the last thing I wanted, my mantra being, Let somebody else do it! I tried fighting off the pressures the administrative mafia was putting on me, using any and all the excuses I could come up with.

I mean sure, I get it, the headmaster didn’t realize that, deep down inside, I was that same, mousey-little, neurotic, post-traumatic-stress-disordered ‘high school freshman’ who’d once actually run for his life from the library of this very same school! I mean… I guess I looked like a normal human being and all.

Anyway, they finally got me box-canyoned-in between a rock and a hard place. I caved.

But you can’t imagine not only the cruel irony, but the stress of being the so pathologically self-conscious, stage-frightened, shrinking violet who’d never even been in (could never have been in) a frickin’ play in his whole damned lifetime! Finding myself back living in the same nightmare all over again? The nightmare of being lashed to the helm of the Good Ship Foxcroft Drama Club? The nightmare of the large crowds. Moms and dads and their families! School board members and (shudder!) administrators! Colleagues! And, I dunno, just… random people walking right in off the street. And to do what? Gawk at me and my pathetic little productions with their cold, glassy, and judgmental Medusa stares!

And me backstage, sweating it out with… What if one or more of my kids suddenly gets a lethal case of stage fright (like I would have) and just freezes right up in place? What could I do then?! How could I ever help them?! Or… What if my slapped-together little “opuses” happens to turn out really really bad?! I’m talkin’ a major flop! I’m talkin’ tanked! I’m talkin’… stink, stank, stunk here! What then?

Talk about feeling naked! You know, if anyone ever decided to make a biographical movie of my early drama-director life, they’d hafta steal Don frickin’ Knotts out from under The Andy Griffith Show to play me.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

OK, so obviously one of my standard drama duties was again going to include co-directing the annual musical, like before. I had no idea then it then, but we were destined to eventually pull off Fiddler on the Roof, The Music Man, Oklahoma, Carousel, and Guys and Dolls, before I was through. And again, my task would only be to handle all the speaking parts (as opposed to the choral). But I was fortunate there, as the musical director was more way than competent as the real guy at the helm, so each one of those plays were going to come off a success with, or without, me.

And on top of that, I was also expected to choose and direct either a two- or 3-act drama, plus the usual two or three one-act plays, one of which would again be expected to compete in the Maine State Principal’s One-Act Play competition.

So there I was once, a decade later and once again, wallowing in the same utter dysfunction again as did Catch-22’s lost soul, Major Major Major Major…

Long story short, I just had to make myself put my big-boy pants on, bite the bullet, and man-up. Just get on with it. Despite the fact that things would, and did, go wrong sometimes, of course. Well… actually, practically all the time.

Oh, I’ve got lots of war stories. Stories that’d make you cringe. But, we’ve only got time for one here. Maybe if I can pull off a Part II, I can torture you with two or three more. But anyway, here goes:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

One of the one-act plays I selected very early on was “The Zoo Story” by Edward Albee.

I chose that one because (A) lazy me back then, there are only two characters in it (easier to get two kids to show up for practices at the same time), (B) it required only a minimal set, simply a single park bench (easy peasey), and (C) I wanted to do something a little avant-garde and “relevant” (I mean jeez, Albee wrote the shocker-classic Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, didn’t he. So by going with this one, I suppose I was sorta praying that this particular play might just make me look… (alright, dream on) somewhat cool, probably.

The play is a little existential slice of the Theater of the Absurd… and dark. Right up my alley.

So this very odd duck of a play was to be performed for two nights (thank God, not three!). It ends with the two characters getting into a nasty argument wherein one of them whips out a switchblade knife. And during the ensuing tussle, one of the guys gets stabbed in the abdomen and dies. (See? Dark. I know.)

So the thing obviously was… I needed to procure a switchblade. But from where? They were illegal.

Well as fate would have it, I’d been to Boston a couple of times as a kid. And each time I’d gone, I’d made sure to visit the rare and wondrous, Ray Bradburian emporium, Jack’s Joke Shop. Which is where I ended up blowing most of my vacation money, both times.

That store was a mid-1960s preadolescent boy’s dream! It stocked every thinkable novelty imaginable! You know, the realistic looking fake ice-cube (with the housefly frozen in the center) to casually drop into somebody’s ice tea glass! The fake boutonniere with the flower designed to ‘squirt-gun’ water right into the faces of anyone you could con into trying to give it a sniff! Professionally marked cards to cheat your friends with!! Electric joy-buzzers! Those very realistic-looking ‘puke pads’ to drop on somebody’s clean carpet! Itch powder! And something else. Some very realistic looking “switchblades,” only instead of an actual blade, it was a little steel, fine-toothed comb that would pop out of them when you pushed the button on the handle. That seemed to be just the ticket! I’m tellin’ ya, that place was a play-props heaven.

And luckily, I discovered they still had those switchblade-combs for sale. Two types, actually: the chintzy inexpensive ones, where the comb would ‘jack-knife ‘out from the side,

and the much more expensive model where the comb would telescope forward right out of the handle. And OK, the latter seemed just the ticket. I was craving realism. For with that one, you could (1) after menacingly brandishing the knife under the stage lights, keeping it deceptively moving so that the lights flashing off the steel would not allow the audience to focus on it sufficiently to see that it was actually just a comb), (2) craftily push and hold the release button which acted like a clutch, and then (3) ram your guy right in the guts with it, thereby ‘sending’ the “lethal blade” right back up inside the hollow handle (presto change-o!) instead of burying it deep into the ‘victim’s’ dramatic intestines! At which point the ‘victim,’ feigning obvious ‘pain,’ would conveniently grab and hold the handle in place there (to make it appear embedded, but more honestly to keep the little contraption from [boing!] accidentally launching itself (on its tightly-coiled spring) right off his belly and flying right into the first row of the audience, possibly poking someone’s eye out!

So anyway, we had our little “switch-comb” to practice with for two whole weeks, my two of actors going through the numbers (1,2, and 3) over and over, in slow-motion at first, and then speeding up the action. Simple choreography.

(And by the way, let me just say that that was one of the few things that was actually turning out to be fun about play preparation: playing with fun props. Even for me. Oh, the little boy in me…).

Consequently, the switchblade scene, then, was becoming the least of my worries. What was keeping me up nights was the nightmare what-if-specter of one or both of my actors forgetting his lines on stage! I mean, I’d have nineteen nervous breakdowns if I were an actor and that happened to me! But jeez, just what the hell does one do if and when that horror ever goes down? Other than simply throwing in the towel, looking out at your audience, and saying, “Hey, we’re sorry, but at this point, the show will not go on. You may all collect your money back over at the ticket table at this time. Thank you. Thank you all for coming…”?

No. Somehow I had to come up with a way to insure that I could bail my kids out and not leave them (and me) in the lurch if they did forget their lines. And the best thing I could come up with was… just lying on my belly on the stage floor, stage-left, just barely out of sight of the audience behind the edge of the curtain with script in hand, and me on hair-trigger-tenterhooks staying at-the-ready to hiss their forgotten lines out to them.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“The Zoo Story,” Opening Night…

Here’s a little basic, bare-bones synopsis of “The Zoo Story”:

PETER, a publishing executive in tweeds, wearing horn-rimmed glasses, smoking a pipe, and reading a book, is seated on the park bench near the zoo. Then, JERRY enters stage-right, charging right up to the bench and insinuating himself into Peter’s serenity by first beginning to tell Peter a story about his visit to the zoo, and eventually starting to ask Peter some unwanted personal questions about his life. Before long, things between them go downhill. Jerry wants Peter to move over and give him room to sit, which Peter prefers not to do. Jerry, just the kind of stranger you don’t want to meet alone, by yourself, begins poking Peter, demanding he move over. When that gets no results, Jerry begins punching Peter harder, telling him he now wants the entire bench for himself. And finally, Jerry just outright challenges Peter to a fight. Peter finally agrees to fight Jerry. Jerry pulls out a switchblade, and throws it at Peter’s feet, to give Peter a fighting chance. When Peter picks up the knife in a defensive position, Jerry rushes him— thereby impaling himself on his own knife. Jerry staggers, the knife embedded in him, and falls onto the bench. After a brief exchange of bizarre words from Jerry, Peter grabs his book and runs off screaming “OH MY GOD!” as Jerry dies on the bench.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So OK, it’s a thirty-minute play approximately, but it’s rapidly drawing down to the climax now. Thankfully, not a single line has been forgotten. Plus the play has gone very well so far. You can’t imagine the relief I’m feeling.

And as the end draws near, I begin doing a little play-by-play, in my head:

OK. Here it comes! The fight scene.

Good! They’re tussling!

And voila! Jerry pulls Jack’s-Joke-Shop knife-comb out of his pocket! Snick! Out flicks the blade! Perfect!

He drops it intentionally at Peter’s feet as the initiative for Peter to grab it up.

Now, with Peter holding the blade defensively, Jerry charges him, and impales himself on it!

…WHOA there!

They freeze! And remain frozen, as in a dramatic tableau, for six, maybe seven, long and silent seconds!! Longer than in our rehearsals!

And you can hear a pin drop in the gym!

It’s genius! So… why didn’t I think of this?

And then they fall apart, with Peter fleeing off-stage bellowing his final line, “Oh… my… God!“

And Jerry, now bleeding to death on the bench, delivers his last:

“Could I have planned all this?

“No… no, I couldn’t have.

“But… I think I did.”

Long silence…

He slumps.

(dies)

La Fin.

Curtains starting to close!

THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE FROM THE AUDIENCE!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Wow. While I, so deliriously relieved and crazy with emotion now that everything’s gone off without a hitch, have struggled myself dizzily up onto my feet, I see Peter marching toward me across the stage.

“My GOD! Wonderful job!” I exclaim. “You nailed it! Flawless, you guys! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better death scene. You… outdid yourselves! Congratulations!”

But something’s off. Standing before me now, in place, Peter isn’t smiling. No, that’s an understatement. His face is a mask of horror…

And Jerry, still collapsed over on the bench, is positively glaring up at me. But… why? What is it I’m missing here? “What?!”

Looking down at Jerry, I see that he’s slowly beginning to hike up the front of his shirt.

“Well… I’m confused. I mean, what the hell, guys…? You’re scaring me here!”

But then I see it!

Oh my God!

Jerry has two navels!

No, of course he doesn’t have two navels. The “navel”-navel, the one a little higher up and off to the right of his real one, is not a navel at all. It’s… a dent! A deep… dent in his belly! A hot, reddening, sore-looking, deep, little dent!

“Oh my!” I say.

The stage crew is shouting, “Curtain call, you two! C’mon! Let’s go!”

Peter leans in closer to the both of us, and moans, “Jeez! I’m SO, SO sorry!! My God, I just… I panicked! My thumb just… slipped right over the button, Mr. Lyford!! It slipped! And I didn’t manage to get it pushed down in… the button… so…”

“Curtain call! Come on!”

I’m thinking, Omigod, as the two back away, turn, and head over to center stage. The curtain fully opened now, they take their bows, soaking up the applause and whistles. Stupidly, I even get called out to join in.

But after the curtain closes, I see Peter picking up the switchblade from the floor. “You got a replacement for tomorrow night?” he asks, handing it over to me. Jerry joins us from behind.

“Whatta you mean?”

“I mean this,” Jerry whispers, nodding down at it.

Oh jeez, the blade is still locked in the ‘out’ position. And the once proud and straight little comb is now bent, snaked into what I can only describe as three wide little S-curves!

Peter’s face is a mask of horror. “I’m sorry,” he whines. “So sorry. I panicked and froze! My thumb slipped off the damn button! It… It never collapsed back in! It stayed locked in place! I pretty much stabbed him, Mr. L…”

“Pretty much?” Jerry growls. “I mean… look at my stomach!”

“You can’t believe how sorry I am!”

I’m studying Jerry’s wound. “God, that looks painful!”

“Ya think?!“

And here I’d thought all along that the thing was made of steel. Thank God it wasn’t!

“Wow. Well, at least there’s no blood. But damn, no wonder it looked so real out there! You think you’re gonna be OK?”

“I guess. It stings like hell though.”

“Look, I mean it! I’m so sorry!“

“Yeah, I heard you the first time.”

I shake my head, looking at my crumpled prop. “And that’s a big No on a back-up knife,” I say. “I wish to hell I’d bought two, but…”

“So… what’ll we do about tomorrow night’s production,” Jerry asks. “How’s that gonna work?”

“I have no idea, guys. I have no idea whatsoever.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Next morning what I did do was rush the “knife” over to the shop, looking for any help I could get. “Can you put this in a vise or something,” I asked the shop teacher. “You know… straighten it out? Flatten it out somehow?”

The shop teacher scratched his chin, tsk-tsked over it, hmmm’d and hawed over it a bit and finally said, “I dunno. I guess we’ll find out.”

Well, they did manage to straighten the comb out… somewhat. But not nearly enough to get it to slide back and forth in and out of the handle. It was still too bent for that, alas. But you know what they say… “The show must go on.”

Next night, as I’d instructed, Jerry pulled the pathetic, no-longer-a-switchblade “knife” out of his back pocket and kept it in motion all the time under the lights, us hoping nobody would notice what it was really looking like. I really missed that dramatic, switchblade SNICK! from the night before though.

But we got through the play. And from all the accolades, we were pretty much a success. There was a larger teenage crowd on the second night. I guess that’s because the word got out in school that there was a pretty realistic, friggin’ knife fight in it. Something probably never seen in an Academy play before.

I believe we even broke even, or better, on admission fees. That, in itself, was seen as remarkable…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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SCIENCE FICTION, EUGENE, AND ME, 1974

These days I often find myself reminiscing about the many, many past English class students that once occupied very big, though fleeting, parts in my past life… and hey, I’ve had a lot of high school English kids in my lifetime to reminisce over.

I mean, consider for a moment the thirty-four years wherein I averaged approximately five or six different English classes a day, give or take a study hall or two. And the usual enrollment per class size was somewhere between fifteen and thirty kids. But right here, for our purposes of keeping this diagram simple only, let’s go with fifteen, rather than the actual average of twenty-five.

MR. LYFORD’S ENGLISH CLASS VENN DIAGRAM

**THE *ACTUAL* AVERAGE IS 25 STUDENTS.**
(I was simply too lazy to try to squeeze
*25 of those* little circles in here. *SORRY…*)

Fifteen small circles (each depicting one of my kids) plus the slightly larger one with my name in it, and all of us intersecting the big mother-ship-circle representing that particular assigned English class.

So if you then go ahead and factor in all the classes I was teaching each day over those thirty-four years (6 classes/day x 34 years), that’s 204 classes. (More actually, since I was teaching different semester-, and sometimes quarter-classes, but we’ll go with 204.) So, multiplying those 204 by the approximately twenty-five kids per class, and you’ll come up with 5,100 lifetime students… at the very least.

It boggles the mind…

But see, because this blog is pretty much driven by all the little memory-sugarplums I’ve still got still dancing around in my head after all these years (like clouds in my coffee, clouds in my coffee… me, so vain I probably think this blog is about me), I find myself paying tribute to the stand-out ones, those few of the 5,100 kids who really left their marks on me, for one reason of another.

Like that Wes I recently wrote about. You remember, the little wise-ass who hilariously taped a hasty one-inch margin to each side of his sloppily-written essay in order to checkmate my One-Inch-Margin Rule that, if not met, required a full re-write…

… or little Danny, the kid who took a little piece of my heart along with him when he disappeared into the vast bowels of the Maine Juvenile Corrections Center.

Those being just two of the hundreds of freshman, sophomore, junior, or senior boys’ and girls’ faces that remain stacked in my memory like ready-to-play 45 rpm hits in some dime-a-play, 3-plays-for-a-quarter jukebox from the 60s and 70s. I mean, so many to choose from. A goldmine of flashbacks and reminiscences…

Today however, the one I’m about to share with you involves a pretty odd-duck case of classroom management. So welcome to yet another true story, configured here as The Strange Venn Diagram of…

But that’ll come a little further down the line. First… to digress purposely for a moment, in order to give you some introductory info…

It was in 1975, if I remember correctly, that we (Mexico High School’s 5-teacher English department) turned our standard English curriculum on its head. The 1970s was a decade of great innovation and creativity in education, all around the state and the country. A lot of experimental approaches were being tried. And we were no exception.

Basically what we did is create a suite of quarter- and semester- courses, the majority of which were electives. Our general goal was to kill two birds with one stone: (1) help to broaden the students’ knowledge of the world around them in a number of high-interest topical areas, and (2) promote a higher interest in well-crafted literature (always a good thing).

I can’t remember how many new courses we created, but it was quite impressive. Naturally we had to remain somewhat conservative at the same time in order to maintain scholastic credibility. Therefore, there were a few semester-length courses that were not electives— one, for instance, a required full-semester course of Grammar, Composition, and Usage, along with a couple of other required courses (for the college prep kids) on American or British literature (Shakespeare included of course). All of the courses were tweaked for kids in General English, General College Prep, and Advanced.

This big change was to inject some much-needed excitement into the curriculum. Imagine, instead of simply enrolling in plain old boring English I, II, III, and IV over your four-year high school career (like everyone before you had been doing for a hundred and fifty years), now you’d have some possible elective options: Psychology in Literature, Intro to Journalism, Native American Studies Through Literature, Creative Writing, Science Fiction, Advertising and Propaganda, Literature of the American Wild West, Sports in Literature, Literature of War, etc. It was an invigorating time for us teachers as well, despite the work involved in creating the new curriculum.

In the end, the particular slate of courses I’d drawn (the luck of the draw) included Creative Writing, which was wonderful for me, that being right up my alley— my ace of hearts.

However there was another one that didn’t thrill me at all: Sports in Literature. At first, that is.

I was hoping one of my colleagues would snarf that one up but no— I drew that Old Maid card. I mean, what in the world was I supposed to do with the Literature of Sports? I couldn’t recall reading any sports lit since 5^th grade. And sure, I’d been somewhat of a jock (played Little League in junior high, basketball in junior high and high school, and run the mile in high school track). But… Sports Literature? I was never a sports lit reader.

Fortunately we had the entire summer vacation to prepare and bone up our new courses before school reopened in the fall. And secondly, being the English Department Chairman, I had one pretty helpful advantage: I was free to browse through any number of publishers’ catalogs and order myself free comp-copies galore, for perusal. They couldn’t wait to send me free copies, hoping I’d order a few complete sets (which I did).

Anyway, shortly into my catalogs searches, I came across this little gem: Great Sports Reporting (1970), an anthology of sports essays that had previously been published in the New York Times.

Surprise, surprise: these writings, which were primarily by scholarly celebrities from many walks of life, turned out to be highly cerebral. And not only did I unexpectedly end up liking that little book (a lot), I ordered a full set right away. And I have to say it: just like every other thing that’s serendipitously, out of the blue, come rolling down the pike in my direction, that book also changed my life just a tad.

For instance, as a result of reading one particular chapter, a recap of one of the most famous boxing matches in history known as “The Long Count,”

(the one between Jack Dempsey, “The Manassa Mauler,”

and the against-all-odds underdog Gene Tunny, “The Fighting Marine” [Sept. 22, 1927]), I became the most helplessly,

hopelessly, stupidly pathetic champion of any underdog on the planet, factual or fiction. See, the hook that snagged little-ol’-English-teacher-me from the get-go was that it turned out Gene Tunny was practically being laughed out of the ring beforehand by pretty much the entire boxing world. Why? Because some reporter had spotted him, during some down-time at his training camp, sitting on a bench and reading (wait for it…) a Shakespearean play! Next day, that little nugget got splashed all over the sports pages, and right away Tunny became a virtual laughing-stock among the odds-makers. I mean, who was going to bet on some namby-pamby Shakespeare lover stepping into the ring with a “killer” like Dempsey, “The Most Vicious Heavyweight in Boxing History”, whose motto was “I can’t sing and I can’t dance, but I can lick any SOB in the house.” Dempsey scoring the KO was an obvious foregone conclusion.

And sure enough, in the seventh round, (this from Wikipedia)— “With Tunny trapped against the ropes… Dempsey unleashed a combination of punches that floored the champion. Two rights and two lefts landed on Tunny’s chin and staggered him, and four more punches put him on the canvas. Referee Dave Barry ordered Dempsey into a neutral corner to no avail; but Dempsey remained standing over Tunny.”

See, the savage Dempsey was known for standing right over his downed opponents, the easier to finish them off as soon as they tried to get to their feet. But by standing right there and refusing to go to his neutral corner, the ref’s 10-count was delayed. This gave the dizzy Tunny the few extra seconds he needed to recover. And before the next round was over, Tunny had ended up flooring Dempsey.

And there it was. I was hooked on underdogs. For life. Meaning I was going to end up in a horrific lifetime of one disappointment after another. Because that famous “Long Count” bout was a 100% real-life Rocky Balboa story. It was amazing. But consequently, I was now suckered into wasting decades of my life rooting for, and ridiculously expecting, the Red Sox to finally break the infamous Curse of the Bambino! Which, yeah, they finally did. In 2004! But lest we forget, that particular curse had been crushing the BoSox ever since 1918!!!!!

Alas, to this day I’m still always the hopeless romantic going for the underdog. I just can’t help it. To quote Shakespeare’s Romeo, “I am fortune’s fool!”

So, if by chance you happen to be an underdog, please let me know and I’ll be rooting for you right to the bitter end.

But so much for Sports in Literature.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Another class I got assigned was a semester-length course, Science Fiction. And I was feeling great about that one. Smug, even. I mean hell, I’d read a ton of the sci-fi classics as a kid, hadn’t I. So, no sweat. It meant I wouldn’t have to be wearing myself out preparing for it. I was already prepared. I could practically see the entire syllabus, done and dusted, in my mind. So… of course I went right on ahead and ordered sets of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mister Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, and From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne.

Four of my favorites. Easy Peasey. And I can’t tell you what a relief it was to have at least one class plan already bagged and tagged as quickly as that. I still had a lot of paperwork to do on it, statement of goals, etc. but the syllabus had practically written itself and, before I knew it, I was neck deep in formulating the next one on my slate-of-courses list.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

And then, alas, September had come. And there I was, back in the classroom, meeting and greeting my new students. And man, there’s always just something that feels so darned positive and optimistic about those early days, starting the process all over again, launching into a fresh start.

Creative writing turned out to be rather a hit (well, not for everybody of course, as some had just enrolled in it because there was an empty slot in their schedules needing to be filled) because the majority of the kids who had signed on really wanted to write their little hearts out. Which made my job easy.

Sports lit. was also doing well— mostly boys, but the three girls didn’t seem to mind being outnumbered amid all that letter-sweater testosterone.

Also I was particularly proud of my Advertising and Propaganda class since I’d thought that one up right from scratch. It was turning out to be so relevant, plus we had a great textbook to go with it. And there were so many honest-to-God fun projects to keep us busy.

Of course we had to have that same ol’ same old Grammar and Composition course. (yawn)

But Science Fiction held a surprise for me, and not in a good way either. I mean, it was going OK but… just OK, for some reason. Ironically, since that was the one I was so excited about, passionate about really, it was taking a lot of the wind out of my sails that it seemed to be coming across to the kids as a bit of a drag. I mean sure, they’d rather be taking Science Fiction than Grammar and Comp, so they really didn’t mind all that much I guess, but I’d expected more of a spark there.

And then…

…on top of that…

Something unsettling happened in that class by the end of the second week.

It was the weirdest thing. The end-of-class bell had just rung and the kids were herding themselves out into the hall. Yay. T.G.I.F. !

But…

Suddenly I spied a slip of paper, folded in half, lying on my desk, looking just a bit conspicuous. I didn’t think it had been there, last time I’d looked. Had someone left me a note? Me? But if so, why?

So… I picked it up, unfolded it, and…

What the…?

“D+” was all it said.

HUH…?

Wait, was somebody… grading me? Grading me… and grading me anonymously? How dare they?! I mean, what the hell?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So I went home that weekend with the note squirreled away in my pocket and the D+ stuck in my craw. I was irked, man. I mean, somebody was saying what, that I didn’t know what I was talking about? Or that I was boring?

Well hell… if there was one thing I wasn’t, it was boring. That much was clear. I mean, I was in my fifth year teaching, and nobody had come out to me with… “boring.”

But maybe the D+ wasn’t for “boring”…

But if it was for something else, then what? I started going over and over that class in my head. What had gone wrong? Were my jokes too corny? (Was it my clever puns? No, I didn’t think so. Puns are supposed to be lame; that’s the point.) No, I was pretty confident that I possessed what I was pretty sure was a healthy sense of humor. So that couldn’t have been it. Right?

But maybe it wasn’t something that had happened in that one particular class? Maybe the day before? Or maybe the whole goddamn week?

Jeez, I felt so… violated, you know? I mean there I was, just doing my job (and doing it professionally, I might add), and what? Some smart-ass, hotshot, anonymous, little sniper of a Lee Harvey Oswald puts the crosshairs on my back and squeezes off a round? And for no discernible reason I could come up with? Seriously?

Hey, who was the teacher here anyway? Me! I was the one doing the grading, not the one on the receiving end. Damnit though… that D+ was fast becoming an insidious little worm curled up in my brain and nibbling away at it.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So… I began the class on Monday by doing something a little weird, a little out of the ordinary. Totally silent, I strolled mysteriously up and down each aisle, stopping for a moment and giving each and every face what I hoped was some pretty damn daunting eye-contact. And when the kids asked, “What’s up?” all they got from me was a business-like, but-almost-Cheshire-Cat smile. I had no idea what I was expecting from doing that. I guess I just wanted to spook whoever it was that had left me the note. And of course I got no indication whatsoever that any of my kids were spooked.

Actually, it left me feeling felt quite ridiculous and embarrassed after finally returning to the front of the room to start the class. I mean, who did I think I was? Hercule Poirot?

But long story short: I got no note on my desk that period. So: perhaps my mysterious little play-acting had spooked somebody after all. Yay, me!

But not so fast. When I returned to my room after lunch, there it was! A second poison-penned note. And all that was written on this one was “Really?” and, below that, simply a “D.” Jeez!

So… The Game was afoot, was it…?

OK. But I knew one thing: I was gonna catch the little so-and-so! No doubt about it! And when I did? Then what? What the hell was I gonna do? Well, the plan both my id and ego were pushing for was wringing somebody’s wise-ass little neck and flunking the little bugger right out of existence! It looked good on paper but, fortunately, my pansy-ass superego butted in, pulled rank, and overruled their plot: No, THAT’S not going to happen. We’re better than that. We’re professionals now. There’s got to be a more acceptable Plan B.

I can tell you one thing though. My college Methods of Teaching: Classroom Management textbook was turning out to be of no help whatsoever. I was on my own.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Turned out The Game wasn’t destined to last long at all. At the end of class two days later, just after the end-of-period bell rang and the kids were forming their usual bottle-neck traffic-jam in the doorway, he (yeah, it turned out to be a guy) simply stopped by my desk on his way out and, with a taunting smile, just as proud as you please, planted a new one on my desk. Right there in front of me! And then he was gone. But my God, it had turned out to be the last person in the class I would’ve expected! The quiet one. The loner. The scholarly namby-pamby nerd with the over-sized glasses…

So… who the hell WAS this guy?

His name was Eugene.

And Jeez! You kidding me? A “D-frickin’-MINUS!”?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

OK, so I caught up with the kid in the cafeteria at noon and loomed over him at his table for an ominous mafia-moment before speaking.

“So… I’m wondering if you might, you know, want to stop by my room right after school this afternoon. I’m thinking we probably have some things we both might want to say to each other. Am I right?”

Smiling almost condescendingly while pushing his glasses further up on the bridge of his nose with an index finger, (the better to observe me for the moment, and leaving me feeling uncomfortably like some peculiar biological specimen he had just happily discovered), “Of course,” he said. His voice was soft, cucumber cool.

Of course? I don’t know what I’d imagined but… I guess I was expecting more than two simple words. And now there he was sitting, politely waiting for any reply I might care to make. Like, the ball was in my court. And I was finding myself suddenly feeling somewhat… what, out of my depth, somehow? A little intimidated? Like I was in the presence of… well… I-didn’t-know-what?

Yes, I was the teacher of course, and he was the student. But honestly? “Teacher?” “Student?” Somehow the accepted connotation of those two now-seemingly relativistic tags were starting to feel a little slippery, getting somewhat emotionally blurred in my head. I didn’t totally feel I was standing on solid ground.

So… what could I say in response?

“Of course,” I replied, sharply turning on my heel and marching back out of the caf toward the safety of my room where I would spend the rest of the afternoon trying to concoct some/any workable plan to try to navigate myself through the uncharted territory

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So OK. 2:45 pm…

“Hey, Eugene. Yeah, come in, come on in. Have a seat…”

Me, seated in one of the student desks now, gesturing him toward the other waiting student desk, the one I’ve dragged around to be facing mine.

Still smiling pleasantly, he sits. “Thank you.”

And after a moment, I begin. “Well, this feels a bit awkward,”

“Hmmm.”

“Yes. Just a tad. You?”

He nods. “A tad.”

“So…” I let out a long sigh. “Where to begin? Where. To. Begin?”

His smile remains. I sense a little curiosity going on in there. But calm. Comfortable in his own skin. Unlike me. And seemingly content in the wait-and-see stance he’s adopted. I catch a little twinkle in his eye. I believe he’s enjoying my discomfort.

“OK then. Let’s see. Two questions…”

“Alright.” He’s nodding for me to go ahead.

I take in a deep breath. Let it out.

“Yes. Number one: Why, sir, is it that I find myself doing so poorly in your class…?”

OK, that took him by surprise. A little double-take there.

“And number two: How can I up my grade, not only to passing, but to at least a solid B-? Is there any make-up work I might do?”

This scores me a soft, happy, little, inner-Eugene chuckle.

“Hah! Didn’t expect that. Didja.”

“Hmmm,” he says, shrugging his shoulders, and shaking his head no, with a little smirk.

“So OK. Let’s get on with it. What’s going on with you? With us?”

Looking me right in the eye, he says a single word: “Content.”

Very economical with his words, this one.

“Content? And by that, you mean…?”

He frowns. “OK, how do I say this…? Alright: Science Fiction is alive and well. And by that, I guess what I’m telling you is that it didn’t simply drop dead at the end of the 19^th century.”

“Begging your pardon?”

“Sci-fi didn’t die back in the 1800’s, right after Jules Verne and H. G. Wells retired. OK? It’s been going on ever since. It just evolved, just as any living thing does eventually. It’s still alive and well right now. And guess what: still evolving. Even as we speak.”

“Uhhmm, O… K?? Your point being…?”

“Being that those four books you’ve listed in the syllabus were, sure, all hot-off-the-press back when Mark Twain was alive. And being that they’ve all been replaced a thousand times over since then.”

“Well… people still read them though. Don’t they?” I’d decided to play hardball.

“Sure. Kids stuck in sci-fi classes. But surprise. Other people? They’re reading and enjoying the new stuff. Ever hear of Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury?”.

“Yeah, I’ve heard of them. But back to the classics. They’re still making movies out of’em, you know. Movies that people buy tickets to go to and watch’em.”

“Really? When’s the last time you bought a ticket to The Invisible Man?”

“Well… OK… yeah. But it doesn’t seem all that long ago I went to see War of the Worlds...”

“Well guess what. They’re also making movies out of brand new sci-fi as well. Ever hear of 2001: A Space Odyssey?”

“Oh yeah. I actually saw it. About four… maybe five years ago.”

“Really? Good for you. What’d you think of it, by the way?”

“”Uhmm… interesting. Long though, that’s for sure. Kinda difficult to understand. Especially the ending of it. And that computer in it…?”

“The HAL 9000. Yeah.”

“Scared the bejesus out of me.”

He shakes his head. “Maybe 2001 is difficult to understand because it’s just trying to get you to think. To broaden your mind a little. Just saying. Oh, and by the way. Have you seen Soylent Green? Just came out.”

“WHAT green?”

“Soylent Green.”

“I have not. And what kind of a title’s that?”

“Go see it and find out. Stars Charlton Heston.”

“Oh. I know him at least. And I like him. Maybe I will.”

“It would be nice if you did, you know? Give yourself a chance to start boning up on some of the new stuff that’s out there. But hey, listen. Don’t get me wrong. I like the four books you chose. And respect them. It’s just that I read them… so long ago. When I was a kid. Along with The Invisible Man, Journey to the Center of the Earth… “

“Alright. I get it. But see, that’s you. I don’t get any inclination that the rest of the kids have.”

“OK. Fair enough. But that could very well be because you adults who end up teaching science fiction by simply fall back on your pasts, rely on the books that you had to read. The old books… that fulfilled their purpose back in the day, sure, a hundred or so years ago. But now, see, they’ve become quite a bit stale. Why? I dunno, maybe because the future they were writing about has already come and even gone. And I mean, come on! There’s no law against kids reading some good science fiction that’s been written in this century, is there?”

“No. Of course not. But… whatta you consider good science fiction? I mean, this is an English class still, after all. You’d have to have something very well-written. Something with some real literary merit and value. Right?”

“Well of course. But look. OK. Science fiction is my… thing, alright? It’s what I do. Sci-fi is my bailiwick, you know?”

“Bailiwick? Hmmm. Me thinks you have a pretty good vocabulary…”

“Thank you. I do. Of course I do. Because I read all the time. And … hey, getting back to what do I consider good, well-written, science fiction? I don’t suppose you’ve heard of The Andromeda Strain.”

“Uh… no. I haven’t.”

“By Michael Chrichton?”

“Nope.”

“Well… I feel so confident that… if I could just… get you to read… maybe only three or four chapters of it… (and they’re short) you’d understand where I’m coming from! There is good stuff out there. And if you did try reading it, you’d… agree with me. I know you would. And hey, I have a copy of it.”

At this point, the gears in my skull were starting to turn, although reluctantly. I said, “Well, I can tell you one thing. I’m really starting to feel bad for you.”

“Why is that?”

“Because it’s really going to be a long, boring eighteen weeks, isn’t it. For you, I mean. Being stuck in here every day. Listening to us going over stuff you’ve already been through before.”

He shrugs.

“And… that’s no good. That’s no where even near ideal. I really don’t want to do that to you. So… I’m thinking… maybe you and me could, I dunno, maybe strike a deal.”

“A deal. Which would be… what, exactly?”

“Well, you honestly appear to know a heck of a lot more about modern sci-fi than I do. I hafta admit that. So… how about this for a start? You lend me your copy of Andromeda Strain and I’ll tackle it. And if the first few chapters are as engaging as you make’em out to be, I’ll read the whole thing.”

“You do that and you’re going to like it. You really will.”

“I probably will. Promise to try anyway. And then… how about this? Part of your… on-going assignment will be to work out a syllabus for me.”

“For… you.”

“Well, a suggested reading list anyway. And not all at once. You could take your time at it, OK? On-going, as I said. You know, authors and titles you’d include if you were teaching this class. And… think of me as this class, OK? That’d be helpful to me.”

“Well. I could do that.”

“Oh, and another part I’m pretty sure you’d find tempting. Feel free to join in on any conversation we’re having, or not, (that’ll be up to you, OK?) but… other than that, you can use this period as your own personal, sci-fi, free-reading time. Only stipulation: you gotta hand in a written log after finishing each title. A little synopsis, perhaps. And you could come up with some kind of personal rating system. You know, one to five stars or whatever. And maybe compare or contrast that book or short story to others your already familiar with. Actually, you could do that, too, with ones you’ve already read prior to this. That’d also be very helpful to me.”

Eugene is slightly shaking his head, looking just a little smilingly bewildered.

“We could work out the finer details as we go. But… you do this, and it turns out you’re the sci-fi expert you’re claiming to be, then I’m willing to trade you an A+ for… well, you giving me an introductory education in the modern stuff in this genre. It does appear that you’re a resource I can, I should, use. And so then next semester, my next Science Fiction class will very likely be taking off in a whole new direction. A win-win situation. That’s what I guess I’m hoping. So. Whattaya say?”

“Well. I guess I have to say that’d be an offer I can’t refuse.”

“Hmmm. Sounds like you’ve recently seen The Godfather.”

“I have, as a matter of fact.”

We’re just sitting here now, eying each other tentatively…

“Eugene,” I finally say, “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

OK, YEAH, I DIDN’T ACTUALLY *SAY* THAT. I WAS JUST THINKING OF
*CASABLANCA JUST NOW…* **IS ALL**…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

MY SCIENCE FICTION YEARS

I’ve already stated that practically anything that has come barreling at me down the pike has tended to change my life, at least to some extent. Well, Eugene got his A+. And me? I got into modern science fiction. Big time. My reading of the then-modern sci-fi books and stories simply caught fire. And... as the first sentence in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 reads… “It was a pleasure to burn.”

I’m an obsessive-compulsive personality anyway, so when something catches my fancy, I go all in. Can’t help it. I mean, all my life I’ve been helplessly and hopelessly hooked rabidly on one hobby or another that temporarily (for five years or so) would completely takeover my life: ham radio, photography, motorcycling, trying to be a “poet,” and computer programing, to name some.

So thanks to Eugene, who turned out to be my dealer for the gateway drugs that are well-written science fiction stories, I became a real sci-fi addict overnight. First of all, I fell head over heels with Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain. Could hardly believe how fascinating it was.

I also latched onto a copy of 2001: A Space Odyssey and was so delighted to find that the book, by Arthur C. Clarke, explained the plot intricacies so much more understandably than the film had, that I didn’t have to lose any more sleep at night trying to figure it all out.

Hell, I remember one day I almost got run crossing the street in downtown Mexico because, jjust like some kid staring at his Medusa smart phone screen in 2024, I couldn’t pry my eyes out of the pages of Ray Bradbury’s Farhrenheit 451.

And one day I overheard Eugene speaking about “fanzines,” and I was like, What the hell’s a fanzine? Oh: it was a magazine for sci-fi fans. Next thing you knew, I was subscribed to OMNI, a very serious periodical that was half hard science and half science fiction. I was in sci-fi heaven.

It wasn’t long before I could see that along with the fiction in sci-fi, I was beginning to learn a decent amount of hard science as well, especially with the likes of Arthur C. Clarke’s works, of which I was reading a ton. So… in my five-to seven-year-long sci-fi reading marathon that ensued, the following wondrous authors’ names became the new sci-fi sugar plums dancing inside my addled brain: Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven, Robert Heinlein, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ray Bradbury, Ira Levin, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Frederik Pohl, Douglas Adams, Michael Crichton, Poul Anderson, Theodore Sturgeon, Fritz Leiber, Robert Silverberg, Frank Herbert, Philip K. Dick, Jack Finney, Roger Zelazny, and Alan Dean Foster. Yes, these are authors I still hold dear after all these years, as is the memory-catalog of my long-favorite titles, titles I find myself wishing I’d never read yet, so I could revisit the pleasures of diving into, and discovering, their worlds for the first time all over again: Rendezvous with Rama, Slaughter House-Five, Ringworld, The Mote in God’s Eye, The Foundation Trilogy, Dune, Flowers for Algernon, A Clockwork Orange, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Neutron Star, The Martian Chronicles, The Sirens of Titan, and On the Beach, and more along with the following six pictured below:

When 1977 rolled around sometime later, I was empowered by the administration to take my new first semester Science Fiction kids on a bused field trip to Lewiston to view Close Encounters of the Third Kind. And a couple of months later, I got to treat my second semester Sci-Fi class to a viewing of the very first Star Wars movie to ever come out. Yeah, I was a very popular guy that year teaching a very popular class.

Now here I am living in 2024 and, sure, I’ve cooled off on science fiction. I probably only read one a year, if that. I do watch quite a few science fiction flicks though. But I have to realize, and admit to myself, that all of the titles and authors’ names (which I was so nostalgically happy just to be typing them out in the paragraph above) have also pretty much faded away in popularity and blown like dead leaves away on the winds of time, every bit as much as The War of the Worlds and From the Earth to the Moon had already faded some fifty-something years ago.

As I have myself.

But again, I’ve had so many English class students in my career, a large number of which had a real impact on, and made a real difference in, my life. And my hope is that some might realize that their lives, their ‘stories,’ are still alive and well in my memories.

This particular post is a tip of the hat to one Eugene, a unique and courageous soul who dared to challenge me and, on top of that, teach me some things to boot. And even though Eugene stopped leaving those little report cards on my desk way back then, I like to think that by the end of it all, I too was pulling down some A+’s.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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SCIENCE FICTION, EUGENE, AND ME, 1974

MR. LYFORD’S ENGLISH CLASS VENN DIAGRAM

It boggles the mind…

… or little Danny, the kid who took a little piece of my heart along with him when he disappeared into the vast bowels of the Maine Juvenile Corrections Center.

Today however, the one I’m about to share with you involves a pretty odd-duck case of classroom management. So welcome to yet another true story, configured here as The Strange Venn Diagram of…

But that’ll come a little further down the line. First… to digress purposely for a moment, in order to give you some introductory info…

In the end, the particular slate of courses I’d drawn (the luck of the draw) included Creative Writing, which was wonderful for me, that being right up my alley— my ace of hearts.

However there was another one that didn’t thrill me at all: Sports in Literature. At first, that is.

Anyway, shortly into my catalogs searches, I came across this little gem: Great Sports Reporting (1970), an anthology of sports essays that had previously been published in the New York Times.

For instance, as a result of reading one particular chapter, a recap of one of the most famous boxing matches in history known as “The Long Count,”

(the one between Jack Dempsey, “The Manassa Mauler,”

and the against-all-odds underdog Gene Tunny, “The Fighting Marine” [Sept. 22, 1927]), I became the most helplessly,

Alas, to this day I’m still always the hopeless romantic going for the underdog. I just can’t help it. To quote Shakespeare’s Romeo, “I am fortune’s fool!”

So, if by chance you happen to be an underdog, please let me know and I’ll be rooting for you right to the bitter end.

But so much for Sports in Literature.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Sports lit. was also doing well— mostly boys, but the three girls didn’t seem to mind being outnumbered amid all that letter-sweater testosterone.

Of course we had to have that same ol’ same old Grammar and Composition course. (yawn)

And then…

…on top of that…

Something unsettling happened in that class by the end of the second week.

It was the weirdest thing. The end-of-class bell had just rung and the kids were herding themselves out into the hall. Yay. T.G.I.F. !

But…

So… I picked it up, unfolded it, and…

What the…?

“D+” was all it said.

HUH…?

Wait, was somebody… grading me? Grading me… and grading me anonymously? How dare they?! I mean, what the hell?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Well hell… if there was one thing I wasn’t, it was boring. That much was clear. I mean, I was in my fifth year teaching, and nobody had come out to me with… “boring.”

But maybe the D+ wasn’t for “boring”…

But maybe it wasn’t something that had happened in that one particular class? Maybe the day before? Or maybe the whole goddamn week?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Actually, it left me feeling felt quite ridiculous and embarrassed after finally returning to the front of the room to start the class. I mean, who did I think I was? Hercule Poirot?

But long story short: I got no note on my desk that period. So: perhaps my mysterious little play-acting had spooked somebody after all. Yay, me!

So… The Game was afoot, was it…?

I can tell you one thing though. My college Methods of Teaching: Classroom Management textbook was turning out to be of no help whatsoever. I was on my own.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So… who the hell WAS this guy?

His name was Eugene.

And Jeez! You kidding me? A “D-frickin’-MINUS!”?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~