The Student Who Taught Me

I met Ted the second semester I taught at a community college—just a few short years ago.

He sat in the front row. His legs were too long to fit under the ridiculously small 1970’s desks we had then. The chair seemed tiny in comparison to his frame. He was a former Marine, 49, six-foot-five, and the oldest student in the class. Ted was even a couple of years older than the newbie instructor--me.

When he first spoke up, challenging me on an essay we’d read for the English comp class, I thought, “What am I going to do with this dude?”

His voice boomed off the concrete block walls of the classroom.

The essay we’d read for class that day, “The Androgynous Man,” was pure crap, Ted informed me. I later learned he’d been a drill instructor among his many other Marine Corps positions, so no wonder his lungs seemed to dwarf my pitiful, newly developing “teacher voice.”

You know what? That essay was pure crap.

And Ted was going to be Trouble with a capital T.

I didn’t know what to think about Ted. I thought I was prepared to work with military, former-military, and military-dependent students, but no one had mentioned Ted. I found I was dumb as a mud-stump.

Ted even had to explain to me what “Sergeant Major,” his last rank before retirement, meant. Even though my dad was a WW II Marine Corps vet, two of my brothers were Marines, and one brother served in the Navy, enlisted men all, ranks were fuzzy to me.  I had no clue, until Ted, that S.M. is the highest rank an enlisted Marine can hold, and that the rank is not just another Sergeant.  Sergeant Majors are few and powerful. They can and do talk back to officers.

Because of his “no bullshit” attitude, it had taken Ted a bit longer than it might have to achieve this high rank, but he was justifiably proud of the achievement. Ted seemed an anomaly to me at first, a Marine to the bone, an American patriot in the tradition of the best fighting force in the world, who was not afraid to point out flaws in the Marine Corps. In spite of my personal experience with my father and brothers, who are as different in their political views as any other randomly chosen group of four men, I had the dumbass idea that many military men and women were generally brainwashed into unquestioning support of their service branch.

In the years since he was my student, thanks to Ted and many other individual students, I’ve come to realize that there is no such thing as a “military” person. Each man or woman who is serving or has served may have shared the same training, the same job title, the same rank, the same duty station and more, but the military never truly “takes over” the person the way I suspected. Generalizing about military or former military members is not wise, is not accurate, and shortchanges them. They are individuals who may share a sense of camaraderie.

There has never been another Ted, that’s for sure.

Soon, I realized Ted was not my adversary in the classroom. It happened slowly, but I saw him nodding in agreement during class lectures. He visited my office with rough drafts of his papers. He was good at expressing himself in an essay. He was unfailingly polite, carefully considered my criticisms and suggestions, revising his papers to bring them up to A level. He worked hard.

We grew to like each other, and although our classroom banter was a little edgy, we gained each other’s respect. Ted will never understand how much his respect means to me.

There came a day, though, when Ted sat sullenly in the classroom. He wasn’t looking at me, wasn’t paying attention, wasn’t answering any of the questions I posed to the class.

I thought he had a hangover. I was a bit angry because I expected more of Ted.

Frustrated, I finally called on him by name. “What’s the matter with you today, Thaddeus? Celebrate a little too much with the boys at the club?”

“My nephew was killed in Fallujah last night,” he said, flatly.

 Of course, the rest of the class members fell silent. Of course, the wall clocked ticked, ticked, ticked.

“Oh, Ted. I am so sorry,” I finally mumbled.

 I will never forget those words, “My nephew was killed in Fallujah last night.” Never.  The clock, and Ted’s face, and his long legs crunched up under the stupid too-small desk. The nephew was married, and had an infant son at home.

Ted was gracious, then. How could he be gracious? I don’t know, but he was.

“It’s okay. You didn’t know.”

I didn’t know anything.

Now, seven years later, he sits across from my desk. He is a friend. We chat for a while, mostly about his rose garden and his grandkids. When he leaves, I tell my office mate, newly hired to teach, about Ted.

“God, I was green,” I tell her.

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“Ted taught me more than I ever taught him. I hope you have a Ted in one of your classes.”

I say it, I mean it, and it is inadequate.

But I do. I do wish her a Ted. Teds make teaching an honor, a joy, and incredibly worthwhile.

Thank you, Sergeant Major.

Blogging Milestone: "First Contact" With a Reader

Thanks to reading advice from my favorite “big-girl bloggers,” the wise ones who have way more blogging experience than I do, I knew it was coming.

First contact. A reader. And me.

Yes. I met in person someone I knew who’d read my blog. Dun, dun, duuunnnn (scary organ music).

Of all places, I was at the pharmacy counter picking up perhaps two of the most potentially embarrassing prescriptions known to womankind. A former student now works there as a pharmacy tech.  She’s a charming young woman, was an excellent student, and is a talented writer. (If you’re reading this, hello dear one!)

A slightly terrifying fact is that she changed her major to English, partly at my encouragement. Although pleased when a student chooses English, I also panic, thinking that if they face a lifetime of starvation and deprivation due to the liberal arts degree, the guilt will be on my shoulders.

When I saw Alice (not her name) was going to wait on me, my mind started spinning. I wanted to ask how her studies at a major university were going, and was trying to remember other points of conversation. Slightly embarrassed at picking up major drugs, I knew I could unreservedly trust Alice with the personal nature of my “lady scrips.”

Sweet Alice rescued me from the somewhat awkward moment, asked me how I was, and said with a smile, “I read your blog!”

That was when I thought I’d faint.

Whoa, boy. The look on my face must have been priceless.

Alice said “I hope that was okay?”

“Oh, of course, that’s great!” I said, leaning on the counter nonchalantly to keep from falling down.

“I really liked it! It was the one about you dressing up?”

My brain was blanker than blank. I couldn’t think, in this month of NaBloPoMo, what post she may have meant. I mumbled something about writing posts every day for a month, the posts being a blur.

“Oh, you must be doing NaBloPoMo!” brainy Alice said. She knew about NaBloPoMo! I love that girl!

We chatted a moment more; she rang up my purchases. We wished each other well and I went on my way.

High-pitched voice inside my head: Someone I know in person read my blog! A former student read my blog! What does it MEAN?

Sweet Alice, thank you. Of all the people who could have been the first one to tell me they’ve read my blog, it was supportive, generous you.

I’m overwhelmed, scared, proud, humbled, and happy. Where blogging is leading me, I have no clue. But I’m one step further along the journey.

Has it happened to you? Tell the story, please. If it hasn’t happened yet, how do you imagine, or fear, it will go when it does happen? And the big-girl-bloggers were right—it will happen.

Virginity Lost

“I miss my virginity.”

That was Dylan, a 25 year old student in our American Lit II class at a community college in North Carolina, where I’ve been an instructor for a number of years.

No, Dylan wasn’t speaking of the kind of virginity you may first imagine.

Near a military base, we have many vets of both genders in our classes, most of them logging in multiple combat tours. Dylan has been on three combat tours in Iraq, and is a single dad now working on his associate degree.

What prompted Dylan’s statement was the class discussion of a line from Kurt Vonnegut’s 1969 novel, Slaughterhouse Five. In the story, Mary O’Hare, the wife of one of Vonnegut’s World War II army buddies, has just blasted Vonnegut for planning to write a book about the war. The source of her anger is asleep upstairs in footie pajamas—her young children.

You were babies, she growls at Vonnegut, and yet I know you’ll write the book as if you were men. You weren’t men; you weren’t John Wayne or Frank Sinatra, she hisses. You were children like our kids asleep upstairs. You’ll glorify war in your book, glamorize it, pretend you were big brawny men when you fought it, and people will keep fighting wars forever.

She hates Vonnegut for the book she believes he’ll write.

Sitting at Mary’s kitchen table, Vonnegut surprises Mary. He swiftly agrees with her that he and his pal, O’Hare, were children, in fact were “virgins,” when they fought in Germany. 

Our American Lit class discusses the meaning of the word “virgin” in this context—that it doesn’t refer to sexual virginity but to the innocence of teenagers who have yet to fight their first battle.

Dylan pondered this discussion for a few seconds. Then he stated the line above that deserves repeating-- “I miss my virginity.”

The hair on my neck stood up. His terse comment chilled the stuffy classroom. Some of the other combat veterans nodded.

Dylan has been my student in other classes. He’s smart, no doubt about that. But he’s more than smart. He’s perceptive, analytical, and insightful. He’s wise.

He has been a warrior for us, the best kind of warrior. Sometimes I wonder how many U. S. citizens know, care, or approach understanding what our warriors have done for us.

Dylan probably won’t even mind me adding that I know he can be gentle, although I wouldn’t announce that to a crowd if I ran into him at a local pub on a Saturday night. He is confident, not arrogant, not the macho stereotype of the warrior. I’ll go further. I admire him, and the other men and women like him in my classes.

What they have seen and experienced in Iraq or Afghanistan I can’t come close to imagining, even though I watch the nightly news five nights out of seven. The conflicts that I see in sound bites, they lived in 3-D, 24/7.

Now they’re looking at me, for Pete’s sake, standing here hoping I have something to teach them. They are so eager to learn that they lean forward in their uncomfortable plastic chairs. They are my students, but I look up to them. They humble me.

Dylan is unique, but he is also just one of many warriors among us. He is the warrior who comes home from battle, makes a good life for himself, his family, his community.

He lost his virginity for us.

He misses it, and that is part of what makes him the man he is. 

just bullwhipping

Tommy Barnes had some time to kill between classes at the university where he’s a junior creative writing major.

So he went out to his truck and got out his bullwhip.

He had some empty water bottles, and he set them up on the open tailgate of his pick-up truck for targets. Tommy began practicing his aim with the bullwhip—CRACK!, in the lovely fresh air that early fall day on the edge of the shady campus parking lot.

A little background may put this in perspective from Tommy’s point of view. He’s a backwoods-of-Florida young man (yes, there are a few still left), about 26 years old. At one time in his life, he lived alone in the woods in a trailer with no running water or electricity.

He hunted, trapped, and ate the animals. He grew vegetables. He rarely went to town or shopped for food. He wrote poetry. He grew a beard. He was 20 years old.

When I met him a few years later as his first college English teacher, he had a meticulously-kept folder of dozens of his poems. Good poems!

Tommy is that rarity in modern life, an individual. Lady Gaga, you Madonna wanna-be, you only wish you were half the unique person Tommy is.

Maybe this explains why when Tommy took out his bullwhip on that sunny fall morning, he didn’t dream of the reaction by the conformists, his fellow university students in North Carolina. College students raised on a bland diet of Domino’s pizza, the Simpsons, the Sopranos and re-runs of Friends were not prepared for Tommy. The little lambs.

Slack-jawed with astonishment at the sight of a ball-capped, blue-jeaned bullwhipper, they called the cops as quick as their fingers could hit 911.

A few minutes later, campus police arrived.

Lost in the moment, unaware of any commotion, Tommy was still bullwhippin'.

“What are you DOING?” they asked. Pre-Tommy, they thought they’d seen it all.

“Um, practicing with my bullwhip…” Tommy tried to explain. Essentially a sweet soul, he doesn’t truly understand the magnitude of his own uniqueness.

“Well, you’re scaring people. You gotta stop.” The campus police officers looked at Tommy, his bullwhip, and his rusty pickup truck plastered with the University of Florida Gators logos.

“You’re not from around here, are you, son?” the flabbergasted officers deduced.

“Nope.” Tommy rolled up his bullwhip. He didn’t argue.

I’m guess I’m just an ole redneck, Tommy thought. He was happy they didn’t arrest him, but amazed that his bullwhip had cause such a ruckus.

I’ll never have another student like Tommy. Gosh, I love that kid.

(Student names are always changed to protect privacy.)

roller coaster of school and ... love!

The semester is winding down at my community college and it's an emotional roller coaster. I get choked up with love for some of my students and how I'll miss seeing them each week. And... getting kinda happy at not having to deal anymore with the few students who are <stinkers>!

Silly me, I thought teaching at a college meant I wouldn't have to deal with much in the way of discipline issues. But that's not what I want this post to be about. Let me change gears.

I do love my students, and some of them love me back. Get your mind out of the gutter! This is platonic love between people working toward a common goal of getting our English on.

My students are nothing if not complex. Julie has served a couple of combat deployments in the Marines, drives a Harley, has extensive tats, but can dress up like a girly-girl when she's in the mood and rocks a college research essay like nobody's business. I adore her and told her if her momma don't treat her right, she can come on and be my daughter.

A former student that I hadn't seen in a year came by to tell me he'd received his bachelor degree. He brought me angel trumpet flower plants that he grew in his own greenhouse. Sven is a retired Marine Sergeant Major (the highest enlisted rank there is in the Marines), 6 ft. 6, with a mad green thumb-- yet I doubt you would peg him on sight for a flower lover. He looks more like the biker that he sometimes is on weekends. Yet, there he was outside my office door with a cardboard box full of plants. He even brought me photos to show what the plants will look like when they get mature. Made me feel like a queen to have Sven care enough to bring those plants in.

Another former student popped in. He'd been away at the Merchant Marine Academy, but is now back in town finishing up a few credits to get his bachelor degree. While Gregg was gone, he served on ships in the Bering Straits and in the Great Lakes in the winter. He got hurt twice by equipment, lines snapping, that kind of thing, and showed me the scars on his leg and the back of his neck. He's 23 now and has come a long way from the socially awkward 17 year old I had in freshman composition. He said I was the only teacher at my school that he wanted to come back and say "hi" to. How humbling is that! Sheesh.

Like I said, a roller coaster ride. I'm still hanging on, getting ready for our school's graduation ceremony and the start of summer session classes. And a whole new crop of students. Some will be stinkers, some will be future sparkly gems.

(Names are always changed to protect student privacy.)

The Longest War, and It Feels Like It

I teach English at a community college in a military town. Names have been changed to preserve confidentiality.

Will sits across from my desk, trembling from head to toe. He looks very young, but I figure he’s at least 23 since he says he’s been out of high school for five years. Will has an intelligent, devoted wife who’s applying to grad school and a 3-year old son. Tall and thin, he has thick, light brown hair and piercing blue eyes.

Will’s wife, Sandra, my former student, came by earlier in the week to tell me her husband is upset about his paper. He hasn’t slept in days.

He’s done two combat tours and survived, yet he’s worried about his response paper for British Lit.

Sandra says, “Mrs. Bruce, can you do something? I keep telling him he’s smart, he’s a good writer. He just needs to get a rough draft down on paper.”

Sandra and I discuss strategies to help her husband’s writer’s block. She says she’ll try to get him to come see me.

Will sits in my office two days later. I’m glad he came; I like his sincerity.  But he is in constant motion.  I’m trying to ignore it.

I can’t say I’ve ever seen a man so restless. I’m vaguely aware that I’m in denial about what is going on with Will.

I try to reassure him. His paper looks great; he’s done a fine job with Blake and Coleridge. I think: Why is he trembling? Is it espresso? Red Bull? Was he like this before the war? He is apologetic, saying that in high school he didn’t take so long, worry so much over his papers.

While I’m talking with Will, my officemate Amber is finishing up her conversation with a muscular young student in a black t-shirt. A loud talker, Jake’s articulate, with an impressive vocabulary. They’re discussing the draft of his argument paper. Our office is small, and I can’t help listening a little, distracting me for a moment from Will’s jitters.

Jake must’ve written about his battles with the VA; Amber is telling him it’s good to be passionate in his paper, but maybe some of the language, the tone, is a bit too strong for a college argument. He shouldn’t use words like “idiotic,” or “foolish.” Jake has hearing loss from the war, and the VA says the damage is not from his time in the military, despite all evidence to the contrary.

“I went into the military with perfect hearing and I came out with hearing loss. They say it has nothing to do with the guns and the IED’s. I’m 24—where else did I get hearing loss?”

Jake is mad about the runaround he’s getting, but with effort, he’s contained. Amber is mad, but self-possessed, professional. I’m getting mad, too, and not at the students in my office. There’s another emotion trying to escape from my chest. I’m not sure what the other emotion is. It makes me clench my jaw.

Will glances at Jake, but without expression. Will talks a little louder, so I can hear him over the unintentionally loud guy with the hearing loss.

We continue our conversation about the poetry paper. I may be repeating myself when I tell Will he’s a good writer, not to over-think the assignment. He rises to go. His hand is dry, warm as he shakes my hand, his grip strong but not overbearing.

He leaves, but my brain is roiling. Once again I have seen what few Americans ever see and rarely concern themselves with, even if they watch Brian Williams on NBC every night.

I’ve got to do something. So I begin a blog entry, trying to avoid a harsh feeling of futility. Of sinking, sucking, slippery despair. Trying to find some way to be a witness, to give a tribute, to define and contain something that is amorphous, monstrous. Something that Will is working to conquer, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.

I’ve proudly taught vets since 2003. I love what I do and I’m doing what I can to help. I’m not being flip, hard-hearted, or disrespectful. But by the time both Will and Jake leave my office, I need a therapy session.

Is it selfish to ask who’s going to help me?

Yes. It does seem incredibly selfish.

What can I know about what my students have gone through, are going through? The ones who have been to war, the ones who waited for them to come home, and the ones whose loved ones didn’t come home, or didn’t come home whole.

 It has been a long war for all of us.

So I get up and go teach Creative Writing class.