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‘Those who can’t do teach…’

2008-03-18

It was the last day of the winter quarter of classes on Monday here at the UCSC (no I don't know why they divide it up four ways either) so I decided to have a little fun with my friend Donnie. Seeing as he was teaching the final class of his writing course that day I'd decided to have a little fun heckling him in it for a variety of reasons. First, the most unselfish one. Emma's been totally stressing about finals for awhile now, so this lighthearted ribbing of my best friend serves as a kind of stress relief for her.

O.K, seeing as you're probably only half believing that one at best I'll detail the wholly narcissistic one. When Emma broke her leg , I then had to take notes for her, unfortunately this meant I had to sit in and take notes in his class too and listen to him blather on about first person narrators and properly using  metaphors for two hours. Then there's the altruistic ‘it's for his own good' rationale. He takes himself far too seriously when he teaches, this'll help him embrace chaos before he starts walking around wearing a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows and smoking a pipe. Finally the rational rationale, and the one that makes the most sense, it's the last day of classes. No one ever teaches anything new in the last class, and never has, so who would I be harming? The lecturer normally spends his time answering questions from students, and trying to convince them he's an o.k. guy and not such a hardass as thought.

With all of the above I disguised myself (disguised meaning wearing a Yankees cap and sunglasses) and accompanied my hobbling girlfriend to Donnie's final class and sat in the back row and waited.

I felt more excited than Scott Baio when he found out the producers of ‘Charles In Charge' had added Nicole Eggert to the cast.

I was right. The whole class was conducted like some kind of literary jam session, with Donnie trying his best to convince the kids he was hip to them and not some old fogy. The way he conducted it was so relaxed and mellow that you expected him to break out a bong and start passing it around.

He rebuffed my initial attempts to rattle him by asking literary questions he'd have to think hard about answering (stuff like can you evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of different types of narration) in the hope he'd end up embarrassing himself in front of his beloved students. Unfortunately he managed to duck these good naturedly by basically saying he could answer that question, but if he did it'd take up the whole class.

This would not stand, so I tried some more direct tactics. I raised my hand courteously until he responded.

‘Yeah the guy in the back with all the questions, you have another?'

‘I have ‘a friend' who thinks your writing's o.k.,' I began sardonically, ‘but that you basically have been writing the same thing for years. Any comment?'

‘Yeah I think I know who you're talking about, and I haveta tell you that this guy once asked me why Starbucks was named after the character from ‘Battlestar Galactica', so there you go.'

His audience of followers laughed along with his joke.

‘Shouldn't Starbucks have an apostrophe in it?' I replied.

I waited nearly ten minutes before unleashing another question, my personal favorite by the way.     

‘This friend I mentioned before also said you'd written an unofficial sequel to ‘The Catcher In The Rye.'

A series of oohs and ahhs overcame the lecture theatre, as this was indeed news to them I'd imagine.

He let his mask slip a bit and gave me a type of murderous look.

Timeout.

The Catcher thing is true by the way, though he doesn't like anyone mentioning it. A number of years back he began writing a novel that picked up where Salinger's book finished with Holden Caulfield heading out west. I tend to describe it as an ungodly combination of ‘On The Road' and ‘An American Tail: Fievel Goes West.' If the whole concept wasn't so funny the thing would actually be impressive, because he really got the narration down to the point where it sounds like Salinger himself-right down to the types of people Holden considers phony. Of course Donnie claims that he has no intention of ever trying to get it published, but I think he's lying and would jump at the chance, if any publisher would touch it with a ten meter cattle-prod.

Time back in.

He over-laughed to try and make light of my mentioning it, and said jokingly that; ‘that was just a writing exercise, I never intended to publish it.' (See, see).

Some guy two rows in front of me piped in in a So-Cal twang that ‘dude that sounds awesome.'

I agreed with him, adding; ‘yeah you should bring it in and read it to the class.'

‘Uhh...you know what pal I think I've lost it. Any other questions?'

‘Yeah,' I continued, ‘Didn't you once propose a concentration camp system to remove ‘the grotesquely' ugly from the gene pool?'

A few smatterings of dissent from the assembled masses. This happened in college when he was immature, but you know never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

‘That's out of context,' he said half-lying to cover his tracks. ‘It wasn't serious, it was meant to be taken ironically like Swift's ‘A Modest Proposal'.'                                                                This may be true.                                                                                                                       If this were a wrestling match, it'd be the moment where Stone Cold Steve Austin's music unexpectedly hit, he stormed the ring, flipped everyone off and proceeded to deliver stunners to everyone.

‘What's up with all this? Are you even in this class?'

‘I am today,' I replied glibly. ‘So what about this proposal I read where you propose building a sixty-foot high electrified fence around the state of Massachusetts?'

‘Hey, that was you,' he said angrily.

‘Oh yeah, I forgot,' I said faux apologetically.

After that I let him get back to ‘teaching' his class for the whole eight minutes remaining. By the by the Emma part of this mission worked a treat, she was laughing and snickering under her breath the whole time.

We stayed around after class was over, and Donnie stormed up to the back of the room , asked what I thought I'd be doing  and called me an asshole.

I told you he takes the whole thing far too seriously.

I told him to relax , and asked him if he was done for the day. He said he was and so we headed down to the bar I work at (I should really start putting that in inverted commas) per my suggestion. It was St. Paddy's day so the bar was actually jumping. Actually technically it wasn't. I don't know whether you heard this or not, but the catholic church actually moved it back to last Friday, apparently because of the leap month the traditional March 17th date ran into ‘Holy Week' and the powers that be decided that it wasn't entirely appropriate  for drinking n' carousing to happen. I guess that they could have cancelled it for this year, but the Irish (and the hordes who use it as an excuse to get drunk on a workday afternoon ) probably would've considered it an act of war. Personally I think it was an Irish-Catholic conspiracy to stretch the thing out into a four day weekend of green Guinness drinking, leprechaun hat wearing  and Pogues and House Of Pain  songs, call me crazy.

So we sat there drinking this Celtic pied piper,  as Donnie continued to rake me over hot coals about ruining his precious lecture, while my cute girlfriend looked on at us arguing with an amused  smile on her face.

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