Roger Pires August 30, 2012
When he's not offering his take on daily life, Roger Pires spends his days as a computer systems analyst. It's not exactly a glamorous calling but hey, it pays the bills. He enjoys hockey, canoeing, snowshoeing, and spending as much time as he possibly can outdoors. He lives in Udora with his wife and two kids, who are his prime inspiration for Ravenshoe Ramblings.
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The essay
The career of many a class clown came to a crashing halt in Mr. B’s grade eleven advanced English class. My reign as resident wit lasted all of about thirty seconds. Mr. B’s parry and thrust of sarcasm and seriousness was a potent antidote for teenage bravado. You didn’t know when he was being sarcastic and when he was being serious. Unless he wanted you too. By that time, you were well on your way to becoming the punch line of one of his extended jokes. I was merely one in a long line of casualties slain by his caustic wit.
In most classes, Day One followed a standard format. The teacher would sit at his or her desk doodling in a notepad and checking off the names of each student as they walked in. The teacher’s name appeared in loopy handwriting in the upper right-hand corner of the freshly-scrubbed chalkboard along with the course code. And there was usually some pithy bit of wisdom pilfered from Shakespeare - a lot of thines and wherefores attributed to someone named Puck or Horatio. But the eccentric scholar that presided over room 211 was to conformity what the Big Mac is to Weight Watchers. There was no name. No “ENG 351” in block letters. No obscure literary reference. Just this challenge scrawled on a board that looked like it had been recently salvaged from the rubble of an earthquake: “What I did on my summer vacation.” And as we filed in, Mr. B leaned against a wall, flipping a chalk brush in a cloud of dust.
That’s when yours truly, the poor deluded fool, decided to stake my claim as court jester. I questioned whether such a mundane topic was worthy of advanced academics. “No, but it’s perfectly suited for you.”
I failed to heed the warning. “How long does it have to be?” “As long as you want.”
“When’s it due?” “At the end of the class.”
Many of us didn’t even have a pencil yet. Murmurs of discontent rose from the cheap seats. I resumed my role as spokesman for the great unwashed. “Do we really have to do this, sir?”
I had pressed his “on” button. From here, he proceeded to regale his captive audience with a dissertation on the history of democracy. He paced the classroom like a mad genius. His hairstyle looked like it had been applied by Ontario Hydro and with his aquiline nose, it made him look like the love child of Albert Einstein and Barbara Streisand (his description). He went on to expound on the ancient Greeks and introduced his callow charges to the great lawmaker, Solon, and his mission to alleviate the suffering of the poor while preserving the privileges of the rich. Juggling the chalk brush, he told us about how Socrates and his student, Plato, attempted to define the individual’s role within the community. About how the Romans furthered the work of the Greeks. Now standing on a chair in front of his desk, the poor man’s Churchill laid out how the Magna Carta curtailed the role of those in power. Then there was some guy named Rousseau that influenced some other guy named Paoli who drafted something called the Corsican Constitution.
We were now headed for the finish line and Mr. B brought it home with the English Bill of Rights, the Virginia Declaration of Rights which led to the American Constitution, and of the repatriation of our own Constitution and how this fledgling manifesto spelled out the rights of the individual within the purview of the state. He surveyed the room full of blanks stares and concluded: “So, you don’t HAVE to do anything. It’s a free country. But expect to be aptly rewarded.”
At this point, anybody with even one live brain cell would’ve taken his lumps, borrowed a pencil, and begun cataloguing the mundane events of a suburban summer: going to the mall, playing baseball, camping with your family, going to the mall again, griping to your mother that you’re bored, being sent to the mall.
But some of us are slow learners. I thought I would impress our esteemed Mr. B with a totally fictional romp through the highlights of summer. I piloted the space shuttle, scored the winning goal in the Stanley Cup finals, led an expedition down the Amazon to unearth some ancient civilization, tamed lions, and wrestled sharks. My rock band sold a million copies of our new album and headlined all over Europe. I don’t recall now but I think I even became my own superhero, saving the world from long-winded speeches about Greeks and democracy.
Mr. B was true to his word. For my imaginary tale I received an imaginary grade – and an alternate assignment. He handed me a massive, dog-eared tome entitled, “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare”. If I wished to reclaim any semblance of a mark – purely up to me, of course – I had to read Act One from a play of my choosing and list any literary devices used by the great master along with an example of each. Due next class. Either that or write, “I will not be a smart ass in Mr. B’s English class”, one hundred times on a sheet of foolscap.
I grabbed the foolscap, went back to my desk, and tucked into a nice, thick slab of humble pie.
