Tuesday, September 19, 2006

when people become myths

Today I fulfilled a dream I have held for years.

Today I visited Mr. X. I will call him that in deference to his desire for privacy.

The lesson I learned occured before the visit began.

I have long called Mr. X the most influential teacher I have ever had. Though he was my teacher for less than a semester, he irrevocably influenced the way I see the world.

I read Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man in his class, 12th grade AP English. We dissected the book and its political, historical, literacy and sociological ramifications. We talked about the roles forced upon black men and white women in US culture as depicted in the book.

Mr. X taught me the meaning of critical thinking. It didn't mean important thinking, it meant criticising received wisdom. It meant questioning assumed truths. I went home and debated the issues we discussed in class.

Mr. X made Friday Dress Day. He asked us to dress in business attire, and he did the same. It was a question of respect, and he said he gave preferential treatment to those who took part. I was always a sucker for preferential treatment.

I once accused him of being a hypocrite during a class debate. He told me to look up "hypocrite" in the dictionary. I was duly chastised.

He was not the secular humanist Jewish teacher that I recently heard referenced as an archetype. He is an African American Vietnam vet. I think.

Mr. X left the school after winter break, claiming we had not read Crime and Punishment and were not prepared for class discussions.

I and a student named Aaron each wrote a letter to him, asking him why he left and lamenting our comparably bland and unintelligent replacement teacher. He wrote back, a personal letter encouraging me to keep questioning, keep debating, keep dressing, and to stay in touch. He even put a phone number in the letter.

I still have that letter.

I graduated from high school almost ten years ago.

I treasured that letter, as I went through college, becamed politicized, read Marx and Malcolm X and liberation theology.

I wrote to him, years later, after college, I believe.

He'd moved. My letter was returned, undeliverable.

I wrote to him asking for advice, telling him he'd been my most influential teacher ever, telling him I'd come to a point in my life where I was making decisions about my future (when have I not been at that point in the past five years?).

Mr. X became a myth to me.

He became wise, all-knowing, infallable, and utterly superhuman. No person could possibly have lived up to be the person I had created in his name.

This summer, a teacher education textbook of mine asked whether I had thanked the teachers who had influenced me.

Surely I'd tried.

But this time I would succeed. I googled his name, googled my high school, googled los angeles, LA Unified School District, English, AP.

And I found him. The real him. It could have been another Mr. X teaching AP English in Los Angeles. But doubtful.

I found his school, I found the address, phone, even his classroom. I found his schedule.

Today, I visited while on break between classes. I'd perfected the scenario I'd replayed for years:

"Hello. I'm ____. I was your student ten years ago at _______ High School."

"_____! How nice to see you."

I would then proceed to tell him the great things I've accomplished, tell him he was the most influential teacher I've ever had, tell him Invisible Man was the most influential book I've ever read. He would look knowingly at me, wise, smiling, and encourage me to continue on the path I was already on.

But today was different. I didn't replay the scenario.

I was terrified.

What if he didn't remember me?

What if he did remember me, and didn't care that I'd come to visit?

What if he didn't remember me, and didn't care who I was?

I tried to re-visualize and realized I was all wrong. I was not here to seek at all.

If I was really going to go through with this, then I was here only to give. What was I going to say? I asked myself, walking. I should have come up with a list of well-thought-out questions.

But I was there only to thank. To ask was to ask for disappointment. To expect was to require an inevitable let-down. Who was this person I'd thought about visiting for ten years? Whoever it was, it likely was not the person I would see in that classroom, a person who was instead likely to be completely human and fallible.

All I could do was plan to give, expecting nothing in return. If this was going to be an honest encounter, it was the only thing I could do. And did I still want to go, knowing that I could only be certain that I wanted to say thank you? Yes, I did. Everything else was out of my control.

I arrived at the school sweating, looking for the office, my little heart beating.

I waited in the main office nervously, contemplating leaving at the last minute. I told a counselor why I was there, and she called him. She called him, and asked who I was. She told him that ____ from _________ High School was here to see him.

I wound my way through the "bungalows." I considered leaving. She'd already told him I was arriving. It was too late to turn back.

I walked up the ramp to his class, heart a-patter. I saw him as I walked in the doorway.

His face was completely unfamiliar. I realized that in ten years my myth had not included his face.

How are you? It's nice to see you, he said. How did you find me? Did you ask around?

I googled you, I told him, I found you on my own.

That's scary, he told me.

Oops.

I hadn't counted on that one.

I'm getting my teaching credential, I told him.

So you came to see me?

I came to say thank you.

Well, he said, I appreciate that very much.

I'm a very private person, he told me. I don't use the internet.

Oh.

They made me put a computer in this classroom last year to take roll. I don't even use the internet for my business. I hire people to do that for me.

Oh.

Well, my suddenly sheepish self said, I apologize if I've invaded your privacy.

For your sake, he told me, I'm glad you found me. But that's scary.

He'd hoped I would arrive earlier, because he had a meeting at 1:55. I got lost, told him. I could always come back another time.

He asked me what I was studying. He asked me how I like it. I told him Invisible Man was on my shelf of honor, the most-influential books I'd read. He told me he still uses it in his classes. He told me he used to have student teachers until all teachers were required to be certified to teach English learners, and he was no longer qualified to be a teacher, despite all his years of teaching English to students of all backgrounds. He told me that he refused to have student teachers in his class if he was no longer a qualified teacher. Sometimes, he told me, I have to make a point.

And I left him there. He went to his meeting.

Privacy. Right. In myths, nobody has privacy. Mythological figures do not feel violated, or afraid, or irritable about new regulations. Although his response was as ideological as I'd hoped. I think.

And, despite all of my best intentions, I was thanking him, in the end, for my own gratification. For your sake, he told me, I'm glad you found me.

For my sake.

And so, I return to my mind. My myth isn't shattered because I shattered it myself, just in time.

But -

But -

The myth remains.

Why change it?

I already learned everything I needed to learn from him, ten years ago. Now it is time to return to the present, to allow the learning in the myth to remain, and to go on and learn from others.

And when I meet people who remind me of him?

Remember that what I create is myth. If I want to know a person, leave the myth out of it. Assume nothing. Ask for clarification. Challenge.

Mythological figures don't make very good friends.