Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Chapter 14. Never Good Enough
Lab sessions in any subject drove me crazy. I understood processes and theory, but could never master the precision needed for decent lab work. In physics, we were usually required to calculate our percent of error. Mine was always the largest in the class. Fortunately, DeVasher based his grades on exams not lab results, and his tests focused on processes and theory.
I did manage to engineer a quarter mile aqueduct to fill the old swimming pool from a nearby creek. Mr. DeVasher came and inspected our handiwork and laughed. Eventually more responsible faculty found out about it and required us to dismantle our elaborate structure before someone drowned and the school was held liable.
The most serious problem at Highland was religion starting with Bible class. It must have been early fall. The weather was still warm. It was sunny. I was sitting in Bible class listening to Elder Glenn. I expected a lot from him because my older brother, Arthur the hell-raiser, actually respected him. If Elder Glenn had been able to connect with Arthur, he must be an extraordinary teacher.
Suddenly, Elder Glenn riveted my attention.
“The sun is the center of our galaxy.” This wasn’t his main point, it was a simple fact about the universe he mentioned in passing as part of a larger argument about the amazing dignity God had invested in this earth. Still, he supported his words with a diagram on the board which featured a dot labeled sun at the center of a large circle labeled “Milky Way Galaxy.”
As far as I could tell, no one else in the class was bothered. Apparently, they all knew he actually meant the sun was the center of the solar system. But I couldn’t let the remark pass without saying something.
After a couple of minutes, Elder Glenn recognized me.
“You said the sun is the center of our galaxy, but you meant the sun is the center of our solar system, right?”
“No, the sun is the center of our galaxy.”
“What? Our galaxy is the Milky Way galaxy. Our solar system is a small part of the galaxy. Our sun is just one star off in one of the arms of the galaxy. It’s not at the center.”
“Johnny, if you have any further argument you want to make, please see me after class. The sun is the center of our galaxy. When God created the earth, he created all the stars and planets of our galaxy. The galaxy derives its meaning from its relation to the earth.”
I was dumbstruck. This was a new school. I didn’t have my gang to back me up. I slumped down in my seat. I did not go back with an encyclopedia. I just let it go. For two years I sat in Bible class, did my home work and didn’t believe a thing he said. Just another ignorant preacher.
But I couldn’t ignore the preacher in my own head–the constant, bruising sense of guilt and unworthiness. Every morning I read a chapter from a book about the life of Christ written by our prophet. Others talked of the wonderful comfort and encouragement they found in the book. But all I could find was constantly swelling evidence of my abysmal failure to measure up.
By now I was an expert on Adventist eschatology. I could draw a chart of last day events–the National Sunday Law, the Loud Cry, The Mark of the Beast, the Seal of God, the Little Time of Trouble, the Close of Probation, the Great Time of Trouble, the Seven Last Plagues, the Heavenly Proclamation of the Day and Hour of Christ’s Return, the Second Coming.
I knew that the only adequate preparation for these events was complete personal purification. Every transgression had to be confessed. Every bad habit had to be mastered. And it was not enough to control external behavior. One had to have a pure heart as well.
And how was a teenage male to have a pure heart? Even in the cloistered environment of an Adventist school where girls and guys were carefully segregated most of the time, my mind created all sorts of wonderfully salacious visions. I would get the victory over masturbation for a week or even months at a time. But how could I control my dreams?
I was one of the student speakers for a week of spiritual emphasis. I scolded my student audience for their lackadaisical religion. I preached fierce denunciation of “making out,” which I knew was a regular practice on campus in spite of all the precautions against it. I asked my classmates scornfully if, in hindsight, it was as sweet as they expected it to be. Since I had never participated in this sin, I could speak with great authority about its unfulfilling wickedness.
I was in earnest. I wanted to be holy. But every night I agonized over my sins. Every morning reading The Desire of Ages I found new reasons to condemn myself.
My voice teacher had me memorize a page from the book. One paragraph read:
Christ made no plans for himself. Instead everyday he committed himself to God and followed his guidance for the day.
If we consent, God will blend our hearts and minds into conformity with His will, that when obeying Him we shall be but carrying out our own impulses. Our will refined and sanctified will find its highest delight in obeying Him. Desire of Ages p. 668.
But God did not guide me through the day. I had a class schedule and work and homework. Once in a while, I would have occasion to talk with another student and have a sense of helping someone, but most of the time I was just another student trying to get “A’s” and get girls to notice me.
And I knew I wasn’t good enough. When the Judgment of the Living reached me, I would be crossed off the list of the saved. People liked me. I was elected student body president and voted Friendship King my senior year. (My girlfriend was voted Friendship Queen.) I knew all 151 students by name. But at night I would spend sometimes an hour agonizing in prayer, confessing my sins, asking forgiveness, asking for victory over lustful thoughts and my scorn for Elder Glenn and my resentment of popular students who treated my redneck friends with contempt. I was never good enough.
And I wasn’t alone. There were a couple of other guys who talked to me about their struggles with free-floating guilt and restless sexual desire.
I still had no questions about the validity of Adventist theology. Even if it made me miserable, I knew it was true. All of it. Arthur brought home from college reports of questions about our Adventist prophet. Some people argued she had copied some of her ideas from other people. There were questions about whether she was exactly correct in every statement of historical fact. It sounded like heresy to me, but I didn’t have to form my own opinion about any of this. No one in my world was asking the questions.
The church as a system continued to show its fallibility. One rainy day, I was exploring a grassy hillside behind the maintenance building looking for spider lilies. There was a little rivulet of water running down the hillside. The area stank. The odor was only vaguely familiar. I traced the rivulet to its source, a small nondescript hole in the ground. Then I noticed bits of toilet paper in the runout. The school’s septic system was overflowing! It ran down the hill into a creek.
I was appalled. What about water quality? What about stewardship of the earth? I asked questions. Yes, the administration was aware of it. No they did not have any plans to do anything about it. They didn’t have the money.
By this stage in my life I was already thoroughly infected with environmental protection fervor. I considered reporting the school to some local environmental authority to see if the government could force the school to clean up its act. But I didn’t. How could I bring reproach on God’s church?
Protests against the Vietnam War were building. Historically the Adventist Church had urged its young men to not enlist in the military and if drafted to enter the military as conscientious objectors. They would train and serve as medics, but would not bear arms. But at least since WWII, we had hardly been antiwar.
My senior year, along with Jonathan Wentworth and several others, I wore a black band to show my solidarity with those opposed to the war. I could not understand why the adults in my home church and here at school supported the government in its immoral, futile war. The youth leader in my church at home once said in response to some negative remark I made about the war: “My country and my God, they are inseparable. Patriotism and Christianity cannot be divided.” For once I was speechless. I didn’t know what to say.
One of the faculty members at our school organized a chapter of the MCC–the Medical Cadet Corp. The medical cadet corp was designed to prepare Adventists to face the realities of the draft. Young men learned to stand up for their rights as noncombatants and Sabbath keepers. They were trained in marching and basic first aid. It seemed to me that it was really a celebration of martial culture.
I loudly refused to join. Wentworth stood with me. Neither of us were jocks so the faculty sponsor encouraged his guys to call us the Pansies. The MCC guys would have weekend sessions in the campmeeting cabins at the rear of the school property.
Jon and I organized the resisters. We called ourselves the Pansies in laughing mockery of the cadets’ scorn. We raided their camp at 3:00 a.m. one Sunday, pounding on all the doors, blowing a whistle and calling them to fall in. Then ran for our lives. It took them a while to figure out their commanding officer was still in bed.
To get back at us, the commander challenged us to a game of capture the flag the next weekend. The army pretenders won.
Most Adventist high schools schedule two Weeks of Prayer each year. These consist of two meetings a day–an assembly at 10:00 or 11:00 a.m. and an evening meeting. They usually feature a colorful revival speaker–a former drug addict turned preacher, a converted felon or someone more conventional but whose personal story includes a dramatic, intense conversion story. The goal is the spiritual renewal of the school and the conversion of any unbelieving students. Usually, by the end of the week, the emotional tone is pretty intense.
Elder Euel Atchley was the speaker for the Spring Week of Prayer my senior year. He was flamboyant and dogmatic. He told good stories, but he was in favor of the Vietnam War. On Tuesday, Wentworth and I talked to him about our growing conviction we should register as full conscientious objectors and refuse to be drafted rather than join the army as medics.
He ridiculed us. Called us cowards. Questioned our patriotism and our sanity. And dismissed our quotations from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. "That just doesn't apply to real life, at least not the life of a citizen of a world power." He said. "Do you really want Communism to take over the world? Do you want to live in a totalitarian nation?"
I couldn’t answer all his challenges, but neither did I change my mind.
He continued preaching morning and evening. I grudgingly listened. He was a good preacher, even if he was hopelessly wrong about the war. On Friday evening, at the end of his sermon he gave a call. This was typical. Almost all weeks of prayer included calls for students to come forward and rededicate their lives to Jesus or give their hearts to God for the first time. But this call was not about that. Elder Atchley asked for any young man who felt God was calling him into the ministry to stand.
He talked about the call to ministry for a few minutes, described the glory and weight of responsibility involved in the work of ministry, then gave the invitation again.
“If you feel God is calling you to the ministry, I invite you to stand right where you are. I want to pray for you.”
Suddenly I was standing, looking around and wondering why I was standing. I was going to be a doctor, not a minister. Elder Atchley prayed. I sat down, puzzled. Me, a minister? That would be a hoot. Sure, Mrs. Powell, the old Baptist lady who lived across the street from us had suggested that if I didn’t follow my daddy in the practice of medicine, I should consider the ministry. And after I preached my first sermon when I was fifteen years old in my home church a few of the old people had said, “You ought to be a minister.”
But you would expect them to say things like that. They probably didn’t notice when the minister used bad grammar or make mistakes when he was talking about history or science or even the Bible. They were gullible people who believed preachers.
Medicine, especially medicine in a research environment, made a lot more sense than going around calling pacifists unpatriotic. And at least as a physician, I would have some credibility when I spoke about faith and God.
That summer I worked on the water front at Indian Creek Youth Camp which served Adventist kids from Tennessee and Kentucky. In the fall, I registered at Southern Missionary College as a physics and math major.
I did manage to engineer a quarter mile aqueduct to fill the old swimming pool from a nearby creek. Mr. DeVasher came and inspected our handiwork and laughed. Eventually more responsible faculty found out about it and required us to dismantle our elaborate structure before someone drowned and the school was held liable.
The most serious problem at Highland was religion starting with Bible class. It must have been early fall. The weather was still warm. It was sunny. I was sitting in Bible class listening to Elder Glenn. I expected a lot from him because my older brother, Arthur the hell-raiser, actually respected him. If Elder Glenn had been able to connect with Arthur, he must be an extraordinary teacher.
Suddenly, Elder Glenn riveted my attention.
“The sun is the center of our galaxy.” This wasn’t his main point, it was a simple fact about the universe he mentioned in passing as part of a larger argument about the amazing dignity God had invested in this earth. Still, he supported his words with a diagram on the board which featured a dot labeled sun at the center of a large circle labeled “Milky Way Galaxy.”
As far as I could tell, no one else in the class was bothered. Apparently, they all knew he actually meant the sun was the center of the solar system. But I couldn’t let the remark pass without saying something.
After a couple of minutes, Elder Glenn recognized me.
“You said the sun is the center of our galaxy, but you meant the sun is the center of our solar system, right?”
“No, the sun is the center of our galaxy.”
“What? Our galaxy is the Milky Way galaxy. Our solar system is a small part of the galaxy. Our sun is just one star off in one of the arms of the galaxy. It’s not at the center.”
“Johnny, if you have any further argument you want to make, please see me after class. The sun is the center of our galaxy. When God created the earth, he created all the stars and planets of our galaxy. The galaxy derives its meaning from its relation to the earth.”
I was dumbstruck. This was a new school. I didn’t have my gang to back me up. I slumped down in my seat. I did not go back with an encyclopedia. I just let it go. For two years I sat in Bible class, did my home work and didn’t believe a thing he said. Just another ignorant preacher.
But I couldn’t ignore the preacher in my own head–the constant, bruising sense of guilt and unworthiness. Every morning I read a chapter from a book about the life of Christ written by our prophet. Others talked of the wonderful comfort and encouragement they found in the book. But all I could find was constantly swelling evidence of my abysmal failure to measure up.
By now I was an expert on Adventist eschatology. I could draw a chart of last day events–the National Sunday Law, the Loud Cry, The Mark of the Beast, the Seal of God, the Little Time of Trouble, the Close of Probation, the Great Time of Trouble, the Seven Last Plagues, the Heavenly Proclamation of the Day and Hour of Christ’s Return, the Second Coming.
I knew that the only adequate preparation for these events was complete personal purification. Every transgression had to be confessed. Every bad habit had to be mastered. And it was not enough to control external behavior. One had to have a pure heart as well.
And how was a teenage male to have a pure heart? Even in the cloistered environment of an Adventist school where girls and guys were carefully segregated most of the time, my mind created all sorts of wonderfully salacious visions. I would get the victory over masturbation for a week or even months at a time. But how could I control my dreams?
I was one of the student speakers for a week of spiritual emphasis. I scolded my student audience for their lackadaisical religion. I preached fierce denunciation of “making out,” which I knew was a regular practice on campus in spite of all the precautions against it. I asked my classmates scornfully if, in hindsight, it was as sweet as they expected it to be. Since I had never participated in this sin, I could speak with great authority about its unfulfilling wickedness.
I was in earnest. I wanted to be holy. But every night I agonized over my sins. Every morning reading The Desire of Ages I found new reasons to condemn myself.
My voice teacher had me memorize a page from the book. One paragraph read:
Christ made no plans for himself. Instead everyday he committed himself to God and followed his guidance for the day.
If we consent, God will blend our hearts and minds into conformity with His will, that when obeying Him we shall be but carrying out our own impulses. Our will refined and sanctified will find its highest delight in obeying Him. Desire of Ages p. 668.
But God did not guide me through the day. I had a class schedule and work and homework. Once in a while, I would have occasion to talk with another student and have a sense of helping someone, but most of the time I was just another student trying to get “A’s” and get girls to notice me.
And I knew I wasn’t good enough. When the Judgment of the Living reached me, I would be crossed off the list of the saved. People liked me. I was elected student body president and voted Friendship King my senior year. (My girlfriend was voted Friendship Queen.) I knew all 151 students by name. But at night I would spend sometimes an hour agonizing in prayer, confessing my sins, asking forgiveness, asking for victory over lustful thoughts and my scorn for Elder Glenn and my resentment of popular students who treated my redneck friends with contempt. I was never good enough.
And I wasn’t alone. There were a couple of other guys who talked to me about their struggles with free-floating guilt and restless sexual desire.
I still had no questions about the validity of Adventist theology. Even if it made me miserable, I knew it was true. All of it. Arthur brought home from college reports of questions about our Adventist prophet. Some people argued she had copied some of her ideas from other people. There were questions about whether she was exactly correct in every statement of historical fact. It sounded like heresy to me, but I didn’t have to form my own opinion about any of this. No one in my world was asking the questions.
The church as a system continued to show its fallibility. One rainy day, I was exploring a grassy hillside behind the maintenance building looking for spider lilies. There was a little rivulet of water running down the hillside. The area stank. The odor was only vaguely familiar. I traced the rivulet to its source, a small nondescript hole in the ground. Then I noticed bits of toilet paper in the runout. The school’s septic system was overflowing! It ran down the hill into a creek.
I was appalled. What about water quality? What about stewardship of the earth? I asked questions. Yes, the administration was aware of it. No they did not have any plans to do anything about it. They didn’t have the money.
By this stage in my life I was already thoroughly infected with environmental protection fervor. I considered reporting the school to some local environmental authority to see if the government could force the school to clean up its act. But I didn’t. How could I bring reproach on God’s church?
Protests against the Vietnam War were building. Historically the Adventist Church had urged its young men to not enlist in the military and if drafted to enter the military as conscientious objectors. They would train and serve as medics, but would not bear arms. But at least since WWII, we had hardly been antiwar.
My senior year, along with Jonathan Wentworth and several others, I wore a black band to show my solidarity with those opposed to the war. I could not understand why the adults in my home church and here at school supported the government in its immoral, futile war. The youth leader in my church at home once said in response to some negative remark I made about the war: “My country and my God, they are inseparable. Patriotism and Christianity cannot be divided.” For once I was speechless. I didn’t know what to say.
One of the faculty members at our school organized a chapter of the MCC–the Medical Cadet Corp. The medical cadet corp was designed to prepare Adventists to face the realities of the draft. Young men learned to stand up for their rights as noncombatants and Sabbath keepers. They were trained in marching and basic first aid. It seemed to me that it was really a celebration of martial culture.
I loudly refused to join. Wentworth stood with me. Neither of us were jocks so the faculty sponsor encouraged his guys to call us the Pansies. The MCC guys would have weekend sessions in the campmeeting cabins at the rear of the school property.
Jon and I organized the resisters. We called ourselves the Pansies in laughing mockery of the cadets’ scorn. We raided their camp at 3:00 a.m. one Sunday, pounding on all the doors, blowing a whistle and calling them to fall in. Then ran for our lives. It took them a while to figure out their commanding officer was still in bed.
To get back at us, the commander challenged us to a game of capture the flag the next weekend. The army pretenders won.
Most Adventist high schools schedule two Weeks of Prayer each year. These consist of two meetings a day–an assembly at 10:00 or 11:00 a.m. and an evening meeting. They usually feature a colorful revival speaker–a former drug addict turned preacher, a converted felon or someone more conventional but whose personal story includes a dramatic, intense conversion story. The goal is the spiritual renewal of the school and the conversion of any unbelieving students. Usually, by the end of the week, the emotional tone is pretty intense.
Elder Euel Atchley was the speaker for the Spring Week of Prayer my senior year. He was flamboyant and dogmatic. He told good stories, but he was in favor of the Vietnam War. On Tuesday, Wentworth and I talked to him about our growing conviction we should register as full conscientious objectors and refuse to be drafted rather than join the army as medics.
He ridiculed us. Called us cowards. Questioned our patriotism and our sanity. And dismissed our quotations from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. "That just doesn't apply to real life, at least not the life of a citizen of a world power." He said. "Do you really want Communism to take over the world? Do you want to live in a totalitarian nation?"
I couldn’t answer all his challenges, but neither did I change my mind.
He continued preaching morning and evening. I grudgingly listened. He was a good preacher, even if he was hopelessly wrong about the war. On Friday evening, at the end of his sermon he gave a call. This was typical. Almost all weeks of prayer included calls for students to come forward and rededicate their lives to Jesus or give their hearts to God for the first time. But this call was not about that. Elder Atchley asked for any young man who felt God was calling him into the ministry to stand.
He talked about the call to ministry for a few minutes, described the glory and weight of responsibility involved in the work of ministry, then gave the invitation again.
“If you feel God is calling you to the ministry, I invite you to stand right where you are. I want to pray for you.”
Suddenly I was standing, looking around and wondering why I was standing. I was going to be a doctor, not a minister. Elder Atchley prayed. I sat down, puzzled. Me, a minister? That would be a hoot. Sure, Mrs. Powell, the old Baptist lady who lived across the street from us had suggested that if I didn’t follow my daddy in the practice of medicine, I should consider the ministry. And after I preached my first sermon when I was fifteen years old in my home church a few of the old people had said, “You ought to be a minister.”
But you would expect them to say things like that. They probably didn’t notice when the minister used bad grammar or make mistakes when he was talking about history or science or even the Bible. They were gullible people who believed preachers.
Medicine, especially medicine in a research environment, made a lot more sense than going around calling pacifists unpatriotic. And at least as a physician, I would have some credibility when I spoke about faith and God.
That summer I worked on the water front at Indian Creek Youth Camp which served Adventist kids from Tennessee and Kentucky. In the fall, I registered at Southern Missionary College as a physics and math major.
Chapter 13. Academy
Adventists prize education. However, they are supremely suspicious of the subversive effects of public school education. So they have their own schools. Since Adventists are relatively few and scattered, most states had a boarding high school. Attendance at these “academies” was a rite of passage for most Adventist young people. I was no exception.
In Memphis, the local church school went to tenth grade, so I didn’t had off for boarding academy until my junior year. The level of academic challenge dramatically increased. The Spanish teacher was stern, exact and never wrong. The same teacher taught geometry and chemistry. He was ruthless, taught to the top ten percent of the class and never slowed down. There was no busy work. He didn’t even care about attendance.
“If you think you can make the grade without coming to class, be my guest,” he said. “But if you aren’t making it, you better be here because I won’t put up with any whining about needing help if you aren’t here for class.”
I was amazed to encounter a teacher obviously smarter than I was. I reveled in the structure and rationality of geometry. There was enough complexity to invite good argument about processes and conclusions and enough structure that if you stayed with the problem, eventually you could prove the correct answer beyond dispute.
In chemistry, Devasher insisted he was getting us ready for college, not running a program for building self-esteem. He didn’t care if it was hard. He was notoriously mocking in his interactions with students who didn’t instantly get it. This meant that Linda Sanderson–a gorgeous blond from Atlanta with the richest, most delicious accent I had ever heard–needed my help. Sometimes she was joined by a couple of her friends, also members of the in-crowd. It was my first taste of the social benefit of being smart. I never dated Linda or her friends. I was never part of their circle. But chemistry gave me a certain access.
In lab, DeVasher encouraged us to check things out, to experiment. He was more interested in our engagement with the subject than in fastidious safety. I burned my nose with hydrochloric fumes, scarred my fingers with sulfuric acid and stained them with iodine. DeVasher thought it was all great fun. When I recounted some of my adventures to the public high school chemistry teacher who attended our church back in Memphis, she was appalled. She would never allow her students to be exposed to such risks. My reaction to her horrified reaction: More points for Mr. DeVasher.
DeVasher taught physics and advanced math my senior year. There were only seven of us in advanced math, six guys and Jeannie. Jeannie was cute, quiet, gentle and brilliant. The guys often worked on our homework together. Jeannie worked alone. (School rules did not allow guys and girls to be together after supper.) She would still come out a few points ahead of us. She provoked me to the most intense diligence I had ever invested in school. In spite of my academic envy, or maybe because of it, around her I was perfectly at ease.
In Memphis, the local church school went to tenth grade, so I didn’t had off for boarding academy until my junior year. The level of academic challenge dramatically increased. The Spanish teacher was stern, exact and never wrong. The same teacher taught geometry and chemistry. He was ruthless, taught to the top ten percent of the class and never slowed down. There was no busy work. He didn’t even care about attendance.
“If you think you can make the grade without coming to class, be my guest,” he said. “But if you aren’t making it, you better be here because I won’t put up with any whining about needing help if you aren’t here for class.”
I was amazed to encounter a teacher obviously smarter than I was. I reveled in the structure and rationality of geometry. There was enough complexity to invite good argument about processes and conclusions and enough structure that if you stayed with the problem, eventually you could prove the correct answer beyond dispute.
In chemistry, Devasher insisted he was getting us ready for college, not running a program for building self-esteem. He didn’t care if it was hard. He was notoriously mocking in his interactions with students who didn’t instantly get it. This meant that Linda Sanderson–a gorgeous blond from Atlanta with the richest, most delicious accent I had ever heard–needed my help. Sometimes she was joined by a couple of her friends, also members of the in-crowd. It was my first taste of the social benefit of being smart. I never dated Linda or her friends. I was never part of their circle. But chemistry gave me a certain access.
In lab, DeVasher encouraged us to check things out, to experiment. He was more interested in our engagement with the subject than in fastidious safety. I burned my nose with hydrochloric fumes, scarred my fingers with sulfuric acid and stained them with iodine. DeVasher thought it was all great fun. When I recounted some of my adventures to the public high school chemistry teacher who attended our church back in Memphis, she was appalled. She would never allow her students to be exposed to such risks. My reaction to her horrified reaction: More points for Mr. DeVasher.
DeVasher taught physics and advanced math my senior year. There were only seven of us in advanced math, six guys and Jeannie. Jeannie was cute, quiet, gentle and brilliant. The guys often worked on our homework together. Jeannie worked alone. (School rules did not allow guys and girls to be together after supper.) She would still come out a few points ahead of us. She provoked me to the most intense diligence I had ever invested in school. In spite of my academic envy, or maybe because of it, around her I was perfectly at ease.
Chapter 12. If Only I Had Been a Doctor
The summer after tenth grade, we had a guest preacher one Sabbath for church, Elder Schmidt. He was invited to our house for lunch. I rode with him to give him directions.
Even to an ninth grader, he seemed a little strange. At that time in my life, I wasn’t really familiar with the word, effeminate, but he had a softness that seemed strange in a man. He had attended Madison College with my dad and they had stayed in touch over the years.
Elder Schmidt took ministry and became a pastor. After several years he became a youth director for the Florida Conference, then moved on up the denominational bureaucracy, eventually becoming director of the General Conference Children’s Department. For the last ten years, he had been the editor of “Our Little Friend,” the weekly Sabbath School paper for preschool kids.
In his sermon that morning he talked about the eternal importance of ministry to children. He said the required things. They were all true . . . and dull.
On the drive from church to our house he asked about my career dreams.
“I’m planning to be a doctor. Maybe I’ll be a missionary doctor in Africa.” (There was no point in trying to explain to a preacher about Jacques Cousteau and Ed Link.)
“That’s great. I’ve always admired you dad. He’s a great man. Back when your dad and I were classmates at Madison College, we both were hoping to become doctors. And I would have been a doctor like your daddy, but I got married and didn’t have the money for medical school. So I settled for being a minister.”
I was shocked. He worked for the General Conference. In our denomination, that was like working in the Vatican. There was nothing higher. How could a person work for the General Conference and think of their work as of secondary significance?
“So if you don’t like being a minister, why don’t you do something else?” I asked.
“I’m too old to do anything else. Besides, I have a wife and children who are counting on me to support them. You can’t start over at my age. I have too many responsibilities to change now. I have fifteen years till I can retire.”
By this time, we were pulling up in front of our house on Vinton Ave. My head was spinning as I climbed out of the car. How could this man travel the country talking about the wonderful progress of the church, promoting ministry to children and telling inspirational stories to children–while loathing his work?
He wasn’t the first minister to tell me they wished they were a doctor like my dad. But he was the first to tell me–in plain English–that he was a minister for the money. That the only reason he stayed in the ministry was because of the financial needs of his family. I had never heard a doctor say such a thing.
Even to an ninth grader, he seemed a little strange. At that time in my life, I wasn’t really familiar with the word, effeminate, but he had a softness that seemed strange in a man. He had attended Madison College with my dad and they had stayed in touch over the years.
Elder Schmidt took ministry and became a pastor. After several years he became a youth director for the Florida Conference, then moved on up the denominational bureaucracy, eventually becoming director of the General Conference Children’s Department. For the last ten years, he had been the editor of “Our Little Friend,” the weekly Sabbath School paper for preschool kids.
In his sermon that morning he talked about the eternal importance of ministry to children. He said the required things. They were all true . . . and dull.
On the drive from church to our house he asked about my career dreams.
“I’m planning to be a doctor. Maybe I’ll be a missionary doctor in Africa.” (There was no point in trying to explain to a preacher about Jacques Cousteau and Ed Link.)
“That’s great. I’ve always admired you dad. He’s a great man. Back when your dad and I were classmates at Madison College, we both were hoping to become doctors. And I would have been a doctor like your daddy, but I got married and didn’t have the money for medical school. So I settled for being a minister.”
I was shocked. He worked for the General Conference. In our denomination, that was like working in the Vatican. There was nothing higher. How could a person work for the General Conference and think of their work as of secondary significance?
“So if you don’t like being a minister, why don’t you do something else?” I asked.
“I’m too old to do anything else. Besides, I have a wife and children who are counting on me to support them. You can’t start over at my age. I have too many responsibilities to change now. I have fifteen years till I can retire.”
By this time, we were pulling up in front of our house on Vinton Ave. My head was spinning as I climbed out of the car. How could this man travel the country talking about the wonderful progress of the church, promoting ministry to children and telling inspirational stories to children–while loathing his work?
He wasn’t the first minister to tell me they wished they were a doctor like my dad. But he was the first to tell me–in plain English–that he was a minister for the money. That the only reason he stayed in the ministry was because of the financial needs of his family. I had never heard a doctor say such a thing.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Chapter 11. The Principal
Ninth and tenth grade in the Adventist school in Memphis were not that different from seventh and eighth grade. One teacher for all the classes. In addition, our teacher also served as principal, which meant he frequently was out of the classroom to handle administrative responsibilities. At least the subjects were more interesting. Algebra, biology, history.
In tenth grade, our old class was back together which did not bode well for our teacher. That summer the school had expanded a small room that had previously served as a library. The new addition was our classroom. One unfortunate feature of the room was the heating. Even though construction had added square feet, it had not added any heating capacity. On really cold days, the radiators did not keep up and it was uncomfortably cold.
One morning Mt. Williams stepped into the room just as the bell rang. We were all sitting on the window sill with our feet on the heater registers which were barely warm. He ordered us to our seats. Said he would be just a few more minutes in his office, directed us to get our Bible textbooks out, then stepped back into his office.
We didn't sit.
When he came in again, he got really huffy and demanded that we get to our seats immediately. “Mr. Williams,” I said. “It’s too cold to sit in our seats. We are on strike. We’re going to stay by the heaters until we have more heat.”
Mr. Williams stared at us, speechless. He had ordered us to our seats–twice. He threatened us. We said nothing. We didn’t move. His face turned red. He had this funny thing that happened in his throat when he got upset. Suddenly, he turned and stalked back into his office. We finally tired of sitting on the window sill and returned to our seats. Eventually, he came back to classroom. He said nothing. We said nothing. But class was never quite the same again. He was no longer the undisputed boss.
Then came the great Bible class debate. Based on his interpretation of a passage in the most famous book by the Adventist prophet, Ellen White, he told us that Jesus would return to earth precisely at midnight. I raised my hand.
“Mr. Williams, how can you say that when Jesus himself said, ‘No man knows the day or the hour of his return’”?
“Well Johnny, it’s like this. In Jesus’ day, no one knew. But God has revealed it to us, here in these last days. Notice the words of the prophet, ‘It is at midnight that God acts for the deliverance of His people.’ You can’t get any clearer than that.”
“But the deliverance she is talking about doesn’t have to mean the second coming. It could refer to God saving people who are about to be executed. It could be an earthquake or an angel. There are all sorts of ways that God could act at midnight to save his people. Mrs. White’s words do not pinpoint the hour of Christ’s return.”
“Johnny, we are not to question the prophet. She says in this passage, which is about the end of time and the return of Jesus, that ‘It is at midnight that God acts for the deliverance of His people.’ That’s good enough for me. It should be good enough for all of us.”
At home that night Jeannie and I consulted Mother. Mother always supported our teachers. She never took our side, at least that’s the way we felt. But this time she agreed to help us find evidence to rebut Mr. Williams’ midnight second coming theory.
The next day in Bible class we resumed the debate. I brought out my quotations.
“No one knows the day or hour. . .
“No one should say they know the day or hour . . .
“Time is not a test. . .
Mr. Williams sputtered arguments in response, but he wasn’t prepared for the battle. Eventually, he conceded. I was another step away from trust in the competence of church authority.
In tenth grade, our old class was back together which did not bode well for our teacher. That summer the school had expanded a small room that had previously served as a library. The new addition was our classroom. One unfortunate feature of the room was the heating. Even though construction had added square feet, it had not added any heating capacity. On really cold days, the radiators did not keep up and it was uncomfortably cold.
One morning Mt. Williams stepped into the room just as the bell rang. We were all sitting on the window sill with our feet on the heater registers which were barely warm. He ordered us to our seats. Said he would be just a few more minutes in his office, directed us to get our Bible textbooks out, then stepped back into his office.
We didn't sit.
When he came in again, he got really huffy and demanded that we get to our seats immediately. “Mr. Williams,” I said. “It’s too cold to sit in our seats. We are on strike. We’re going to stay by the heaters until we have more heat.”
Mr. Williams stared at us, speechless. He had ordered us to our seats–twice. He threatened us. We said nothing. We didn’t move. His face turned red. He had this funny thing that happened in his throat when he got upset. Suddenly, he turned and stalked back into his office. We finally tired of sitting on the window sill and returned to our seats. Eventually, he came back to classroom. He said nothing. We said nothing. But class was never quite the same again. He was no longer the undisputed boss.
Then came the great Bible class debate. Based on his interpretation of a passage in the most famous book by the Adventist prophet, Ellen White, he told us that Jesus would return to earth precisely at midnight. I raised my hand.
“Mr. Williams, how can you say that when Jesus himself said, ‘No man knows the day or the hour of his return’”?
“Well Johnny, it’s like this. In Jesus’ day, no one knew. But God has revealed it to us, here in these last days. Notice the words of the prophet, ‘It is at midnight that God acts for the deliverance of His people.’ You can’t get any clearer than that.”
“But the deliverance she is talking about doesn’t have to mean the second coming. It could refer to God saving people who are about to be executed. It could be an earthquake or an angel. There are all sorts of ways that God could act at midnight to save his people. Mrs. White’s words do not pinpoint the hour of Christ’s return.”
“Johnny, we are not to question the prophet. She says in this passage, which is about the end of time and the return of Jesus, that ‘It is at midnight that God acts for the deliverance of His people.’ That’s good enough for me. It should be good enough for all of us.”
At home that night Jeannie and I consulted Mother. Mother always supported our teachers. She never took our side, at least that’s the way we felt. But this time she agreed to help us find evidence to rebut Mr. Williams’ midnight second coming theory.
The next day in Bible class we resumed the debate. I brought out my quotations.
“No one knows the day or hour. . .
“No one should say they know the day or hour . . .
“Time is not a test. . .
Mr. Williams sputtered arguments in response, but he wasn’t prepared for the battle. Eventually, he conceded. I was another step away from trust in the competence of church authority.
Chapter 10. National Geographic
Dad may have been anchored in Memphis by his call to serve the blue collar people of his home town, but he had a restless fascination with the whole world. Maps from National Geographic covered the wall of his ham radio room (his “shack” in ham jargon). Sabbath dinner conversations included reports about his regular conversations with Adventist missionaries. We heard about emergencies in which Dad put Catholic and Lutheran missionaries in touch with their headquarters back here in the States and about phone patches (radio to telephone hookups) that allowed lonely scientists at the South Pole or McMurdo Sound talk with girlfriends and wives back home.
We never threw away a National Geographic Magazine and during my teen years, I devoured every issue, both current and those stored in boxes in Dad’s shack. Through fifth, sixth and seventh grades, articles about Africa fueled my dreams of going to Africa as a doctor. Pictures of dirty villages, of dark women in outlandish jewelry that stretched their necks or earlobes, of people squatting in the dirt to cook, make weapons or groom each other. If anyone needed the benefit of enlightened Western civilization and medical care these folk did.
But somewhere along the way, the magazine became subversive. I wasn’t swayed by the reports of the Leakeys about their findings of ancient hominids in Kenya and Ethiopia. They were obviously benighted evolutionists hopelessly committed to an erroneous understanding of earth history. But the description of their outdoor life and their place in the local society undermined the neat separation between America as the land of plenty and Africa as a world of need.
Africa was not just a place of service. It could also be a place of wonderful, sweet adventure. Their son, Richard, grew up camping with his parents on their digs, thoroughly immersed in the natural and native environments where his parents worked. I still vividly remember a photo of Richard in a muddy lake. Just his head was out of the water draped with moss and algae. The caption explained he had learned from Africans the trick of camouflaging himself as a floating stump to sneak up on ducks. It required great patience, but he could walk slowly, neck-deep, across a pond until he was close enough to grab a duck by its feet.
The lakes of northern Mississippi where we swam and skied were muddy, but the lake Richard was pictured in was more like an algae-covered, late summer pond. I could never bring myself to drape my head with gooey, slimy algae. And grabbing a duck by its feet required a boldness and force of will I didn’t have. But I imagined it. And longed for the unconstrained adventure of a life in the wild.
I read with skeptical fascination the Leakey’s reports of their discoveries of bones and tools and dreamed of doing my own field work to find irrefutable evidence to disprove their theories of ancient evolution and establish the reliability of the Bible. I began to imagine a life that combined high religious purpose with outdoor adventure.
As I moved into my high school years, the magazine continued its subversion. It did not alter my explicit beliefs about earth history or God. Instead I was seduced by the back story of the writers and photographers. They told of exotic customs and strange foods. They reported on elements of culture, climate and biology different from anything I had ever seen. But these reports could be ordered into pre-existing categories in my head. The most subversive thing about these writers was what they revealed of themselves.
When they were in Fiji, National Geographic writers dined with the local king not the villagers. On the Mongolian steppes they were guests of the chief. It was not too difficult to imagine stepping into their culture–not the culture of the people in the pictures, but the culture of the people taking the pictures–urbane, educated, sophisticated, cool. They were a secret aristocracy with privileged access anywhere in the world, the very opposite of the effete dullness I associated with the fat, rich people of upper class Memphis. And certainly very different from the ordered, boring world of conventional Adventist church life.
While I was immune to the science in articles about evolution, I was enchanted by the reports on balloon flights to explore the troposphere, expeditions to the poles and the work of Jacques Cousteau and Jane Goodall. The science reporting that most fascinated me concerned Edward Link’s work on extended periods of living in undersea environments, the story of a midwinter traverse of the Arctic Ocean by the nuclear submarine, Nautilus, and the work of Alvin, a deep-sea submersible used to explore seven miles down in the Marianna’s trench.
In all these expeditions there were doctors. Not missionary doctors, but still doctors. I found my place in the stories in the references to the medical challenges of sustaining human life in a submarine environment.
At school, I was an outsider. I wasn’t picked on. I was just different. I was different at home, too. I was different everywhere. This was unmistakably clear to me by third grade. At recess, I wasn’t the worst ball player, but usually I was no better than the top of the bottom twenty percent. Not infrequently I spent recess inside with Kenny Brooks doing late homework. My parents and teachers talked to me constantly about what I could do if I would just apply myself. I tried sporadically, but the tedium of homework always defeated me. By sixth grade I was aware the cutest girls would never be interested in me. I just didn’t have whatever it was that got their attention. In addition to being clumsy, socially inept, and hopelessly defeated by homework, I was separated from most of my classmates by my intense (fanatical) piety. While the kids were not mean, it was clear I could never fit in with the school crowd.
The world of science was different. It was an exotic, enchanting culture in which the price of admission was intellect not social coolness. Scientists were like missionaries in their ability to flout social conventions and in their intense, life-forming commitments to their tasks. They were an elite I could imagine being part of. At least that’s what I learned reading National Geographic.
We never threw away a National Geographic Magazine and during my teen years, I devoured every issue, both current and those stored in boxes in Dad’s shack. Through fifth, sixth and seventh grades, articles about Africa fueled my dreams of going to Africa as a doctor. Pictures of dirty villages, of dark women in outlandish jewelry that stretched their necks or earlobes, of people squatting in the dirt to cook, make weapons or groom each other. If anyone needed the benefit of enlightened Western civilization and medical care these folk did.
But somewhere along the way, the magazine became subversive. I wasn’t swayed by the reports of the Leakeys about their findings of ancient hominids in Kenya and Ethiopia. They were obviously benighted evolutionists hopelessly committed to an erroneous understanding of earth history. But the description of their outdoor life and their place in the local society undermined the neat separation between America as the land of plenty and Africa as a world of need.
Africa was not just a place of service. It could also be a place of wonderful, sweet adventure. Their son, Richard, grew up camping with his parents on their digs, thoroughly immersed in the natural and native environments where his parents worked. I still vividly remember a photo of Richard in a muddy lake. Just his head was out of the water draped with moss and algae. The caption explained he had learned from Africans the trick of camouflaging himself as a floating stump to sneak up on ducks. It required great patience, but he could walk slowly, neck-deep, across a pond until he was close enough to grab a duck by its feet.
The lakes of northern Mississippi where we swam and skied were muddy, but the lake Richard was pictured in was more like an algae-covered, late summer pond. I could never bring myself to drape my head with gooey, slimy algae. And grabbing a duck by its feet required a boldness and force of will I didn’t have. But I imagined it. And longed for the unconstrained adventure of a life in the wild.
I read with skeptical fascination the Leakey’s reports of their discoveries of bones and tools and dreamed of doing my own field work to find irrefutable evidence to disprove their theories of ancient evolution and establish the reliability of the Bible. I began to imagine a life that combined high religious purpose with outdoor adventure.
As I moved into my high school years, the magazine continued its subversion. It did not alter my explicit beliefs about earth history or God. Instead I was seduced by the back story of the writers and photographers. They told of exotic customs and strange foods. They reported on elements of culture, climate and biology different from anything I had ever seen. But these reports could be ordered into pre-existing categories in my head. The most subversive thing about these writers was what they revealed of themselves.
When they were in Fiji, National Geographic writers dined with the local king not the villagers. On the Mongolian steppes they were guests of the chief. It was not too difficult to imagine stepping into their culture–not the culture of the people in the pictures, but the culture of the people taking the pictures–urbane, educated, sophisticated, cool. They were a secret aristocracy with privileged access anywhere in the world, the very opposite of the effete dullness I associated with the fat, rich people of upper class Memphis. And certainly very different from the ordered, boring world of conventional Adventist church life.
While I was immune to the science in articles about evolution, I was enchanted by the reports on balloon flights to explore the troposphere, expeditions to the poles and the work of Jacques Cousteau and Jane Goodall. The science reporting that most fascinated me concerned Edward Link’s work on extended periods of living in undersea environments, the story of a midwinter traverse of the Arctic Ocean by the nuclear submarine, Nautilus, and the work of Alvin, a deep-sea submersible used to explore seven miles down in the Marianna’s trench.
In all these expeditions there were doctors. Not missionary doctors, but still doctors. I found my place in the stories in the references to the medical challenges of sustaining human life in a submarine environment.
At school, I was an outsider. I wasn’t picked on. I was just different. I was different at home, too. I was different everywhere. This was unmistakably clear to me by third grade. At recess, I wasn’t the worst ball player, but usually I was no better than the top of the bottom twenty percent. Not infrequently I spent recess inside with Kenny Brooks doing late homework. My parents and teachers talked to me constantly about what I could do if I would just apply myself. I tried sporadically, but the tedium of homework always defeated me. By sixth grade I was aware the cutest girls would never be interested in me. I just didn’t have whatever it was that got their attention. In addition to being clumsy, socially inept, and hopelessly defeated by homework, I was separated from most of my classmates by my intense (fanatical) piety. While the kids were not mean, it was clear I could never fit in with the school crowd.
The world of science was different. It was an exotic, enchanting culture in which the price of admission was intellect not social coolness. Scientists were like missionaries in their ability to flout social conventions and in their intense, life-forming commitments to their tasks. They were an elite I could imagine being part of. At least that’s what I learned reading National Geographic.
Chapter 9. Lawful Rebellion
Mr. Wood taught seventh and eight grade at our Adventist School. He was conscientious and boring. I remember thinking how sad it was that some people doing their very best could only be mediocre. Not every kid could be an A student. School work didn’t come easily to everyone, especially math. But still they had to go to school and accept their “C’s” and “B minuses.” It must be like that for adults who became preachers and teachers. They worked as hard as they could, but their best deserved a “C.”
Mr. Wood didn’t try to make us play Patty Cake. He was just plodding. He had spent years building the band program, with a beginners band for the lower grades and the concert band for the upper grades. Even a teenager had to respect his indefatigable commitment. But I couldn’t help overhearing conversations between my mother and my older sister, both musicians, about the pedestrian nature of Mr. Wood’s music. He was sincere, devoted, hard-working, but didn’t have a sharp ear or a gift for conducting.
In class I was required to respect him for his position and his dutifulness. But he failed when measured by the ruthless meritocratic scale my parents constantly held up, a scale with intellectual acumen at the top. Probably second in that ranking was, curiously, skinniness. A fat preacher or teacher was ranked far lower than a dull one. At least Mr. Wood wasn’t fat.
He combed his straight back. It had these amazing waves in it. I had curly hair, but I didn’t have waves like he did–precise, parallel lines of peaks and valleys from his forehead back, neatly held in place by Vaseline hair tonic. (I assumed it was Vaseline. That’s what my dad made me put on my curls to keep them in place.)
I survived seventh grade. The next year, Mr. Wood became the principal and the ninth and tenth grade teacher. I was thrilled we had a new teacher for seventh and eighth grade–Mr. Streeter. He seemed like a really nice man. After the first week I knew this school year was going to be a lot more interesting than seventh grade.
But then came the “peninsula incident.” It was geography class and we were talking about land forms. Mr. Streeter wrote “peninsula” on the board and asked for examples of a peninsula.
I raised my hand.
“Johnny.”
“Florida.”
“No, Florida is an isthmus.”
I raised my hand again. “Yes, Johnny, what is it?
“Mr. Streeter, Don’t you mean Panama is a isthmus?”
“No. Florida is an isthmus.”
“But I thought Panama was an isthmus.”
“No, Panama is a peninsula. Florida is an isthmus.”
I couldn’t believe a teacher could be so dumb. I waited until the lecture was over. Once Mr. Streeter finished and released us to work on the assigned exercises, I got up and brought a dictionary from the shelf back to my desk.
I raised my hand and waited to be recognized. Finally Mr. Streeter looked up from his desk.
“Yes, Johnny, what do you want?”
“Mr. Streeter, I know you said a peninsula is a narrow strip of land that connects two larger land masses. But this dictionary says a peninsula is a strip of land sticking out into a body of water. It lists Panama as an example of an isthmus. Which are we supposed to believe, you or the dictionary?”
He asked me to bring the dictionary to his desk. I did. He read the entries as I stood there.
“Well, I guess you’re right.”
It was only the first time.
We were studying compound interest. He told us he was going to show us a short cut. He took the simple annual interest based on the initial amount, divided it by 365 and multiplied it times the number of days the money was on deposit. “That’s your total interest for the year compounded daily.”
I raised my hand.
We argued round and round.
At home that afternoon, I recounted my argument to Mom. She always supported
teachers when I complained about them, but I could see her surprise as I described Mr. Streeter explanation of compound interest. I showed her my work and she agreed I had it right.
The next day, to his credit, Mr. Streeter said he had done some more study. He went over compound interest again and did it correctly. But the class remembered yesterday.
Blood was in the water, and we were sharks.
One assignment in language arts class was to create our own vocabulary list each week. Each of us chose twenty-five words to write with their definitions. Naturally, I looked for interesting words. The third or fourth paper was returned to me with the word “aardvark.” marked wrong. I couldn’t believe it. I raised my hand. (I only asked questions in private when I didn’t already know the answer.)
“Mr. Streeter, I have the word aardvark on my vocab list. But it’s marked wrong. Can you tell me why it’s marked wrong?”
“Bring it up to my desk.”
I did. I laid my notebook on his desk and pointed to the word.
“What’s wrong with this word?”
“Johnny, your vocab words have to be actual words. You can’t just make up words.”
“But it is a word. I found it in the dictionary.”
“No, it can’t be. There is no such word.”
“Yes, there is. Let me show you.”
I fetched the dictionary, laid it on top my notebook and opened it to the first page of entries. “See. It says right here, aardvark. A-A-R-D-V-A-R-K.” The entire class was listening, delighted.
Late in the fall, I was summoned to a meeting with Mr. Streeter and Mr. Wood, the principal. They talked to me about my attitude. If I wanted to, they said, I could be an influence for good. But my attitude was affecting the other students and making learning difficult. If I couldn’t make some changes, perhaps they would have to expel me.
It was a curious meeting. They were pleading with me to change. But they had nothing definite to pin on me. I hadn’t broken any rules. I never corrected Mr. Streeter without first raising my hand and waiting to be recognized. And Mr. Streeter was always wrong.
Mr. Streeter left after the first semester. I stayed. I felt sorry for him but felt he had earned everything we gave him. I found out later he became a preacher. That suited him–he was a nice guy, just not too bright.
Mr. Johnson took his place. He was a fiery, aggressive teacher. He pushed us hard and we thrived under his pushing. He left half way through the middle of the next year. Kids whispered rumors about something dirty going on at his apartment with some of the boys.
Mr. Wood didn’t try to make us play Patty Cake. He was just plodding. He had spent years building the band program, with a beginners band for the lower grades and the concert band for the upper grades. Even a teenager had to respect his indefatigable commitment. But I couldn’t help overhearing conversations between my mother and my older sister, both musicians, about the pedestrian nature of Mr. Wood’s music. He was sincere, devoted, hard-working, but didn’t have a sharp ear or a gift for conducting.
In class I was required to respect him for his position and his dutifulness. But he failed when measured by the ruthless meritocratic scale my parents constantly held up, a scale with intellectual acumen at the top. Probably second in that ranking was, curiously, skinniness. A fat preacher or teacher was ranked far lower than a dull one. At least Mr. Wood wasn’t fat.
He combed his straight back. It had these amazing waves in it. I had curly hair, but I didn’t have waves like he did–precise, parallel lines of peaks and valleys from his forehead back, neatly held in place by Vaseline hair tonic. (I assumed it was Vaseline. That’s what my dad made me put on my curls to keep them in place.)
I survived seventh grade. The next year, Mr. Wood became the principal and the ninth and tenth grade teacher. I was thrilled we had a new teacher for seventh and eighth grade–Mr. Streeter. He seemed like a really nice man. After the first week I knew this school year was going to be a lot more interesting than seventh grade.
But then came the “peninsula incident.” It was geography class and we were talking about land forms. Mr. Streeter wrote “peninsula” on the board and asked for examples of a peninsula.
I raised my hand.
“Johnny.”
“Florida.”
“No, Florida is an isthmus.”
I raised my hand again. “Yes, Johnny, what is it?
“Mr. Streeter, Don’t you mean Panama is a isthmus?”
“No. Florida is an isthmus.”
“But I thought Panama was an isthmus.”
“No, Panama is a peninsula. Florida is an isthmus.”
I couldn’t believe a teacher could be so dumb. I waited until the lecture was over. Once Mr. Streeter finished and released us to work on the assigned exercises, I got up and brought a dictionary from the shelf back to my desk.
I raised my hand and waited to be recognized. Finally Mr. Streeter looked up from his desk.
“Yes, Johnny, what do you want?”
“Mr. Streeter, I know you said a peninsula is a narrow strip of land that connects two larger land masses. But this dictionary says a peninsula is a strip of land sticking out into a body of water. It lists Panama as an example of an isthmus. Which are we supposed to believe, you or the dictionary?”
He asked me to bring the dictionary to his desk. I did. He read the entries as I stood there.
“Well, I guess you’re right.”
It was only the first time.
We were studying compound interest. He told us he was going to show us a short cut. He took the simple annual interest based on the initial amount, divided it by 365 and multiplied it times the number of days the money was on deposit. “That’s your total interest for the year compounded daily.”
I raised my hand.
We argued round and round.
At home that afternoon, I recounted my argument to Mom. She always supported
teachers when I complained about them, but I could see her surprise as I described Mr. Streeter explanation of compound interest. I showed her my work and she agreed I had it right.
The next day, to his credit, Mr. Streeter said he had done some more study. He went over compound interest again and did it correctly. But the class remembered yesterday.
Blood was in the water, and we were sharks.
One assignment in language arts class was to create our own vocabulary list each week. Each of us chose twenty-five words to write with their definitions. Naturally, I looked for interesting words. The third or fourth paper was returned to me with the word “aardvark.” marked wrong. I couldn’t believe it. I raised my hand. (I only asked questions in private when I didn’t already know the answer.)
“Mr. Streeter, I have the word aardvark on my vocab list. But it’s marked wrong. Can you tell me why it’s marked wrong?”
“Bring it up to my desk.”
I did. I laid my notebook on his desk and pointed to the word.
“What’s wrong with this word?”
“Johnny, your vocab words have to be actual words. You can’t just make up words.”
“But it is a word. I found it in the dictionary.”
“No, it can’t be. There is no such word.”
“Yes, there is. Let me show you.”
I fetched the dictionary, laid it on top my notebook and opened it to the first page of entries. “See. It says right here, aardvark. A-A-R-D-V-A-R-K.” The entire class was listening, delighted.
Late in the fall, I was summoned to a meeting with Mr. Streeter and Mr. Wood, the principal. They talked to me about my attitude. If I wanted to, they said, I could be an influence for good. But my attitude was affecting the other students and making learning difficult. If I couldn’t make some changes, perhaps they would have to expel me.
It was a curious meeting. They were pleading with me to change. But they had nothing definite to pin on me. I hadn’t broken any rules. I never corrected Mr. Streeter without first raising my hand and waiting to be recognized. And Mr. Streeter was always wrong.
Mr. Streeter left after the first semester. I stayed. I felt sorry for him but felt he had earned everything we gave him. I found out later he became a preacher. That suited him–he was a nice guy, just not too bright.
Mr. Johnson took his place. He was a fiery, aggressive teacher. He pushed us hard and we thrived under his pushing. He left half way through the middle of the next year. Kids whispered rumors about something dirty going on at his apartment with some of the boys.
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