The Academic Path Less Taken

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference." Robert Frost

It’s a miracle that I was never held back a grade by the time I got to high school. My report cards were littered with the letter F.  Somehow, I managed to squeak by each year. Lots of last minute extra credit work. This pattern followed me into high school. I was failing or just barely passing most classes my sophomore year. Near the end of that year, we were given a national standardized test to take. I liked these tests. It changed up the schedule and they typically seemed easy to me. So, I took the test and as usual, I heard my friends talk about how hard it was. I didn’t get it. It was easy stuff.

The results came back and my verbal score was 98^th percentile. 

My tenth-grade English teacher at North Mecklenburg High School, Mrs. Scarborough was a no-nonsense type. She barked out our names and insisted we keep our shirts tucked in. She was stern, but kind on a one on one basis. When the test results came to her attention, she asked me to stay after class. She gave me a hard stare and said, “Do you know what these results say about your ability in English class?” I shrugged. She said, “Don’t you shrug your shoulders at me. You score a 98 percentile! You know how to use your words!” I said that the test seemed easy to me. She sat back and looked at me with a puzzled expression. “Are you bored in my class?”, she asked. 

A million thoughts raced through my head. I was bored in every class. I could not wait for each class to come to an end. The clock always moved tortuously slow. But I could not tell Mrs. Scarborough any of that. I squeaked out, “No ma’am.” She replied, “I think you are bored, and that’s OK.” She said that she was not upset with me. She felt that I was not being challenged enough in my classes and that is why I was making bad grades. Oh no, what had I gotten myself into? I could see the stacks of harder work piling up in my head. No. Mrs. Scarborough, I don’t think boredom is the issue. I do not want to have to do harder work. I’m failing now. My grades will only get worse. Mrs. Scarborough said she would be talking to my parents and that she was recommending that I be placed in advanced Language Arts and Social Studies courses for eleventh grade. Ugh. Two roads diverged before me. Who will guide me to the right path?

I kept the first for another day.

So, that’s how this nearly failing student ended up in advanced classes the next school year. I was still in math and science with all my buddies. But then for third period I reported to Advanced Language Arts with Mrs. Maye. She was young and pretty. She spoke with a soft voice. I thought these kids are going to walk all over her.  But there was something different going on. The other students were sitting quietly in their seats. They actually seemed to be eagerly awaiting to hear from our new teacher. I’d never experienced that. There was no cross-room banter. No papers being tossed across the room. It was quiet. So, I sat quietly as well.

Mrs. Maye had written her name on the board. She proceeded to tell us a little about herself. She had a nephew that she was very proud of. He was a basketball star at one of our rival high schools. I’m not sure that scored her the points she was expecting. However, I was about to become an uncle myself, and I could relate to the pride she displayed. In my other classes, some students were already parents or about to be parents themselves. I scanned the room. No pregnancies in here. I saw kids I recognized, and a few that I knew. Kids who easily adapted between their more academic friends and their friends who seemed to have no real interest in school other than the parties.

I believe we started the year with poetry. Secretly, this excited me. I had fancied myself a poet. 

I dabbled in rhymes. I had a few friends from the bus and from journalism class that I shared my writing with. All girls. Girls loved a good rhyme. I had no real clue about poetic devices, but Mrs. Maye was about to change that. I fell in love with alliteration and assonance. I was thrilled to discover that onomatopoeia was a real thing. I asked Mrs. Maye if I could share Todd Rundgren’s song about it with the class. She warily agreed, and then delighted in the song once she realized it was clean!! “Onomatopoeia, every time I see ya, my senses tell me hubba, and I just can’t disagree-a, I got a feeling inside that I can’t describe, it’s sort of whack, whir, buzz, beep, echo, hiccup….” The class loved it too. Kids actually thanked me for sharing it. This would not have happened with my regular buddies. I would have been the target of lots of jokes about my musical taste. “Why didn’t you play some AC/DC?”, I imagined they would have asked. I had taken the path less traveled by.

Then we moved on to writing poems. There was a bunch of lessons about rhyme and meter that frankly frustrated me. It seemed like math. I wanted to freely express myself without rules. I managed through this portion of the semester. At the start of first quarter, we were finally able to begin writing our own poetry. Mrs. Maye had done an excellent job exposing us to a variety of styles, across various cultures. I loved Langston Hughes, Edgar Allen Poe, but my favorite was Robert Frost. Particularly, The Road Not Taken. 

Mrs. Maye guided us through writing poems by first having us follow well established patterns. For the first time since grade school, I was proud of the work that I was creating. It was not A-level work, but it was B and B+. My parents were happy. My mother shared poems that she had written in high school with me. She was good, and I had no idea about that prior to eleventh grade. It was a new connection that we could share, and I have Mrs. Maye to thank for that.  My first poems rambled, lacked the rhyme and meter that makes a poem flow properly. Mrs. Maye took an interest. She saw something in my work that indicated potential. She spent time with me at her desk. She helped me hone the work. But, she also allowed some of my sloppier work that seemed artistically significant to me at the time. A master teacher who did not want to push so hard as to squash my new-found excitement about school work.

Toward the end of the year, I decided to push my limits with Mrs. Maye. I was testing her, but also struggling to find a balance between my cool, rock and roll persona and my new-found enthusiasm for education. The assignment was to write a research paper on a famous American poet. I chose Jim Morrison, the lead singer for The Doors. Morrison considered himself a poet. In addition to cryptic lyrics with shamanistic overtones in the music by The Doors, Morrison wrote long multi-stanza poems that were probably sophomoric compared to the greats that Mrs. Maye had in mind. But they were full of angst and crazy spirituality that fascinated me. Mrs. Maye asked me to meet with her to discuss the project. She was kind, but discouraging. She worried that there would not be enough research material. I dug in and argued that Rolling Stone magazine, as well as books on the life of “The Lizard King”, a name he had given himself, were adequate materials. In the end, she reluctantly agreed.

Of course, I turned it in late and suffered the consequence of a letter grade reduction. But I think I still made a B-.  I’ll never forget the dedication of Mrs. Maye to her students. I will always remember the fact that she noticed my potential and held me to account. I will be forever grateful that she realized the critical moment to step back and let me do an ill-advised research paper because she saw the value in fostering my enthusiasm rather than remaining rigid in insisting on a more traditional subject.   

And I am grateful to Ms. Scarborough who was the first to really question why I was not working up to my potential. Many thanks to these fantastic teachers. Who knows where that other road would have landed me at this point in my life. I can only say that I have no regrets about being directed down the road less traveled. It made all the difference.

Peace on Earth

Is there a war on Christmas?  For several years, I have been adamant in answering this question with a big “NO!” After all, as an educated, southern liberal married to a Jewish woman, I would certainly have inside information if there was a war on Christmas. Weren’t the conservative Christians accusing the liberal elite of stopping them from saying Merry Christmas?  I am inclined to identify myself with the very people that the poor Christmas-loving victims have accused of attempting to rob them of their Holly-Jollys. If there were such a plot, I would know. I’m on the inside. I would have been brought into the fold on this conspiracy. But alas, no one ever asked me to attend a secret meeting in which we plot to overthrow Santa Claus. However, I have concluded that the war on Christmas is real. Only it’s not the politically-correct liberal elite that have conspired to rob us of real Christmas joy.

In the eyes of the conservative Christian, the biggest piece of evidence presented that battle against all things snowy-and-white is real, is the inclination of some people to be inclusive in their Holiday greeting. According to the Christmas-defenders, saying Happy Holidays is a clear attack on the Christian Christmas. They say that Happy Holidays is politically-correct. You can almost hear them spitting the words “politically-correct” off their tongues, disgusted how those words taste as they say them. After all, they would argue, this is a Christian country and they have the right to not have to worry about offending people. I often wonder why it is that Christians seem so hell-bent on their right to offend people. As one defender of Christmas said, “I’m gonna say Merry Christmas whether you damn well like it or not. Have a f@*%king Merry Christmas.” Take that. 

But if the liberal elite are not waging the War on Jingle Bells and HoHoHos, then who is? In my estimation, the war on Christmas is much older than the political correctness movement. In fact, the real war on Christmas is plotted in secret meetings behind closed doors all over this country. The people responsible are all around us. They work with us, they teach in our schools, and live in our neighborhoods. And get ready for this…..they even go to our churches! Gasp! What??  Churchgoing folk might really be anti-Christmas plotters. Presbyterians, Baptists, Lutherans, and Catholics are diligently working to take the Merry out of Christmas?  From my perspective, it looks more like they are trying to take the Holy out of Christmas. And by “they,” I mean us. All of us. All of us Christians.

Yes, I am Christian. Baptist, to be specific.  But, I don’t believe in flying my religious flag so that everyone can see just how damn proud I am to be Christian. Pride in being Christian is counter to being Christian. To have pride in your righteousness is to lose your righteousness. And isn’t the desire to shout Merry Christmas from the mountaintops just that? I’m not talking about genuinely wishing someone a Merry Christmas.  No one wants to take that right from anyone. Please, by all means, say Merry Christmas to those you love, to the hungry, to the homeless, to the refugee. But say it because you mean it. Do not rant about your right to say Merry F’ ing Christmas to whoever you want. That, my friend, is just an exercise in smugness and pomposity.

Now, back to the real war on Christmas. We recently watched my younger daughter’s performance in her school Christmas program. They did a reader’s theatre version of “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” She played Lucy. As you know, Lucy was obsessed with “Nickels, Dollars, cold hard cash!” Admittedly, this was the most convincing line my daughter delivered during her performance. She could relate.  And I believe that we have all been conditioned to relate to Lucy’s perspective on the value of Christmas. We are pummeled with the capitalist idea of Christmas constantly. Most of our economy is dependent upon the Christmas spirit filling us with fervor to rush out to stores, go online, and descend upon malls to shop, shop, shop.  We must have the latest gadgets. We must out-decorate our neighbors. So, we buy blow-up santas, snowmen, and even manger scenes. We shine spotlights on our decorations and feel happy. “See!”, we shout with our flashing snowflake lights, “I am the biggest celebrator of Christmas on my entire street.” Christmas tradition has become a Christmas competition. Or vis-versa.

So, our fellow churchgoers are secretly meeting behind closed doors and plotting against Christmas. They do it in special rooms, seated around fancy tables in cushy chairs. They plot their war on large screens using Power Point presentations. Power Point is the most devious of tools at their disposal. They use it to make graphs, and charts, and even funny memes to convince those at the highest levels of corporations across this country that Christmas is fundamentally commercial in nature. 

Cold, hard cash is the real enemy of Christmas. To paraphrase Reverend William Barber, we celebrate Christmas in the “spirit of Caesar, not the spirit of God.”  And then we ourselves become the real soldiers in the battle to destroy Christmas. We buy into the whole thing. We become more concerned with the giving and getting than we do with the birth of a savior.

The war on Christmas is an American war. It has USA written all over it. In fact, the very idea that saying Happy Holidays is somehow bad would only happen in America. We are a nation of egotists. It’s all about us. In “A Charlie Brown Christmas”, it’s Linus who reminds us of the true meaning of Christmas. And he does it in the simplest way, he just recites the story of what happened in the City of David. Holding his blanket, with the house lights turned down, he says that on this day a Savior was born. It is the quietness of that moment that stands out from all the commercial cacophony. There is a stillness that happens during the Linus scene that is deeply moving. I believe it is in that stillness that we can save Christmas from the real war it faces.

Every year the drumbeat leads us to the inevitably, increasing volume of Black Friday. Black Friday, becomes Cyber Monday, and the world loses itself in a mindless rush to make each Christmas bigger and better than ever before. The growing sounds of 24-hour Christmas stations, decorating parties, and jingling santas sounds like a symphony headed for a crescendo without their conductor. The noise reaches an unbearable point, nearly shattering the glass that protects the real Christmas.  But then, it happens.

Every year. Without fail.

The whole country stops and takes a breath. You can feel it. It’s that quiet stillness that only comes when the house lights are turned down. The moment that a simple story of weary refugees giving birth to a savior, using a manger as a makeshift bed, brings a holy hush over our lives. In that quiet moment, we sit with loved ones, notice the beauty of the stillness, and rediscover the true meaning of Christmas. Love.  It’s the greatest weapon in our arsenal. We can win the war on Christmas. 

Joy to the world.