Jim Hare classic posts Archives

Who Do You Have This Year?

Walt, et al.

This story is about a teacher, but I think it applies to doctors/healers too.

Students will often ask each other, “Who do you have this year?” instead of “What are you taking?" They know the class is less important than “who” is the teacher.

One will say, “I got Merriweather,” and there will be groans, and eyes will roll, and anther will say, “I got Johnson,” and those listening will go, “Oh you lucky!” with voices of envy.

Some teachers have a magic that has created a practice called “crashing classes,” which is when you try to weasel your way into an already full class. Sometimes it is because “so and so” is an easy grader, but not always. Sometimes the lessons are less about literature, for instance, than about “something else”, something only that certain teacher can impart. That is why you take Johnson, not literature, because even though your transcript says literature, what you really get is Johnson!

Doctor Johnson was, in fact, my teacher of Shakespeare. We just called him “Johnson”. To give you an idea of how he looked, his gray, shaggy hair and wild look was pure Christopher Lloyd; however, I took his class long before Lloyd did his characterization of Professor Emmet Brown in the “Back to the Future” trilogy, so you’d have to say the look was actually pure “Johnson”.

Johnson’s wardrobe looked thrown together in a typical, unkempt professor stereotype. His oddball reputation included the rumor that he drank in his camper in the parking lot. Only when I became a senior was my priority number high enough to get me into one of his classes.

His severe speech impediment was a frequent gulping hesitation, which left us desperately hiding giggles the first day, like in church, but that glaring defect in his delivery seemed to disappear in the electricity of his presence. He won us over by sharing the sorts of things teachers and writers of traditional texts had held back from us for years. In typical public education we are espaliered on a trellis of politically correct curriculum, but Johnson’s garden was much less restrained. He led us into Shakespeare’s lusty humor, the bawdy puns, and obscure lewd meanings, and once we had given ourselves over, he lifted us high into the great truths, the universal human predicaments, and the beauty of the language. He invited us to wander off track and relate the themes to our own lives. It was glorious, and our spirits grew!

Student popularity gave Johnson a measure of power on campus. He was a thorn in the side of administration and was not much for following lesson plans, curriculum guidelines, record keeping, or grading on the curve. His roll taking was a sham, since he marked everybody present every day. Nobody would ever think of cutting his class anyway, so it worked out.

One day he announced that everybody in class would get either an “A” or a “B.” He said that “administration” was forcing him to give a test but that he would grade it as follows: If you did well you would get an “A.” If you did not do very well, you’d get a “B.” “They won’t like it,” he said with a rapid series of his strange hesitating gulps, which got more spasmodic and amusing as they mixed with his chortles as he revealed his amusing little plan, “but there’s not a damn thing they can do about it.”

One day he came in with only a hand mirror, which he put on the lectern. He went to the windows and stood with his back to us for an uncomfortably long moment. We knew something was up. He turned and came back to the mirror, took it up, and began a soliloquy. Gone was Johnson, and in his place was a king. He strutted, he paced, and he fretted. He moaned, he raged, and he agonized at the mirror. In the end, he flung the mirror into the wall and walked out, crunching over the pieces of broken glass as he left. For a moment there was only a room full of wide eyes and open mouths. We sat there silent, like you do after a particularly poignant movie ending. We didn’t know if he was coming back or not. He did not, and we left quietly.

When he returned for the next class, we all stood and gave him a round of applause, to which he responded with a sweeping bow. While he lectured that day, I heard a classmate whisper what I hadn’t realized. The speech defect had not happened during his performance the class before, but it was back now. By this time in the semester we were used to it, and did not notice it much anyway, but it is true, Johnson’s speech was entirely clear during his act.

Whenever I think back on my class in Shakespeare, what I remember and think about is Johnson. He was more than the teacher; he was the lesson. That is why I say I took “Johnson” that year instead of “Shakespeare”.

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