My Seniors' Moments--Best of Fall, 2010

This past semester, I kept a record of responses to directions, statements of fact and other utterances given to my British Lit and Composition classes. While we did get into some approaching-depth-type discussions, there were also quite a few doozies--non sequiters and otherwise notable statements. I have collated the most frequent of them below—in order to make the list, some semblance of the statement had to have been said three times or more in response to the listed situation.

Like last year, I feel the need to stress that these are not invented or fictionalized in any way. These are my children. My students. My classes.

My God.

Anyway, Happy Holidays.

Things typically said the first five minutes before class

“Do we need our book today?”
"What are we doing today?"
“When is the essay due?”
"I forgot my book."
"When is class over?"
"Will this be on the test?"
"What's a Homework Pass?"

Things most often said in response to a direct question

"I wasn't sleeping."
"What?"

Things most often said upon second request for response to direct question

"Am I exempt from the final?"

Response from student in Seat 17 when greeted with a "Good morning"

"I think this carpet is lame."

Things said during our study of Francis Bacon

"His name is Bacon? That's stupid."
"I'm sorry, but seriously...Bacon?"

Conversations most often had when discussing a student's tardy problem

"I'm not tardy."
“You can’t mark me tardy.”
"How many tardies do I have, anyway?"
"Whoah..."
"Then I wasn't tardy."

Things most often said upon perusal of the day's schedule

"Are we watching a movie today?"
"Do we have a fire drill today?"
"Do we have a quiz today?"
"Are we reading about the Vietnam War today?" (I did mention this was a British Lit class, right?)
"Is today your birthday?"
"Wow! Happy Birthday!"
"It's not your birthday?"
"Why did you say today was your birthday?"
"What is today?"

Answers I got to the question, "Why doesn't Hamlet immediately kill his uncle?"

"Let's look this play up on Youtube."
"I lost my textbook. Can I have yours?"
"I want to go home."

Things said when studying Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen

"Virgin? Heh hehehheh..."
"Why did they call her that?"
"Heh hehheh...Virgin…"

Things said concerning bathroom requests

"Can I go to the bathroom?"
"Hey, can I go to the bathroom?"
"This time, I really do need to go to the bathroom."
"I NEVER ask to go to the bathroom. So...can I go to the bathroom?"
"Do you have any more tissue? No? Then can I go to the bathroom?"
"Where is the bathroom?"

Concerning the last five minutes of class, especially before lunch

"I like Jersey Shore."
"How much longer to lunch?"
"Can I go to lunch early?"
"Do you have fifty cents I can borrow?"
"Did you get a haircut?"
"Why don't you get a haircut?" (Okay, this one is a fair question.)

Things said on days when the weather is moderately drizzly

"Do you think they'll cancel school because of the wind?"
"Do you think they'll cancel school because of the rain?"
"Do you think they'll ever cancel school?"
"Shit, they never cancel school. It's so unfair."

Things a student in Seat 11 said on November 4, when asked to take his book out

"Look, I can wrap this book completely around my pencil! Watch!"
"I need a new book."

Things said upon a request for students to get their books out and turn to page 73

"You never said we needed our books today."
"What page are we on?"
"What page?"
"You never said what page we're on."
"I still don't know what page we're on. I give up."
"Do these books even have pages?"

A Student's Introduction to William Shakespeare, by William Shakespeare

Greetings, 21st Century high school students. As I write this, I can’t help but notice that I’ve been dead for almost four hundred years now, and the planet is a decidedly different place. In my day, I was lucky if I didn’t get a bucket of offal thrown on my head when walking the city streets, and now, apparently, the real danger is carbon emissions and too much food. My my, we have wasted time and now time doth waste us.

As I look over this brave new world of modern medicine and McDonalds you all have managed to cook up, I can’t help but think, Hoo boy, you people really made a dog’s breakfast of art, didn’t you?

For starters, in my day, the theatre was a place where the struggles of humanity were replayed and put on display for all to enjoy. Now, you apparently have something called Reality Television, where people stumble between bars, bump uglies and talk about themselves in the third person. No catharsis. No resolution. No wars or even mistaken identities and twins separated at birth. What kind of amateurs do you have putting this crap on? (By the way, do you know if they need writers for that job? They do? Okay, can you give me the address?)

Which reminds me, what’s this reputation I’ve managed to garner with every single high schooler in the building? I’m boring? I’m hard to understand? Give me a break—back in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, I regularly sold out every seat in the house. Did you see my Winter’s Tale? I mean, I had a bear come out in Act IV and eat a guy. A fucking bear! What, you want the bear to transform into a vampire and ride a motorbike into a burning building or something? You do? Well, I’ll get back to you.

(No I won’t, actually. Please. You know how hard it is to get a guy in a bear costume to look frightening? And we didn’t even have Marlon Brando back then.)

I tried to soften up the first class I sat in on this morning. I tried to tell them not to transform the pillars of the world into a strumpet, but all I got was, “Oh, so you’re the berk who wrote all that ‘To be or not to be’ rot?” and then Bam! I’m getting my arm twisted behind my back and made to say things like “I’m a big fat stupidhead” and “I liketh to kisseth guyseth.” And I thought I was lowering myself when I made the Porter a drunk.

Look, I’ll admit—my language is elevated. But I was trying to combine poetry with drama, and in all modesty, I think I pulled it off pretty well. Try looking at it this way—you don’t have to “get” every single line I wrote in order to follow my plays. Hell, I don’t get it all the time. When I wrote Hamlet, I made him in his early twenties, but then that windbag Richard Burbage just had to play him, so suddenly he’s a middle-aged overweight has-been, which so completely screwed up the play’s continuity, I don’t even want to talk about it. But that’s not even the point. The point is, when a character jumps out and says, “Lay on, Macduff!” or “The play’s the thing!” or “What fools these mortals be,” he’s not saying something you can’t get. You might just have to think about it for a minute.

In fact, try right now, with the “What fools these mortals be” line. What does Puck really mean?

• Mortal people are idiots
• Idiots are mortal people
• People idiots mortal are
• “Do we have to bring our book today?”

Okay, never mind. I guess I’m saying that, the fact that I’m writing verse drama just means I think highly enough of you to be able to follow it. If your brains have been turned slowly into tapioca mush from watching and reading the stuff I’ve chanced upon since I came back to life, yeah, it’s going to hurt a little. No fooling. So does going to the gym when you’ve been moldering on a couch over a long, inert weekend. But “challenging” doesn’t mean “I’m dumb if I don’t get it.” Get it?

Which reminds me—whoever said I was an elitist artist? Elitist? Me? Are you kidding? Half my audience was wasted on beer made from sawdust, for Christ’s sake. You know how many fart jokes I had to throw into Comedy of Errors before the Neanderthals I worked with would put it on? You know what “poprin pear” in Romeo and Juliet really means? Or “thereby hangs a tail” in Othello? You want to really get under your teacher’s skin, find the double entendres. At least then he’ll know you’re reading the play and not just using it as a pillow.

Well, I digress—I have a callback for a soup commercial and I need to rehearse my lines. So, in closing, I can’t promise you’ll love everything I wrote, but give it a go, will you? You give it some time, you might surprise yourself.

But I do apologize for Kenneth Branagh. I promise, I’ll have a word with him as soon as he’s done mucking up my work in his latest film.

Forsooth,

POSTSCRIPT: Famous Plays by Shakespeare

• Macbeth
• Twelfth Night
• Twelfth Night Part II: The Morning After
• MacBird
• Gremlins 3: Scaly Little Things
• MacBush
• I Do Not Like Green Eggs and Hamlet
• Dude, Where’s My Friends, Romans, Countrymen?
• MacBlago
• The Hairy Wives of Windsor
• MacPoliticianIDon’tLike