Lesson Learned--Slowly

As those who occasionally visit this site probably know, I have been (slowly) working my way through the complete novels of Wilkie Collins (1824-1889). Probably best known for The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone (1868), Collins was very popular during his heyday*--friend and collaborator with Charles Dickens, etc. I've got about four of his novels remaining (I'm reading them in the order of publication).

Currently, I'm reading The Black Robe (1881), a novel about a troubled young man, a new marriage, and some disturbing moves by some Roman Catholic authorities (Collins apparently had some ... issues).

Anyway, last night I was reading about the recent marriage of Louis Romayne to Stella, a young woman with a past she's struggling to conceal. A young priest is helping Romayne with his research and writing--and also trying to convert him (for reasons I'll write about when I finish the book). The young priest, sensing some tension in the new marriage, gives this advice to Romayne:

"Don’t be impatient with her! Put away from you that besetting temptation to speak in irony—it is so easy to take that tone, and sometimes so cruel" (146 in Pocket Classics edition--see pic at top of this post).

The truth of that comment hit me in various ways--but it mostly reminded me of a discovery I made about my relationship with students when I first began my teaching career--seventh grade "language arts" back in the fall of 1966. The lesson was this: Don't be ironic or sarcastic with them.

I'd like to say I discovered this right away (I didn't); I would like to say that once I discovered it, I never did it again (oops!); I would like to say that I am never that way now (hah!).

Yes, early in my career I used irony and sarcasm like weapons. I didn't seem to remember how I'd felt when adults had used that technique on me--how it had made me feel diminished, powerless, angry.

No, I didn't remember that. I just used it like a cat o' nine tails to lash those young students (they were just twelve, for pity's sake!) who were simply trying to figure out how to get along in my class. I wish I could remember some specific examples (actually, I'm kind of glad I can't); suffice it to say: At times I was, as the priest says in the Collins' novel, "so cruel."

As I indicated earlier, I did not entirely lose the impulse to lash out, even near the very end of my career in 2011.

I was teaching those final years part-time at Western Reserve Academy (a grades 9-12 prep school), just a couple of blocks from our house. In good weather I would ride my bicycle--and I wore a helmet.

One morning, arriving at school, as I was dismounting from my bike, a young wag gave me some harmless grief about wearing a helmet. And I--forgetting all I'd learned (or thought I'd learned)--whipped out these words: "Well, I like my brain," I said. "If I had yours, I probably wouldn't bother to wear a helmet."

Ha, ha.

The young man looked as if he'd been punched. And he had. By one of his teachers. I felt terrible--then and later. I like to think that I apologized to him, but I'm not sure I did.

And here's the thing: Those words made me feel diminished, too. As they should have. Once again, I realized I was less than I'd thought I'd been.

Early in my marriage--nearly fifty years ago now--I learned (and quickly so) to keep sarcasm and harsh irony chained up in the back yard. Why would I want to make the woman I love feel bad? (Unfortunately, the creature escaped from the back yard now and then, charged into the house, bit my lover, snarled at the "man" who hadn't chained him securely, a "man," who, by then, was snarling at himself as he returned the thoughtless creature to his chains.)

We live. We learn. But sometimes--at least in my case--we don't learn fast enough--or thoroughly enough. And Regret becomes a common companion.


*a word "of uncertain origin" says The Oxford English Dictionary

cat o' 9 tails
(and you can buy them online! yikes!)