Mr. D

I went to high school in rural, middle Tennessee. A public school, centrally located, it was just one of two secondary schools in the whole of the county. In fact, it is not uncommon for folks from very small towns in the south to provide the name of their county as an answer instead of a city. Because you have probably never heard of it.

Ashland City, my hometown, is just 30 minutes northwest of Nashville, the state’s second most populous city (behind Memphis) and I’d say just 5% of people who ask where I am from know where it is. If they are older or are employing a spit cup, they are more apt to know. Ashland City is just a street light and a McDonald’s and a courthouse with kids in big trucks in front of it every Friday night. The school year’s biggest parties were held in fields around fire. Just down from the cows. And illegally. There was always the threat of getting caught, since everyone there was drunk and hollering, and parties often ended with teenagers scattering into the woods upon first sight of blue lights. I’ve heard tales of kids running full-tilt into a fence of barbed wire in the black of the night. I didn’t see it for myself. I hardly ever made it out for those things, as Bud Lite and bug bites weren’t my bag.

I had Show Choir practice and a newspaper to edit and straight As to get. Besides, at 7 in the morning there was Academic Decathlon study meetings. (I so hate the high school me.)

Academic Decathlon was coached (and I use the wod loosely) by one of Ashland City’s most legendary history teachers, Mr. D. He taught only Advanced Placement courses and designed a modern history class that was supposed to be incredibly tough, nearly impossible to ace. All the freshman and sophomore honor students had heard nothing but the scariest things about Mr. D. People said he taught just like a college professor and that if you didn’t learn to take quick and precise notes and show up every day and take tests that take over two hours to complete you’d never so much as pass his class. I was thrilled for the challenge.

Because my school sorta sucked. It did. I had some really amazing teachers who were brilliant and enthusiastic and nurturing, but not more than three. In, like, all of my pre-college public school education. When the new Geometry teacher took us outside to use the lines and angles and points of the buildings as class material kids flipped out. Hands-on learning? Say what? I figured geometry would be taught using one of those film strips that has the tape for audio seperate, its frames clicked manually by one lucky student, who was so very often me, since I volunteered for everyfuckingthing. It wasn’t Tracy Flick syndrome, it was that a bright kid in that sort of backward learning environment has to be inventive. Immerse herself in extra-cirricular activites and debate team and thespian society because the core classes, the bare minimum required, is almost nothing at all.

So, I was ready for Mr. D. I knew him only by reputation, and by his beige BMW. Mr. D drove to school everyday in an immaculately kept, but seriously old, BMW. He drove into the parking lot at quite a clip, decked out in driving gloves, and was a proud member of the BMW Car Club. This I knew about the man before I ever stepped foot into his classroom. The first morning I did, though, I had a fat, clean notebook and three full pens of ink. By the end of the semester the notebook was full, the pens were bled dry, but I knew no more about history than when I began. The intense and lauded teaching style of the infamous Mr. D was nothing more than him reading aloud decade-old notes he’d written in dry erase marker on clear laminates which he projected to an overhead screen. We merely copied down the words, ignoring his speech, since it was the very thing we were already writing down. He’d move quickly, taking away the laminate before some of us were finished, and smiled at himself for a job well done. He was tough. A regular John Keating. Molding the minds of the young one laminate at a time. Come test time we’d all spend several hours memorizing the notes before throwing them back up onto paper the next morning. As all around.

Not only did he totally suck as an instructor, he outright lied about shit. During the several weeks we spent on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, he lined the walls of the classroom with copies of German letters and other second-rate memorabilia. One afternoon he stood in front of the class, thin, wiry, with a headfull of greasy hair. You could count on it. Monday he’d have clean, somewhat lackluster hair. Tuesday it’d be oily with a bit of a cow’s lick in back. Wednesday, it looked like he stuck his head in a tub of butter for breakfast and he was starting to smell a little ripe. Thursday he’d repeat the process over again. Ad nauseum.

Anyway, without prompting, Mr. D begins to translate some of the German found in the letters on the wall to us. I’m listening intently when my friend Brian, who has taken three years of German from one of the truly brilliant teachers at that school, leaned over to tell me that our instructor was full of shit. He’d read the letters, and while he couldn’t fully translate them, he was sure as shit that what Mr. D said they meant wasn’t even close. I saw Kayce, another thrid year German student whispering to our friend Robin and I knew that maybe Brian was right. He was just making stuff up! All four of us discussed it later and opted not to confront him about it, to just laugh it up between ourselves. Oh, and we told everyone else in the class.

Which is why I was totally flabbergasted to see him get called the fuck out–not by his students, but by his colleagues. Appaently, this guy was the laughing stock of his fellow AP teaching staff. One afternoon, my journalism teacher Mr. M, my honors English teacher, Mrs. B and Mr. D were discussing “The Color Purple” as some students sort of listened on. As it so happens, Mr. D and Mrs. B were the other two totally amazing teachers I mentioned, and my repect for them that afternoon multiplied.

It turns out that Mr. D, in his discussion of the film, basically quoted word-for-word a People magazine review he’d read–which, unbeknownst to the younger of us, was his wont to do. Mr. M and Mrs. B had both read the same review. Grinning at one another, Mr. M and Mrs. B nodded at his appraisal. Then, totally off the cuff, Mr. M asks Mr. D what he thinks of “the governor in that one scene.”

Mr. D begins to talk in circles about nothing really, how he thought it was essential and powerful. None of the students had seen the film, and in truth were only half-listening to the conversation, when Mr. M let out this enormous “HA!” and excalimed that there was no governor.

They certainly had our attention now, and the look on Mr. D’s face was one I’ll never forget. Sheer shock. His eyebrows shot up and he stammered and stuttered and Mrs. B burst out laughing before she could help herself. I had never been so surprised or embarrassed for anyone I held in esteem before. Sure he was full of shit, but I still considered him an authority. It was uncomfortable and hilarious at the same time, and I’ve never since seen someone get so totally thrown off balance.

Mr. D stormed away and Mr. M made us promise not to embarass him further by spreading it around. He felt bad about it afterward.

All this to say thank you to the person who sent me this. Perhaps this book will serve to correct the damage done by my “brilliant” honors history teacher.

Everything I learned might be a lie.