By MaryJanice Davidson
I was an air-force brat, which is a fine way to learn to adapt to new situations but a rotten way to get to know teachers. I never tried in school, because I always knew we'd be moving again, so why bother to please a teacher?
Then I met Mr. Fogarty.
My family moved for the last time, settling in Cannon Falls, Minnesota, where I finished high school. I was the class clown, but Mr. Fogarty had the nerve to see past my wisecracking surface to the intellect beneath. He had the nerve to expect me to – ugh - learn. Get good grades. Excel.
Naturally, I fought this. I'd been coasting just fine for years. I knew I wouldn't have trouble graduating. I wasn't planning to go to college, so who cared what my G.P.A. was?
I explained this to Mr. Fogarty during our student/teacher conference and left his classroom certain he understood what I required — namely, to be left alone to goof off until graduation.
The next day I discovered he had enrolled me in ISP.
ISP was an independent study program for the super-smart kids. I can't imagine the strings Mr. Fogarty must have pulled to get me, with my mediocre G.P.A. and smart-ass attitude, signed up. My jaw dropped when he explained that study hall — precious study hall, formerly used for napping! - would be devoted to working on independent study programs.
"What independent study programs?" I shrieked.
He remained unperturbed, although I was standing so close my yelling was blowing his bangs back from his forehead. "Whichever ones you like. Pick any two subjects you want to study."
I was furious at his interference. And a little flattered. Mr. Fogarty thought I was smart enough to be in a class with the likes of Marnie Ammentorp and Kirsten Hammer and Jessica Growette - the really smart kids. The last time a teacher took such an interest in my brain was to ask if I had suffered head trauma as a child, since I napped so much during school hours.
Outwardly, I remained irritated. I'll fix him, I thought. Any two topics? Okey-dokey, pal. You asked for it.
Mr. Fogarty was a religious man, a devoted father and easily embarrassed. I maliciously decided we would learn anatomy together. It would be torture for him; he'd drop this whole independent study nonsense, and I could go back to reading comics during study hall.
My plan didn't work. He got me a copy of Gray's Anatomy and we were off, starting with the names of the bones. All 206 of them. He didn't want to be there. I didn't want to be there. But he stuck it out and made me stick it out. While we studied metacarpals and metatarsals, he talked about the speech team.
As if it wasn't bad enough that I was memorizing the femur and the coccyx, now he was trying to sign me up for after-school activities. The man was insane!
He needed someone for the storytelling category. I resisted. He persisted. I told him I couldn't memorize a hundred stories in time for the tournament that weekend. He told me I could memorize a hundred thousand stories if I wanted. "You're not fooling anybody," he said. "I know there's a brain in there. Saturday, 8:00 a.m. Don't be late."
I wasn't late. I was amazed to find myself there, but I wasn't late. I was scared. I was sure I couldn't do the work, but Mr. Fogarty thought I could. And for the first time, I didn't want to disappoint my teacher.
Storytelling is just like it sounds...you read a big book of fairy tales (that year's book had 216 stories). Then you draw to find out what story you're supposed to tell. That's why it was important to read every story - if you drew one you hadn't read, you were sunk. You
I didn't have to worry about that; to my surprise, I'd easily read the stories in time. But I worried about the competition. The other storytellers were all tiny and had bows in their hair and big eyes and wore ruffled dresses. I towered over all my classmates and was darned near as tall as Mr. Fogarty. I was clumsy - always tripping or dropping things or stubbing my toe. I didn't wear bows; my hair was usually skinned back in a ponytail. The other storytellers all looked like Goldilocks; I looked like one of the bears.
"I can't do this," I whispered.
I was wasting my breath; Mr. Fogarty wasn't interested in hearing my protests at this stage. "You'll do great."
"No, I will not."
"Yes," he said cheerfully, giving me a shove toward the stage. "You will."
The key to successful storytelling is to really throw yourself into the story. So I ignored the audience and became Simple Simon, blundering about on the stage as Simon blundered about in his life. I couldn't believe the laughs I was getting.
Mr. Fogarty had been right again; out of fifty storytellers, I took second place. Team Goldilocks never knew what hit them. After that I took first, second or third place at every tournament. By then I was fast friends with the smart kids; they had decided I was one of them.
Meanwhile, Mr. Fogarty and I were doggedly plowing through Gray's Anatomy. I now knew more about bones, cartilage and the nervous system than I ever wanted to know. And Mr. Fogarty told me I had to pick my second independent study program.
I groaned; would the madness never end? I'd accidentally gotten an A in biology thanks to my stupid independent study; I was fast losing my reputation as a slacker. And now I had to pick another topic?
I argued, but we both knew who was going to win this one - the same person who'd been winning all of them. So I picked writing, half expecting him to tell me I shouldn't, or couldn't.
He assigned me essays. He assigned me short stories. He made me read O'Henry, Jackson, Bradbury, Chaucer. After I was saturated with words, he asked me to write. My first short story was about a little boy who kills his mother. I was incredibly proud of the gruesome thing and, although Mr. Fogarty was probably appalled, he encouraged me to send it in for publication. I confidently mailed it to The New Yorker.
Naturally, they sent me a rejection letter. I'm amazed they didn't set my story on fire and return the ashes. But Mr. Fogarty was as proud as if they'd printed my story on the cover. "A rejection from The New Yorker," he said admiringly, holding the letter as if it was spun gold. "That's really something. Most people will never see something like this." He put my rejection slip up on the bulletin board so everyone could see that I was (sort of) working with The New Yorker. Then he told me to write another story.
Mr. Fogarty was my speech coach and teacher all through high school. He made me laugh; he made me furious; he made me try. Today, I've published six books, with four more coming out in the next two years. One of my books has gone into a second printing, and another won a national writing award, but because it was a sensual romance with some – ahem - explicit scenes, I never dared send it to Mr. Fogarty (making him study anatomy was bad enough). But he deserves a crate of books from me; he deserves a million crates. I owe him more than the books I wrote; he taught me to believe in myself, to have the confidence to dare what everyone else told me was impossible. It wasn't just that he expected me to try - he expected me to succeed. And once I started doing that, I found I had a taste for it. All because a teacher wouldn't give up on the smart-ass new kid.
Mr. Fogarty has touched my life in more ways than I could have dreamed, aside from helping me realize my dream of being published. I'm married to a Harvard graduate, a man from a wealthy family who was eating risotto when I was gulping down corn on the cob, the kind of man I once thought beyond my reach. And those smart kids on the speech team? The smart kids became the smart grown-ups and my dearest friends; our children play together.
Most amazing, I've been asked to teach at a writers' colony next summer. I'm nervous - I've never taught. But I'm going to do it anyway. For one thing, Mr. Fogarty would be appalled if he knew I was chickening out. For another, I've got the chance to touch the life of an aspiring writer, encourage her dream, help her be herself. Change her life forever.
Be a teacher
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