Phoning it in

I'm ashamed to admit this, but I'm proud of my files.

I keep files on everything. Story ideas. Jokes I've read. Music
I'd like to buy. Some of them are electronic, but most of them are paper
-- mountains and mountains of paper, as I found out this week when
transferring the files I've accumulated over five years of teaching from my
office at my high school to my office at home.

My academic files began as four folders taking up part of one desk
drawer, and have since mushroomed to fill two filing cabinets, with folders
for every subject, every book or topic in every class, every lesson or idea
or quiz on every topic. They come in handy on occasion. Tonight, I thought,
was one of those occasions.

I was tired. God, was I tired. I knew being a reporter for a
radio station would be tough, but I had never imagined the number of things
I'd be asked to do during the course of a single day. It wasn't that the
writing was hard -- I've been covering news for more than a decade -- and it
wasn't that the technology was difficult to master, although remembering
which switch does what when the computer is from 1990 and the transmitter
dates from the ’70s and the 360 machine is "acting hinky," as the news
director told me today, is taking longer than I expected. It's not even
that I'm supposed to write on deadline while keeping one ear tuned to the
police scanner, another to the station broadcast, a third (?) to someone
talking on the two-way radio, a fourth to a conversation going on in the
back of the room, and a fifth to what's being said between the lines in
that conversation -- I'm used to that.

It's doing it all at the same time, while trying not to think about
overdue bills at home or the need to fill out graduate forms or finish
cleaning the apartment before Trish arrives next week or when in the world
I'm going to have time to run or lift or write -- that's what I took this
job for, right? to give me time to write? -- that gets to me. I arrived
home at 4:30 this afternoon feeling all but wiped out. I had just enough
time to make dinner, eat, check my e-mail, and head out to my six o'clock
class at Quincy College. I hadn't had time to prepare or even think about
class tonight, but I wasn't worried: I had my files.

Class began, and I launched into what I thought was a pretty good
lecture about definition essays. I had handouts. I had samples. I had
notes -- pages and pages of notes. I had anecdotes I'd made up to go along
with my notes. I thought I was doing well, but by 7:30 my class was staring
at me the way Sitting Bull must have stared down Custer just before issuing
the orders for his final charge. I couldn't understand it -- I'd used the
same lecture before, and it had always gone well. I called for a break,
and the relieved students trudged out of the classroom.

During the break, I asked a few of my students what was wrong. "We
don't get it," one said. "This doesn't seem to have anything to do with
anything," another replied. "You're not yourself tonight," a third said.

I looked down at my notes -- crisp, only slightly creased, clearly
typed and tenderly tucked into their manila folders -- and then I put them
away. For the remainder of class, I taught without notes. I asked and
answered questions. I broke my class up into groups and asked them to
complete assignments. We worked on a sample essay together, as a class. I
listened to them and tried to address their concerns. I won't say the
evening was perfect -- I was still tired, and I'm sure it still showed --
but things went better than they had before, and that made me think about
the way I've been teaching, the way I've been living my life.

It's hard for me to interact with other people. I'm uncomfortable
and self-conscious, and I find that I often have few common interests with
others, even the people who are my closest friends. It's not that I hate
people -- I love being with a group of people on a hike, or at the movies,
or in an amusement park. Put me in an apartment, though -- even my own
apartment -- and ask me to make conversation with just one other person,
and I'm lost. I freeze up. At one point in my life, I'd just melt into
the shadows, disappear, and find a place of my own to read, write, or sulk.
These days, more often than not, I go to the files.

I have a series of mental files, as precise, ordered, and as
important to me as the ones I have on paper. They contain jokes I've heard,
anecdotes about my college days, observations about my friends, half-
remembered bits I've cribbed from "Seinfeld," and anything else I've been
able to use in place of conversation at some point in my life. I update
my files on a regular basis, so there's always something at hand whenever
I'm too tired, scared, or bored to come up with something original
when I'm in the presence of another human being. I've always assumed they
worked, because no one's ever taken the trouble to call me on it (except for
Brad, who has had to sit through the "pink ping-pong balls" joke on at least
three occasions). There may even be some people who've never seen beyond
the files -- who have known me for years, and never realized I was "doing
material" with them. Probably not; I'm never as good at fooling people as
I like to think I am.

Tonight, I found out that the best-kept files in the world are
nothing better than a script, and that the best-written script in the world
is nothing without a performer who invests himself in the role, who infuses
his character with passion, intelligence and human expression that go
beyond the written word, who is at all times aware of his audience's reaction
and adjusts himself accordingly. It isn't so much that I want to impress
my students, or anyone else: it's that everyone I meet deserves my
attention, deserves me being present and attentive to their concerns, and
it's about time I began giving that to them. At the very least, the people
with whom I choose to surround myself -- my family, my friends, my students
-- ought to get that from me.

On the other hand, I'm not sure everyone I know would be able to
withstand my full and complete attention. I think I'll try it out first on
a few laboratory animals, or someone expendable, like Mitt Romney.
If nothing else, the results of my experiment should make an interesting
addition to my files.