Consider
the reader.
What does
he know? What does he need or want to know? It’s not about you, the writer.
It’s all about the reader.
Yup, banged
that drum for seven years as loudly as I could!
And then?
Was
completely deaf to it.
I wrote a
book, you see, all about life and death and iguanas and some other stuff. Then,
I concluded it with my getting laid off at Wal-Mart. I mentioned throwing
pencils at the students, about not going back to say farewell to my room, about
not getting to say farewell to my students.
Well, I
sent off drafts to people, and people mostly liked it. Not surprising; is a
friend gonna write and say, “Jeez Marc, you’ve written a dog! Couldn’t get past
the first chapter!”?
OK—the book
is coming out on Saturday. We set
up—my partner in literature and I—a little page on Facebook. There was a sample
chapter. And then I realized. I talked about the building. I talked about the
iguanas behind the building. I certainly mentioned that Wal-Mart cheer!
What didn’t
I do?
Mention
what in the world I was doing at Wal-Mart in the first place….
Marc?
Duh…..
Didn’t
bother my friendly readers—they know the story. But wouldn’t a stranger be a
little confused?
So here’s what
I should have written.
Nothing was
more improbable in my life as the fact that, every day between 6:30 and 7AM, I
walked up concrete steps, ducked the dive-bombing grackles, passed the alarming
cars, and entered the Wal-Mart Home Office.
I knew how
it had happened, of course. Ofelia, my old boss and a cherished friend, had
sent me off to teach in a trailer in a parking lot in Bayamón.
“No,
Ofelia, this is too crazy. I mean, I’ve done the rum factory. That was fun.
I’ve done the executives and their wives of the third largest bank on the
island. And what is Wal-Mart, anyway….”
She sighed
and explained.
Well,
needed the dough, and a gig is a gig.
“So how did
it go,” she asked, after that first day.
“Ummm, I
think I blew it.”
“Oh, dear,”
she said.
“Look, you
know I’ve been teaching ESL for ten plus years, right?”
“Of
course.”
“Well, what
you don’t know is that I become a completely different person when I’m
in a classroom….”
“Of course,
it’s called the teacher’s persona…
So what happened?”
“Well, I
get there and introduce myself to this lady, Elizabeth, and she’s completely
unimpressed. I go into this little trailer straight from Arkansas, and begin
the class. And then, I hear this clapping from next door and someone shouts
‘Gimme a W!’”
“Oh, the
company cheer,” she said brightly.
“Well, I
was dumbfounded,” I said. “Didn’t know what to do. So then I said ‘What the hell
was that?’ And they said what you said. So then I lost it and said, ‘well, do we
have an English class cheer?’”
“Oh no,”
breathed Ofelia. “Marc, you didn’t. Marc, tell me you didn’t….”
“Yeah, I
got ‘em all on their feet and clapping, and I shouted ‘GIMME AN E, GIMME AN N.
GIMME A G’ all the way through the word English, and then I shouted ‘WHAT DOES
IT SPELL’ and then ‘I CAN’T HEAR YOU’ and then ‘WHAT DO WE SPEAK!’ and then….”
Here I
noted that Ofelia had her head in her hands.
Curious
that the company hadn’t called, demanding a change of teacher, I went off to do
more damage the next day. And met the president of the company, coming out the
trailer door.
“Great
cheer,” he said, introducing himself. “Loved it! You’re really part of the
Wal-Mart family now!”
Completely
sincere!
Well, the
disasters multiplied. Tired of teaching, I turned to presentations. Get the
kids to talk! (All students of any age are my kids…)
Great—first
presentation was about the Florida Keys. I noted confused faces. And did
something that I should never do.
Try to be a
teacher….
So I jumped
up, grabbed the magic marker, went to the flip chart, and started to draw.
I drew Florida,
I drew the keys, I created what looked for all the world like an obscene
graffitum on a men’s room wall.
Worse, I
saw myself do it!
It was like
a train wreck—I saw it coming on, I saw my hands creating it.
Couldn’t
stop!
Never
confessed that to Ofelia.
Well, I
started off my Wal-Mart days as a contractor—Ofelia is the head of a very good
little language school.
Then
Elizabeth, apparently more impressed, phoned me, offered me a job. They had
created a position for me, and wanted me to be the fulltime English teacher.
“Great,” I
told her.
“Wonderful,”
I said to her.
“SHIT!” I
said, after hanging up the phone.
Didn’t want
it, but knew I had to take it. The benefits? Great!! Salary? Excellent!
Marc in the
corporate world?
Nahhhhh!
For two
years, it drove me nuts. Then, I relaxed. I began roaming the halls with my
ruler, pretending to be a traditional teacher. I put a ridiculous yellow duck
on the door of my room, and called it my VPI—the volume producing item so
beloved of Sam Walton. I instituted the ‘cultura de la clase de inglés’ one tired day after hearing the
“Wal-Mart Culture” invoked for the umpteenth time.
Among other
items, students had to breathe audibly in and gaze upwards when I pronounced
the name of Sam Walton.
Someone
wasn’t taking it seriously.
Oh, except
for one thing.
The
students. Those wonderful, resilient, amazing people who told me their stories,
shared the joy and pain in their lives, showed me the pictures of their kids or
pets. The kids who put up with my nonsense and dodged the pencils I threw at
them, and said “333 jewelry thieves” and hid under their desks when they heard
me approach, smartly tapping the ruler against my thigh.
Wonderful,
wonderful people!
