Short Story Gift

One of my students who graduated in 2010 and is now studying literature at college wrote the following short story for me. Her name is Heather Ryan, and I feel amazingly blessed and encouraged by her love of literature, and her "getting it."

She wielded a gradebook of pain and an over-loved iPhone. If you could have seen her countenance that day, you might have thought yourself amongst Dante’s accursed. The swindlers of the world never found themselves so unlucky as they did that unholy date in Classroom 10. “After three years of learning MLA, some of you still think a citation is a traffic ticket! And for Pete’s sake, a comma comes before the contraction ‘and’, not after it!”

A slight giggle erupted from the back row. Shelly rolled her eyes and mindlessly uttered, “What could possibly be funny about comma splices?” A thought of Ron Weasley’s horridly graphic splicing in number seven, part two ran through her head. She softened slightly and remembered why she teaches literature. “It’s the books,” she thought, “not these brats.” She sighed.

A scrawny boy with a nose he hadn’t yet grown into dared to answer, slightly hesitantly but arrogantly nonetheless, “You said… tee-hee… CONTRACTION! BAHAHAHAHA!!” The back row now erupted into scoffs and guffaws.

A silence from the teacher’s ‘podium’, as people like to call the educator’s throne these days.

“Ya know… like, a pregnant lady…” the under-grown boy tried to explain as his best mate made distorted faces, meant to look like a woman in labor.

“I KNOW WHAT YOU MEANT,” Shelly snapped, slightly injured as these irreverent rascals mocked the difficulties of motherhood. The few front-row overachievers grimaced at the idea of being scolded by an esteemed authority figure. After a deep breath, Shelly calmly suggested, her voice laced with tiny arrows with which to draw out guilt and repentance, “We all know how to act maturely in here, so let’s do it.”

The giggles continued. “She said ‘do it’,” someone whispered just loud enough for Shelly’s ears to pick up. The hairs on the back of her neck began to stand up.

“DOESN’T YOUR EDUCATION MATTER TO YOU?” she pleaded with every ounce of emotion her tiny body could contain. Dead silence. William’s hearty, stilted laugh could be heard reverberating through the rear wall. A sound that would ordinarily evoke curiosity and amusement seemed ominous to the dumbstruck students. Satan himself mocked their torture. 2:10 could not possibly come fast enough.

“Yeah, school’s real important. I get it. I make good grades. UCF already accepted me. At least someone agrees that I’m smart,” a snarky senior girl growled pointedly. An onlooker might one day swear she saw the senior’s claws extending from the tips of her fingers.

“It’s not just about grades.” Shelly was honest as she spoke from her heart. “God didn’t put us here just to ‘do well’. He also put us here to ‘do good’. You should check your motives if you think the reason you’re in this class is to get an A and AP credit for UCF, should you choose to go there.” Their potential was so much greater than that.

“Why else are we here?” a shy student on the far side of the room questioned quizzically. Shelly glanced in his direction. He looked like a deer in the headlights. No, that wasn’t right. He looked… disturbed. Unsettled, perhaps. “It… isn’t about our… GPA?” he sputtered, slowing down with each syllable. As this thought rippled through the room, the shoulders of his peers began dropping, and they crumpled slightly in their seats. Even the proud star basketball player looked honestly puzzled.

Shelly was taken aback. They really don’t understand. “Why do we study literature?” She asked what she thought was simple question.

“Because this stuff… these books… they’re classics,” said the avid reader at the center table, looking up from her verbose notes.

“Yes,” Shelly answered, “but…why?”

Silence.

More silence.

Shelly returned to her whiteboard with her favorite green Expo marker. She wrote “BEAUTY” across the two boards in as elaborate script as her small, artistically-untrained hand could emit. “What does this word mean to you?”

Silence. Stupid remarks like “a pretty girl” or “Justin Bieber’s hair” now seemed helpless weapons against the weight of the impending answer of this question.

“Why do we study the Bible?

“To learn about God.” The first intelligent answer of the day.

“What is the chief end of man?”

“To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”

“At least they’re listening to Clay,” Shelly conceded. “We’re supposed to enjoy God,” she revealed. “Have you ever thought about that before?” The quizzical looks turned to meditative stares. Shelly could practically see herself in the reflectivity of their eyes.

“God admires beauty. Genesis 1:31: ‘God saw all that he had made, and it was very good’” she explained. “Yes, we study literature so that we can hopefully enjoy a few books – maybe not Heart of Darkness, but some – and so that we can hopefully make a few good grades for college. We study so we can relate to others who are also studying, yes. We study also so that we can better ourselves in view of others’ mistakes. There is a greater reason, too, though.”

There is beauty in these books. They are classic, yes, because others before you have seen their beauty. There is meaning in every word. Yes, Dickens was paid by the word, but no, he didn’t throw words in if they didn’t belong. Like the stroke of Rembrant’s brush across a canvas, each word of these thoughtful authors is a bit of genius, a nugget of truth. Their words, like an artist’s painting, reflects the beauty of this world, even in the brokenness. These broken characters scream for redemption, much like you and me.”

“And yes,” Shelly said, breaking the seriousness up a bit, “it is ‘you and me’ in this case.”

“So,” a student conjectured, slowly forming his thoughts, “when we read about these guys who kind of suck – I mean, stink – at life, that’s sposta like… say something about God?”

“Yes!” said the girl next to him, obviously experiencing a revelation. “It’s like how we read these stories in the Bible and we see how God works in their lives. Well, maybe God’s not a character in the book, but His creation and laws are still there, right? Well, that’s it! If they can be broken and be redeemed, like, so can we!”

A small, lonely tear slowly but determinedly made a pilgrimage down Shelly’s flushed cheek, fell quietly from her hidden chin and found its final resting place in the calming blue carpet below. “Exactly,” she coughed out, trying to hide the fact that she was choked up.

Maybe, it isn’t about the books after all.

...

Only now, looking back, can I see their pain. Only now do I see why educators are different from lecturers. Only now are the blinders of laziness and underused talent lifted and I see the light. Only now do I long for the days when my teachers invested their hearts, minds, and strength into each individual student. Only now do I wish I had listened.