Chatterwhattery

 Chatterwhattery 

                                                                                         i

Gaspar Stephens is spending a year teaching middle school in Mississippi. How he got the gig I am not at all certain – some sort of National Foolery Foundation grant I am guessing. How he could be remotely qualified or temperamentally suited, I don’t see that either. He called last night, muttering about “race-based controversies” busting out all over, classrooms, faculty meetings, district policy, anywhere two or three were gathered. “I've reached a stage,” he said, “where I’m damn near paralyzed.”

     “That doesn’t sound like you.”

     “It doesn’t, does it? But, it’s because no one listens. You can’t listen either. If you don't latch on immediately to a particular viewpoint, if you don’t choose sides, if you try instead to listen and empathize, you're dead – run through the heart.” He paused. “Because you don’t have a weapon to defend yourself, your side. You have to take sides as you’d take up your sword, and you better start waving it around like a madman immediately. Otherwise, they’ll take you down.”

     I waited. “What made me think this was a good idea?” he asked. “I tell ya, I'm too old for this shit. Believe it or not, I’m too nice for this shit.”

     “Do you want my take?”

     “Is it going to help?”

     “I doubt it, but . . . .”

     “Yeah. Go on.”

     “It’s this, and I come to it reluctantly: Listening to anyone, especially sympathetically, trying to understand what they want to say, is a mistake. Because oddly, people don’t want to be listened to; they want to be heard – that’s why they’re yelling so damn loud.”

     “So.”

     “Well, my current default is: listen but pretend you’re not.”

ii

Speaking of pretending. One of you asked how my therapy was going, particularly the three-times-daily calls with Bob. Typically:

     “Hey.”

     “Hey.”

     “This is Ted.”

     “I know.”

     “Checking in.”

     “What have you got?”

     “What have you got?”

     “I was thinking about a time a student asked me about the Oxford comma.”

     “That was a positive thought?”

     “Yeah. It was. It really was. She actually cared; and I could explain it in a way she understood.”

     “I guess.”

     “What about you?”

     “I was thinking about lighting a fart. I haven’t done that since maybe fifth grade.”

iii

Mel Ball called. He wanted to know if St. Hubertus was in my abridged copy of Butler’s Lives of the Saints.

     “Wait a minute.” I thought I knew right where the book was, but it wasn’t.

     “You didn’t borrow the book, did you?”

     “No. Why would I?”

     “Because I can’t find it.”

     “Your logic is impeccable.”

     “What do you want to know?”

     “I read online he was Austrian.”

     “I read the same thing.”

     “I was hoping he was Italian.”

     “And died at a high-class Hooters in Texas.”

     “Yes.”

02.26.16