Dead Poets: Good Society for the Aging Teacher

“How come all the stuff we read is by dead people?” one of my spunky little students asked during a reading of Wordsworth.

“It takes the test of time,” I sagaciously asserted, “to render a work a classic.”

“Then,” she persisted, “who decides which old stuff gets called classic?”

I gripped the sides of the lectern, took a deep meditative breath and said, “There are many factors that determine whether a work will be esteemed as a classic: its thematic content, literary style, historicity, and that certain je ne sais quoi we call aesthetics.”

When I don’t really want to answer a question, like a politician I resort to vague but impressive vocabulary.

“You don’t really know, do you, Mrs. Reynolds?”

Ah, the incisive honesty of youth!

Deflated, I made an attempt to give an honest if less than inspiring answer.

“Well, it seems like the literati (a bunch of nearly dead yet very brilliant guys and gals) get together over the years and form a consensus as to which of the truly dead yet also brilliant folks created works worthy of being called classics.”

“Oh, OK,” came her satisfied response, and we continued our reading.

*

Shortly after that classroom exchange, I had a discussion with colleagues that led me to believe I was poised on entering that fraternity of the aged wise. Well, maybe not wise but certainly aged. It was after a long and boring faculty meeting that I found myself engaged in a conversation about plastic surgery: those nips and tucks designed to bring back the rosy resilience of youth to our weary faces.

The wonderful yet disheartening thing about teaching is that your students seem to keep getting younger and younger while you keep getting older and older. Year after year, you drag out the same old dead guys and their stories about the doomed, teaching their lessons of love and woe to a room full of perky pupils. Romeo and Juliet forever killing themselves instead of growing old gracefully to share a bowl of bran while hunting through the morning paper for early bird dinner specials. Poor old Hester Prynne in her “Scarlet Letter” dress, protecting the honor of that worm, Dimmesdale, instead of enjoying life with a real man. The Great Gatsby endlessly bleeding in the wasteland of his palatial pool all for the love of a dizzy dame named Daisy.

“George, tell me about the rabbits,” and then, “BANG!” another desperate deed in the life “Of Mice and Men.”

No wonder we English teachers talk of plastic surgery.

With a five-digit price tag on cosmetic tinkering, I’d need to choose between saving for my daughter’s college tuition or smoothing out my evitable wrinkles. I figure I have another 10 years before the situation reaches critical. Until then, I can stand before the mirror and note the slightly perceptible sag of my jawline. Having been blessed with a vivid imagination, I can easily foresee the day when my profile will elicit the words, “Gobble, gobble.”

Maybe, when the time comes, I could hock my house and pay for only half of my daughter’s tuition. After all, I worked my way through college; why shouldn’t she? That way, she’d appreciate it more--and she’d have a splendidly youthful-looking mother in the grandstands to cheer as she received her degree.

Of course, as one who has avoided having her wisdom teeth removed out of dread for all things painful, I’d need courage to brave the knife. After watching those Discovery Channel documentaries, I know plastic surgery is not for the faint of heart.

Until then, I’ll start each day with a splash of carpe diem in my morning coffee. Thus fortified, I’ll do my best to teach the wisdom of our learned dead. Yet, “at my back I always hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near.”