Seeing

Well, I'm already bored with blogging, so I've been digging through some old stuff to find post material. This little piece is something I wrote back in 2004 for a short homework exercise. I think she just gave us the title, "Seeing." This is what I came up with:


“Y’all know I’m gonna flunk all them,” Dr. Dillard’s shocking statement rang out in Southern twang across the blank white space that was room 209. We had just heard again the shuffle of five or six pairs of feet down the linoleum of the hall, once again noticed the empty chairs where young men had been at the beginning of class. Old Dr. Dillard, more than legally blind in both eyes, with just enough vision to see something on a page if he stuck his face up really close to it with a magnifying glass, could not notice, could not inspect the empty seats. But he knew all the same. He had heard even better than we girls had those shuffles out of class, noted even more than we did the absence of male voices. All semester long, each of the five or so males in English 102 had made his exit long before class ended. At first, they left after the break, but towards the end of the semester they became more brazen, leaving after a few minutes if they chose to come at all. On this particular day they left right after an announcement about end-of-the-semester matters, just into the first few minutes of class. So he shared his plan.

I was always confused when I talked to my friend Traci about my feelings for Dr. Dillard. She had him in another section and absolutely adored him, even choosing to take him the next semester for 201. But I couldn’t stand his class. In fact, one of the most entertaining moments was when he dared those selfsame deserters with a question that was all too a propos: “Well, why don’t you just leave instead of sittin’ here list’nin’ to this lecture that goes on and on in a boring way-ee?”

I hated the way he made his coffee on his desk with those newfangled Folgers Singles, slowly dipping the bag up and down with his Stevie Wonder expression. I hated the way he slowly swept his tongue over his thin lips and lizard teeth. I hated the 68 he gave me on my first paper, even though I did end up with an A in the class. I hated the ugly age spots on his face and hands. But most of all, I hated the silence. He talked, then silence. He talked again, then silence. Nobody contributed anything to class, and that meant more of his boring lectures, more fighting the impulse to fall asleep on a man who couldn’t see it happening.

One day I realized that my hatred wasn’t really about his habits at all (though his teeth were quite ugly, and he licked them every day). It was really about my relationship with him, and even my relationship with his disability. The truth was, I didn’t know how to deal with him. As a freshman, I expected to either love and respect my teachers, or to dislike and be annoyed by them. Dr. Dillard didn’t fit into those neat categories. Instead, I felt sorry for him. I felt sorry that people tried to take advantage of him. I felt sorry that he couldn’t see. I felt sorry that his teeth were so pitiful, that he didn’t know how ugly he was.

And I didn’t know how to answer the question of why his class was so boring. I guess it didn’t occur to me (and even in my discussions with Traci it just didn’t seem possible) that he got a dud class, that even the most lively, spirited, seeing professor might not have inspired those boys who always left, those girls who wouldn’t speak. Instead my pity turned to irritation, and I obsessed over those little idiosyncrasies as if they were a real reason to dislike him, a real reason to write him off as a “bad teacher.”

But on this last day of class before the final, something changed. In his simple declaration to the rest of us of how he was going to have his revenge on those sneaky twerps, I glimpsed for just a moment a vision of the teacher I might’ve had, had his students been the class they should’ve been. My pity melted away, and I saw him for who and what he was. And in that moment of just pride, of joyful vindication, he had something of nobility about him. In that moment, he was almost beautiful.