It’s Special

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“Watch Alien: Romulus,” a friend of mine said. “It’s special.” 

I loved that characterization. It was so simple that I wish I thought of it first. To set up the backdrop to this characterization, my friend and I have a long history of spoiling movies for one another by overhyping them. “The greatest movie ever!” we said a couple times. “Top ten in the genre,” we said, specifically listing the genre. By saying the movie was special, I think my friend was hoping I would see the movie, but he wanted me to see it, and judge it, even, or without hype. I’ve been on both ends of this. I am superlative man! I’ve ruined more than a few movies for others by going so far over the top that the recipients of my superlatives couldn’t help but consider it “Good, don’t get me wrong, but you were going so ape-stuff over it that I watched it thinking it would be the greatest movie ever made.” I’ve been on the other end of that too, and I’ve watched movies others hyped up for me, eager for that movie to absolutely blow my mind. What do we do? We “meh” our way through it, and then, we return to our friend the next day and say, “It was good, don’t get me wrong, but top-10? I don’t think so.” It’s entirely possible that if we didn’t plant these GOAT eggs on one another, we might’ve considered the movie in question as great as they did. As we all know, distinguishing good, bad, great, and awful can often be all about the mindset we have walking into the theater. So, from this point forward, I am going to adopt my friend’s “special” characterization for any movies, books, or music I hear, and I’m going officially declare to anyone reading the following list of all of my superlatives, regarding the “greatest works of art of all time!” that with the powers vested in me, as the writer of this article, it’s special.

Merriam-Webster defines special as “Distinguished by some unusual qualities.” Other resources list it as, “Better, greater, or otherwise different from what is usual.” My personal definition of special is different, as in a different kind of genius. Some label special geniuses, disruptors, because they dare to be different. They dare to tackle their projects in a way that either no one ever considered before, or they thought it violated some tenet of their definition of art. I choose to dismiss the “better and greater” definition of special, because unusual and different often get lost in debates of quality. Debates over quality often invite technical qualities I know nothing about. I often expose my ignorance in technical quality debates, because I view most technical qualities as trivial. I know special though, and that characterization often leads to ‘Ok, what do you know?’ questions. “I don’t know,” I say paraphrasing a Supreme Court Justice, “but I know it when I see it.”

If Quentin Tarantino died shortly after making Pulp Fiction, he would still go down as a special genius. Some of my friends didn’t enjoy the movie for a variety of reasons, but they still saw it. Just about every single one of them admitted that it had special qualities. If I attempted to dissect the technical qualities of this film, I would display my ignorance on the subject, but suffice it to say that among all of the reasons this movie was special, the primary one was dialog. Some suggest Tarantino worked for ten years to perfect the dialog, and it shows. Bruce Willis claimed it was the only movie he ever worked on that didn’t have one single rewrite. There were so many incredible and unforgettable scenes in the movie Pulp Fiction that we could bog this entire article down with a play-by-play dissection of each scene, but we’ll focus on three of the highlights. The dialog between Vincent and Jules in the introductory scenes was special, because the careful word choices defined the characters with such immediacy, and the action scenes in the apartment were so over the top that they were funny, horrific, and funny/horrific. The countering scene, later in the movie, between Butch and Fabienne, was just as special for its delicate and deft subtlety. The scenes between Vincent and Mia had special, influential and transcendental dialog, and the scene in the restaurant—sans the overrated dance scene—was unforgettable. Even while watching the movie for the first time, in a dingy, old theater long since closed, I experienced a tingle that suggested I might be watching the most special movie I’ve ever seen. I didn’t need to unearth its special qualities in the conversation I had leaving the theater, or read critical reviews to enhance those beliefs, I knew Pulp Fiction was special while sitting in the theater watching it for the first time, and it might be the single most enjoyable experience I ever had in the ever-dwindling experiences I’ve had in a theater.

Mother Love Bone’s Apple was special. I’ve had debates with musicians and other music freaks who know far more about music than I do, and they suggest that the lyrics on Apple were campy, silly, sophomoric, and hippy-trippy lyrics that haven’t aged well. It might suggest that I’m a campy, silly, sophomoric person who hasn’t aged well, because no matter how often I’ve heard and read those complaints, I still don’t see it. To my mind, Andrew Wood was an unusual genius when it came to writing lyrics. After lead singer his premature death, some of the band members reformed with a new lead singer, and formed Pearl Jam. “Ten was superior to Apple in every way, shape, and form,” my musician friend informed me, “and Eddie Vedder was a better lyricist, and he had a better voice.” My goal here is not to criticize Ten, Pearl Jam, or Eddie Vedder, as I enjoyed them for what they were, but they weren’t special to me. I rarely paid attention to lyrics before Apple, and I rarely have since, but Andrew Wood’s lyrics, his Andy-isms, as his bandmates called them, were special. They were funny, campy, sophomoric, and hippy-trippy, but they exhibited an unusual quality I still call “special” thirty-plus-years later. 

You are Not so Smart by David McRaney. “It is far easier to entertain than it is to educate,” someone once said. If that’s true, it takes a special kind of genius to do both at the same time. Some pop psychology books focus on being entertaining, but they are so base, negative, and shocking. Others are so serious that they sound professorial. It takes a special author to combine a special talent for dry humor and wit with professorial scholarship on a subject, and McRaney accomplished that with gusto. What this author did, more than any other, was teach this writer how to tackle serious subjects in an entertaining fashion. He also laid a blueprint for me to understand how to apply everyday situations to larger concepts, a blueprint I’ve pursued ever since. To my mind, You are Not so Smart would be an excellent companion piece for Psych 101 classes, because I think students, who get the dreaded dry eyeball ten sentences into their gargantuan, dry textbooks, would love the learning while laughing arsenal Mr. McRaney employed while writing this book.  

Whereas Pulp Fiction is in-your-face brilliant with quick, hip dialog, quick scene switches, and unforgettable music, the Coen Brothers invoke a more deliberate pace with quiet, casual dialog and more traditional music. I might be different from most Coen Brothers’ freaks, because I don’t think I ever “Wow!”-ed my way out of the theater with whomever I watched it. When I gathered with my friends later, and we remembered our favorite scenes, themes, and chunks of dialog together, I realize how brilliant that movie was. With all that in mind, I watched it again. It might be the way my mind works, but I think appreciation of the full breadth of the brilliance of a Coen brothers movie often requires a gathering storm of adoration. Fargo may have been the only one of their movies that hit me over the head with its brilliance, but I still had to talk about it and view it again to reach that “Wow!” factor. The Big Lebowski, Oh Brother Where Art Thou?, and Barton Fink all required some seasoning before I recognized how special they were.   

Our follow-up question to the Truman Capote quote, “You only need to write one great book” is, “What are you talking about?” In our ‘What have you done for me lately?’ society, we all love to say, “You think that guy’s a special genius, because I thought his last movie [album or book] sucked!” We love to say that about our special artists, because we all know they’re special, and we love to tear down facades. What I think Capote was saying is the author only needs one great book, album, or movie for the rest of us to know their author is special. If he comes out with 20 more works of art, we’ll probably buy ten of his other works before we realize he only had one in him. We’ll probably keep tabs on him too, “Did you read his latest? Is it any good?” We do this, because he really moved us once. His clever arrangement of words, reached us in a way so few do, and they really only have to do this once to start our love affair.  

It’s often difficult to express the special nature of watching a movie in a movie theater for the first time to younger people who now watch an overwhelming majority of the movies they watch on streaming platforms. All of the hype and planning behind trying to get someone to watch it with us was a production in its own right. When we found someone who was as excited as we were to watch the special director’s next movie, we said, “Let’s do it,” and when that movie premiered that Friday, we got together and experienced it together, with a room full of strangers and friend, with popcorn and soda in our lap. It was an “event”. I know some young people still do it, and I stream movies as much as anyone else now, but I think we all miss the event status of what it once was. 

There was also something special about holding a physical album, cassette, or compact disc in your hands, before sliding it into a player and cracking the binding of our brand new book. As a hyper kid who only wanted to do physical things, I became an avid book lover as I aged into adulthood. I loved reading a book in public. I felt like I was finally a part of a club, and I enjoyed  holding a physical copy of that book in my hands while flipping the pages. That’s almost entirely gone, and there’s something about the waiting that is gone too. Again, I could be overhyping the individual’s experiences, but I don’t think anyone eagerly anticipates the arrival of a new movie, book, album, or TV show. I had a hate/love relationship with waiting, similar to a child hating and loving the days until Christmas. We used to ‘X’ off the days on the calendar, until our favorite product would finally make it to store shelves, we’d talk to fellow fans, and build ourselves into a lather until it finally arrived. I could be exaggerating in this regard, but these products just seem to appear now, and we click on it. We might “know” that our favorite author is going to deliver a product to a streaming service sometime in the near future, but do we still eagerly anticipate its arrival? I know I don’t. It’s just there one day, and I click on it.

“In the grand scheme of things, what’s the difference between clicking on something and watching, listening and reading it? Once we’re halfway through it, if it’s great it’s great, and it can still achieve the same special status if it’s that good.” That is all true, but holding a physical copy of the product, even if momentarily renting it from Blockbuster, used to give the consumer of the product some level of ownership that created a “special” relationship with its creator that streaming cannot replicate. Some of us dreamed of this day, and when Napster first appeared, then iTunes, it felt like a realization of that dream, and we loved creating playlists to ‘X’ out some of the more boring deep cuts, but now that it’s all here, and we’re a couple decades into being used to it, some of the “special” event status of it is gone.

I still remember some of the “special” theatrical experiences I had. I remember where I saw this movie, and I still remember watching that movie with a group of friends and strangers, who enhanced my theatrical experience in a way only a group can. One of the movies I watched in a theater was not even that good, it was too long, and it tried too hard, but the theatrical experience I had that day was so “special” that I still remember it fondly, almost romantically. I remember the car I owned, and the street corner I passed in that car, the first time I realized the music I was listening to was the work of an unusual and special genius. I also remember the chair I sat in, the breakroom I read in, and the bathtub I laid in reading the works of genius, because, for me, to quote the group Climax, featuring Sonny Geraci, “Precious and few are the moments we two can share.” 

{Editor’s note, we did eventually see Alien: Romulus, and it was special, but we think we might have ruined the total experience that makes such movies special by watching it via a streaming service. Watching a comedy, or a more typical drama, can be appreciated in either format, but a great horror, sci-fi, or those rare masterpieces needs to be viewed in groups, in a dark theater, with popcorn and soda in your lap or drink holder.}

Know-Nothings vs. Mr. Know-It-Alls

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“You’re such a Mr. Know-it-all,” she said, he said, they all said.

“A know-it-all? Me? Are you serious? I’ll have to check my ledger, but I’m pretty sure I’m about seven I.Q. points away from a know-nothing.”

The first time someone accused me of being a Mr. Know-it-all, I did not know what to do. What defense are we supposed to mount? “Actually, Sandy, when you get to know me, you’ll realize I’m actually quite the dullard.” Prior to that charge, I was pretty sure my plight in life would consist of various insults regarding my lack of intelligence, so Sandy’s charge left me speechless. I thought it was absurdist humor on her part. You know that joke. The jokester holds the tongue-in-cheek preposterousness of their joke in, and they hold, hold, until ultimate seriousness is established, and then they break, “I’m just kidding.” I waited for that break, and not only did it never arrive, she turned to someone else to engage in an entirely different conversation, confident that her point hit home. The idea that she was serious only made the charge seem so absurd, ridiculous, and hilarious.

“She just called me a Mr. Know-it-all,” I whispered to the guy to my right, who knew me better, but he decided not to join in on the laughter.  

We all know a Mr. Know-it-all. They usually wear silk, magenta robes while smoking imported cigars, saying, “You’re just so unsophisticated” and “I don’t agree with you, because I choose to think deeper.” I knew I was not one of those, because I knew to be sophisticated, you had to have “a great deal of worldly experience and knowledge of fashion and culture.” To qualify for Mr. Know-it-all status, I also thought you had to be complicated, and when someone questioned the veracity of your claims, you said things like, “It’s complicated.”

I don’t care how you break down your definition of a Mr. Know-it-all, if you tried to tell my good friends and family that I was one of them, they’d laugh harder than I would, and they wouldn’t have been kind to me in their assessment. In an effort to appear objective, I must admit that if a number of people level such a charge there might be something to it, and I might be substituting an exaggeration of the term Mr. Know-it-all to clear myself of all charges.

***

In his BBC Science Focus Magazine article, titled The Hidden Psychology of ‘Know-It-Alls’: Why They Think They Know Everything, with a You don’t want to do it like that, you want to do it like this subtitle, writer Dean Burnett attempts to tackle the psychology of the Mr. Know-it-all phenomenon from the “Don’t you just hate them” perspective. He also tackles the issue from a “It turns out know-it-alls are always wrong for a variety of psychological reasons” perspective.

He concludes his article with the note: “It could be that to become a know-it-all, you have to know far too little.” It’s a nice, theatrical summary of his thematic “Don’t you just hate know-it-alls” piece, but if you “know far too little” aren’t you a know-nothing?

For those of us who make it a habit of reading articles from the other perspective, as some of us are inclined to do, we think Mr. Burnett loathes people who are right most of the time. We can only guess that he has been corrected, correctly, so often that he was probably pounding his keys when he wrote this article. We can all empathize, because it is annoying when we start in on a heart-felt discussion, only to have someone step in on our story and correct us on some seemingly insignificant fact. When it happens often enough, it can build a level of resentment that leads us to write an article on it.

We could be wrong, and since we’ve never heard of Mr. Burnett prior to this article, we must assume we probably are. Yet, we have to think that Mr. Burnett wouldn’t build such resentment for a know-nothing who is easily checked and always wrong. We have to assume that if Mr. Burnett decided to write an article on this subject after running into a lot of people who know more than he does, and his reservoir of patience for people who call him out dried up long before he sat behind a computer.

I write this as a former know-nothing who supposedly became a “Mr. Know-It-All” to some, but I learned. I learned to avoid the bullet points of a Mr. Know-it-all, because I learned that everyone loathes a Mr. Know-it-all.

If I were commissioned to write an article on know-it-alls, I would avoid Mr. Burnett’s populist, “Don’t you just hate them” clapter angle and try to focus on the gestation cycle of the know-it-all, as I know it.

Who are the know-it-alls that we’ve all come to loathe, and how did they come into being? My guess is they followed a path similar to mine. For all of the conscious and subconscious reasons listed in Mr. Burnett’s article, the know-it-alls I know are uncomfortable, insecure types who seek to prove their newfound knowledge. We, like presumably Mr. Burnett, grew tired of them correcting us, and when we did our research to call these people out on their corrections, we found out that … we were wrong. It is so embarrassing that it can prove humbling to the point of that thin line that separates humble from humiliating, and we never wanted it to happen again, so we went out and gathered ourselves some information.  

We sought information outlets, and we found good, great, and no-so-great outlets. We gobbled up all that information up like the nutrient-deprived individuals we were. Were we right, no, but we were learning, and the learning proved intoxicating. Did we lord this newfound information over others? We might have, but it wasn’t about that for us. We wanted to prove ourselves to ourselves that we were no longer dim-wit bulbs. We were never those gifted intellects who have known nothing but certitude and confidence in our intellectual abilities. Those types rarely need to prove themselves in these arenas. We did, because we just got sick of being run over. 

We learned everything from the “important” to the silly and inconsequential to try to avoid being called a know-nothing ever again. We wanted answers to the five Ws on the ways in which the world worked. Our motivations were not altruistic of course, as we wanted to prove ourselves, but when we saw our friends wrestle with their own know-nothing stigmas, we thought we might be able to help them out. We were eager to share all of the information we were gleaning. 

“[Know-it-alls are] individuals who will enthusiastically lecture you about any topic or area,” Mr. Burnett writes, “despite blatantly having little to no expertise in what they’re talking about. And often, even though you do.”

We’ve all been in those conversations with a group of let’s say four-to-five people, and we’ve heard them drop all the typical platitudes and takes. We stand in the middle of all that, politely listening and waiting for people to finish. “Hey, have you ever heard this [different perspective on a topic we all thought we knew so well]?” we ask when they are done. 

“Okay, Mr. Know-it-all,” they say with exasperated fatigue.  

“No, I’m not saying you’re right or wrong,” we say. “I just thought you may have never heard that perspective before.” The other perspective is the cookie they were supposed to chew on, and they’re supposed to say, I don’t think that’s right, but what an interesting perspective. Let me chew on that for a bit. 

We love it when others open up other avenues of thought, and sometimes we make the mistake of thinking others love it as much as we do. We think it might ignite another thought process in their head and stimulate further conversation. It doesn’t, because those who loathe Mr. Know-it-alls loathe different perspectives, because it challenges their worldview. Mr. Know-it-alls learned the hard way that some of the times it’s just easier to go along to get along.

Mr. Burnett argues that Mr. Know-it-alls base their assumption of superior knowledge of a subject on a psychological quirk we call the ‘naïve realism’ phenomenon, “[Naïve realism] describes how people instinctively assume that their perception of the world reflects objective reality. In actuality, everything we perceive and ‘know’ about the world has been filtered through a complex mesh of cognitive biases, sensory shortcuts, shifting emotion-infused memories, and more.”

This is undoubtedly true, but isn’t that what we call a quality conversation? If you bring your subjective insight into a conversation, and I bring mine, it might be possible for the two of us to arrive at an interesting conclusion that leaves us both stimulated and satisfied. Even if we don’t, different perspectives can result in different perspectives that might act as a linchpin for greater insight. It might also lead to an interesting conversation. No? I’m the Mr. Know-it-all here? 

If you’ve ever reached a point where you thought you knew-it-all, you encountered another know-it-all who may have been a know-nothing, but they dropped that one, tiny little “What was that again?” nugget on you that shifted your perspective on the matter just enough to make you think they were not such a know-nothing after all. I love that. I love when someone manages to disprove all of my preconceived notions about them.

As an alleged Mr. Know-it-all, I appreciate my species in one respect. When I meet a different genus of my species, I see it as my intellectual duty to defeat their thesis to bolster mine, and in the process, I gain greater understanding of my philosophy on an issue.

Some of you might read this and think, I’m not a Mr. Know-it-all, or a know-nothing. I follow a fundamental understanding of the way the world works, I just don’t lord it over my friends, family, or co-workers. I’m just Larry.

“Ok, Larry,” we say almost instinctively dismissing the ‘D) none of the aboves’ who strive to achieve the hallowed nothingness status to avoid the ridicule of believing in something. Larry strives to avoid being a know-it-all, and it’s pretty obvious that he’s not a know-nothing, but as we watch him drive away, we realize he’s probably a Mr. Bumper-sticker-guy. Mr. Bumper-sticker-guy covers every inch of his bumper with stickers, because he has no outlet. He doesn’t correct anyone, because he fears someone perceiving him as a know-it-all, but it eats at him in a way that could lead some to believe that he might be a know-nothing, so he wears T-shirts that say important stuff, and he informs those driving behind him that he is kind of a big deal. I’ve learned to avoid Mr. Bumper-sticker-guy more than Mr. Know-it-all, because Mr. Bumper-sticker-guy often walks into a conversation packaged in a pressurized swimsuit.  

On those rare occasions when a Larry cannot maintain his silence, we see him transform from mild-mannered Larry into Qualifier Man. Qualifier Man’s powers are cased in efforts to appeal to everyone all of the time. He can’t talk about the temperature of the water in the cooler at work without prefacing his comments with at least three qualifiers. His qualifiers please us, because he’ll openly admit that he doesn’t know enough to know what he’s talking about, but after about three or four displays of his prowess, his qualifiers become tedious. “Just say it!” we mentally scream at him. By the time Qualifier Man finally begins his “it’s just my opinion and feel free to disagree” characterization of the temperature of the water, he’s too late. We’ve already summarily dismissed his opinion in the manner his qualifiers require.

Larry makes sure that we know that he knows that others’ opinions differ from his, and he concludes that buildup by offering up a milquetoast opinion that tries to appeal to all of the people all of the time. “Just put your stuff on the line,” we mentally scream when he’s done, and while we’re all thinking that, his advocates, his opponents, and probably even a Mr. Dean Burnett dismiss him. The important note here is that we do not seek to dismiss Larry, but it’s a natural reaction to his “I could be right, or I could be wrong,” and “I’m not agreeing or disagreeing with what you’re saying,” qualifiers that take so long that we don’t like him or dislike him. We dismiss him. Say what you want about all of the Mr. Know-it-alls, but you respect them for taking a stand, believing what they believe, and being unafraid to say it amid the “Don’t you just hate them?” crowd. When you’re debating how Latin American grain prices affect American farmers, is Larry your go-to-fella? No, you go to that blowhard, Mr. Know-it-all, because you almost accidentally respect his opinions more, even when you disagree with them. 

“If you’re going to be wrong,” my 8th grade teacher taught me, “be wrong with conviction!” She said that after I wrote an assigned opinion piece in which I carefully considered all opinions all of the time in that paper. Mr. Burnett alludes to the idea that a Mr. Know-it-all strives for respect, and we can see that, but respect is a nebulous result. In a world of Dean Burnetts, hating those who correct him, I would suggest that the art of gaining respect has less to do with being correct (though a lengthy track record of being wrong will lead to a Mr. Hot-Air characterization) and far more to do with a confident presentation, or “going after it with gusto” than being a pleasant, nice Qualifier Man, who fears being a Mr. Know-it-all, ever will.

Getting the “REACTION!”

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Why did I wiggle and shake the book rack of my fellow high school student in front of me, because it was annoying. I didn’t just want to be annoying I didn’t just want to annoy them either, I wanted to hit something deep in their psyche to find that deposit of anger they had buried for so long that it gushed out of them like a pressurized oil deposit being struck for the first time. There was something wrong with me back then, but here’s the concerning thing, I still consider those shimmy shakes hilarious. Except my enjoyment now comes from the idea that most people think I should feel bad, apologetic, or some level of guilt for doing all that. I don’t. I still think it’s hilarious.

*** 

“I need to pay attention in this class, I need the grade,” Willie said when I ignored his initial, very polite pleas to stop shaking his book rack. “I’m trying to get into Georgetown.” He was trying to get into Georgetown by paying attention, and presumably getting an ‘A’ in an elective class that Georgetown probably would’ve dismissed either way. Yet, he did it. He got into that prestigious school with a full-ride scholarship. He did it by paying attention to the little details that I didn’t, and he probably went on to lead a prosperous, happy life, but I got the giggles watching the otherwise placid expression he wore on his face 24-7 turn from pleas, to frustration, and then anger. My peers were shocked. Not only had they never heard Willie speak, they didn’t even know who he was. When they found out who he was, and that I drove him so crazy that he eventually started screaming at me, they were astounded. It was my biggest accomplishment in life at that point, and I considered it on par with his full ride to Georgetown. 

*** 

“You might want to stop doing that to Max,” a kid named Joe warned me in a different year. “I know him, and he’s nuts. I’m not talking a little off. I’m saying, I went over to his house a couple months ago, and he had what looked like a science exhibit in his room. He had this cord laid out on his bedroom floor, a cord that he cut open on one of those little, oscillating fans in his bedroom, and he pinned that cord back to expose the wires within, and then he plugged it in. ‘What is that?’ I asked him. “My sister keeps coming in my room when I’m not here,” he said. “I want to give her the shock of her life.” That’s what he said, the shock of her life.”

“That’s funny,” I said, “but what does it mean to me?”

“Well, I find it hilarious when you wiggle his chair,” Joe said, “but you might want to be careful doing it to him, because if he’s going to do that to his own sister, what is he going to do to you?”

In my twisted sense of reality, I considered this a challenge to continue, until I saw how much Joe enjoyed it. “Do it again!” Joe whispered between giggles. That whisper ruined the whole aesthetic value this act had for me. I didn’t do it to entertain others, as your garden variety bully might. I did this for my own personal amusement. 

In my non-scientific studies to understand the fragility of the human psyche, my subjects pleaded with me to stop. When that didn’t work, they would resort to some display of frustration that would often evolve to uncontrollable rage. “Stop wiggling my chair!” one fella shouted loud enough for the teacher to hear. After the teacher admonished me, I stopped … for the day. The next day, I was at it again with a vengeance. Another guy tried punching me in the chest. I laughed, but I stopped … for the day. The next day he shouted, “You might be the most annoying person I’ve ever met,” between clenched teeth, and I stopped wiggling his chair or anyone else’s for that matter. His level of rage was one I’ve never seen without a physical followup. We both stared at each other in silence, waiting for a progression, and when it didn’t happen, we went on with our day. Seeing that level of rage gave me an unusual feeling of satisfaction, coupled with this idea that he basically handed me a crown of being the best/worst there ever was at something satisfied a number of needs I never considered before.

Every subject is one great teacher away from being interesting

As I scour my brain to understand who I was, and why I did all that, the best answer I can come up with is that I considered it an antidote to boredom. The structured learning they employ in school wasn’t just boring to me, it was a violation of my constitution. We were all bored in school, of course, but my boredom went beyond an itch to do something, anything else to something that bordered on a hostile rebellion. I considered forcing me, a bubbling cauldron of energy and testosterone, to sit and learn for eight hours a day a violation of nature. It’s okay to do that on a blah day, when you’re not feeling it, but there are days when we’re just on. When you’re having one of those glorious days, it almost feels like a waste to spend them sitting in a classroom, listening to a lecture from a teacher who doesn’t want to be there any more than we did. 

I considered school a prison of the mind that I needed to escape, even if just for a moment. I didn’t have an alternative, of course, but I didn’t want to do that. The prison guards held my aimless aspirations in check with attendance records, “Fail to attend and there will be consequences!” I attended class, but one revelation led to another. The first revelation I had was that I was a poor student, but that didn’t move anything, as my grades proved that. The earth-shattering revelation that changed everything for me occurred when someone said, “Did you ever consider the idea that we just didn’t have quality teachers!” This didn’t nullify the idea that I was a poor student, because I could’ve and should’ve found a way to overcome that, but it did relieve me of some of the guilt and embarrassment I felt for getting such poor grades in school. It wasn’t all my fault, in other words, that I was so bored, easily distracted, and anxious that I ended up wiggling the bookracks in front of me.    

I know we’re supposed to praise teachers for the sacrifices they make to teach young minds how to be well-informed, responsible adults, but most teachers, like most people, lack the energy, passion, and charisma necessary to reach students. School administrators know this, of course, so they try to make their teacher’s job easier by providing them a lesson plan and a structure for their lectures. Even with that, most of them cannot avoid speaking in monotone. Most teachers, like most people, also cannot take a step outside the box to provide a brief, interesting vignette from their lives, or the stories they’ve heard, to prove a point or make a lesson plan more interesting. 

I feel for teachers in one respect, I cannot imagine teaching the exact same thing over the course of five to thirty years. I also understand now that part of their job is to teach to the slowest learners in the class. If I was fresh out of college, and someone hired me to teach something as boring as Economics or Anthropology, I have to imagine that I would struggle to come up with an interesting presentation. I would also find it difficult to muster up some passion for the topic. If I did it, it might take me a year or two to develop a level of confidence that could lead to a passionate presentation of the facts. If I were able to accomplish all that, and I understand that’s a big if, I have to imagine that my passion would begin to wane by about year five or six. “You’ve been teaching the same subject for thirty-five years? Congratulations, and I feel sorry for your students.” 

The Glorious Mr. Schenk

When Mr. Schenk entered the classroom, he did not excite that passion. He was not a person who anyone would confuse with an imposing character. He was short, soft-spoken, and mousy. He wore stereotypical school teacher sweaters, and he wasn’t one to look people in the eye. Mr. Schenk was also not a passionate, charismatic speaker, but the difference between Mr. Schenk and all of the other teachers we had prior to Mr. Schenk, was he knew it. He appeared to know that he couldn’t keep students awake during lectures, so he decided to forego the traditional lecture format. 

“Just write!” he said that first day. “Write, write, write!” Just write became his mantra throughout the semester, and just write we did. Anytime we hit a brick wall, he instructed us to “Write your way through it. I’ll correct it, then we’ll correct, and you’ll learn from it.” I can’t remember how many different pieces we wrote, but there were a plethora of them. Mr. Schenk’s modus operandi was that you can’t teach writing. It’s just what you do. It involves something we call kinesthetic learning, or doing it so often that you learn. 

“You should learn how to spell, how to conjugate a verb properly, and you should know the fundamental rules of grammar,” Mr. Schenk said on day one, “but that’s something for other teachers in other classes. For us, it will be about learning everything you can outside this classroom, learning from our mistakes, and learning from others. We’ll spend a majority of our classes dissecting and critiquing what we’ve all written in the prior week.” 

Creative writing was not a subject I found particularly thrilling when I walked into Mr. Schenk’s class, but I might’ve tried to run through walls for him at the end, without questioning why we consider this such a great analogy for loyalty. Mr. Schenk encouraged us to seek out alternative sources for knowledge on the subjects we would cover. He provided a list of suggestions, but “These are just suggestions. As you work your way through our ‘just write’ format, I think you’ll find that the more alternative, the better. We’re seeking creativity here.”

I excelled in that class. The method of seeking alternative sources for knowledge fit into my wheelhouse. I learned more from those dynamics than I did any other class I ever took. Mr. Schenk’s class is one of the primary reasons I’m writing this article today. Mr. Schenk assigned one paper exclusively focused on storytelling, another on style, and one specifically devoted to pace. There were so many more themes that I can’t remember most of them, but Mr. Schenk encouraged us to seek outside sources to understand these disciplines better. The day after would involve a “What did we learn from our studies?” intro. “Drop the hads!” one student who had understood the assignment would say. “No more you-yous,” you might add, and “You must try to avoid using the word that too often,” and that student would continue to try to avoid that which avoided referring to that too often.  

I wanted Mr. Schenk’s undisciplined, chaotic style of teaching to succeed so much that I chose to succeed within it. I understand that this teacher was a community college teacher, teaching an elective, but I wanted him to trumpet this idea that one of the laziest, most ADHD students who ever sat behind a desk actually excelled in his idea of a lesson plan. I wanted him to spread the word among his colleagues that this might be the key to unlocking the minds of poor students and prevent them from being so bored that they distracted their fellow students by wiggling their book racks.

It probably wouldn’t work, seeing as how lazy and undisciplined young people are, myself included of course, but I thought his teaching style of offering a subject and then allowing the students to learn it on their own, from alternative sources, could succeed in the internet world of charismatic influencers on YouTube. Teachers have some performance reviews, especially in college, but how many teachers are actually fired based on the idea that their lectures are boring and tedious? In the capitalistic struggle for hits and subscriptions, a YouTube influencer needs to find unique ways to maintain an audience, and their struggle involves spending money on graphics and clips that make their presentations interesting and fun. The teacher could say, “This week’s assignment is King Henry VII, go learn everything you can about him, and we’ll discuss it next Tuesday.”  

It’s too late for me now, of course, but this idea goes out to poor students who think different. We all know how individualistic the human brain is. I’m not informed on the science behind it, but for some reason we all learn in different ways. Some are audio learners, visual, and kinesthetic. Minds like mine will never succeed under the current format, but I don’t write that to suggest that I was a misunderstood genius or a prodigy. I may have been such an anxious kid with so much nervous energy that I may not have succeeded regardless the format, but I had teachers who hit me where I lived. Mr. Schenk, Mr. Reardon, and that one woman who interpreted and defined Hamlet for me. So, some teachers woke me up, and they reached me on a level that should’ve defined for me sooner that I wasn’t the horrible student I thought I was. Were they more energetic, I don’t consider that debatable. Were they more passionate and informed, again, not debatable, but they reached me on a level that I still remember with a large asterisk in my life.

To escape what I considered the life-draining minutes of structured learning, I wiggled and shook the book racks of the students in front of me to get some kind of “REACTION!” from them. That was really what it was all about for me, the reaction. The more frustrated and angrier, the better. I thought it was funny most of the times, but I did it so often that it began to lose its edge. I continued to do it, because that’s just the type of (fill in the blank with your favorite invective) I was, am, and forever will be. The difference between then and now is that I’ve learned how to channel all that nervous energy.